* dvbd

** INTRODUCTION

The idea behind dvbd is to make maximum use of your DVB card by
allowing multiple channels on the same frequency to be tuned. It is
split into a daemon (dvbd) and client programs (dvbcat, dvbsched,
dvblist).  It is possible to associate a priority with a connection to
the daemon, so that (depending on the given priority) the tuner can be
made available by dropping connections of inferior priority.

DVB-T, DVB-S, DVB-C supported.

Also read dvbdguide/README.dvbdguide if you are interested in a 
web frontend for this program.

** BUILDING

It is important to specify a prefix for configure, even if you are planning to
install to /usr/local. For example:  ./configure --prefix=/usr/local

** CONFIGURATION

The daemon has a configuration file which by default is
/etc/dvbd/config. The format of the file is lines of key=value. Line
comments can be begun with #.

The following configuration fields are available:
  socket   - the (unix) socket to listen on. 
	     Default is /var/run/dvbd/dvbd.socket
  pid      - the pid file to write to once
	     it has become a daemon.
	     Default is /var/run/dvbd/dvbd.pid
  log      - the log file to write to
	     Default is /var/log/dvbd.log
  schedule - the schedule file to write to
	     Default is /var/spool/dvbd/schedule
  debug    - the debug level (default is 0) If a higher
             debug level is set, dvbd will not go into the
	     background.
  numcards - the number of DVB cards your system supports
  card0    - the first DVB card. The format of this field is 
             type:frontend:channels
             Where 
               - type may be one of dvb-t, dvb-s or dvb-t.
               - frontend is the path to the frontend (tuner)
                 for the card
               - channels is the path to the tzap/szap/czap format
                 channels.conf file for the card.

If no cards are specified, a default of one dvb-t card is assumed with
channels file /etc/tzap.channels.conf and frontend
/dev/dvb/adapter0/frontend0

** CLIENT PROGRAMS

At the moment there are four client programs. dvbcat, dvbrtp, dvblist
and dvbsched.  

dvbcat can be used to extract a stream from the dvbd
for live TV.

For example:

  dvbcat dvb-t "BBC ONE" | mplayer -

dvbrtp can be used in a similar way to dvbcat to broadcast a DVB
stream via the RTP protocol.

  dvbrtp dvb-t "BBC ONE" host:port

dvbsched is used to schedule a recording. Note that an output file
must be specified whose containing directory must be owned by the user
issuing the request. The directory must also be writable by the dvbd
program.

The time format is in at(1) format. See at's manpage for more
information about it.

For example:

  mkdir ~/recordings
  dvbsched dvb-t "ITV 2" 19.20 32 ~/recordings/itv2.mpg

If there is a clash the program will ask you if you want
to cancel your job.

dvblist shows the channels available to tune at the given 
priority (default is 10). 

For example:

  dvblist dvb-t

If there are some existing connections the list of channels
may be shorter than the full list. 

** WEB INTERFACES **

Please see the dvbdphp and dvbdguide subdirectories for web interfaces
to dvbd.

** CONTRIBUTING AND COMMENTS 

Feedback, bug fixes, new features, patches and suggestions are very
welcome.  Please send to jak@users.sourceforge.net or post on the
SourceForge project page.
