Description: Kbtv is a TV viewer for FreeBSD/KDE mostly written in Python. It uses the PyQt/PyKDE3 bindings, SWIG, and SDL, and supports BrookTree/Connexant BT8x8 (bktr) and Phillips SAA713x (saa) based analog TV cards as well as Philips compatible USB webcams (pwc).
Kbtv is hosted at http://freebsd.ricin.com/kbtv as well as on Sourceforge at http://sourceforge.net/projects/kbtv
On my website you can find the source and ports for the first beta of kbtv2 (version 1.91). The GUI uses PyQt4 (not KDE4).
I have developed and tested on FreeBSD6 for now. Saa tuning seems broken ATM, intend to fix this for beta2. After that I will move to FreeBSD7.
Added support for Hauppauge pvr150/500 (maybe also 250/350). See README. Works fine for me (except slower startup than other backends). Viewer uses ffmpeg and it is faster and uses less resources than mplayer AFAICT.
I have PAL B/G television signal, so that's the only one I can really test.
WWW: http://freebsd.ricin.com/kbtv2
I want to do several betas and RCs until I have version 2.0. That version will be submitted to the official FreeBSD ports.
Maybe. The ports have been shaping up lately. But it would depend on how much leeway I have, it's my understanding that the driver is a blob and if I don't have any API to do the same things than with the other supported HW then I would feel like I'm not adding anything and people get a crippled GUI. So I'm not sure.
I may look into it, but need to buy some (representative) HW too then. No promises made.
That's for Linux. It can't be used as-is.
You should look at the multimedia/pvr250 and pvrxxx ports. They use quite some Linux code too but the firmware and -worse- the actual capture driver (.sys) are binary blobs. Tuning not, that's implemented from datasheets, most of it via v4l I think. Probably from the ivtv codebase.
From what I gathered, the ports make the hardware behave like a bktr, that is you can use bktr-ish sysctl for tuning and some other things. Only the framebuffer itself can not be accessed directly in the "normal" way such as mmap, but 'cat /dev/cmx0' is supposed to yield the YUV (MPEG) data and it can be played directly with mplayer.
I think it should be possible to work with this (I use SDL in kbtv for rendering), albeit a bit clunky using read(). So indeed, it looks a lot better than I'd thought.
Correct me if I'm wrong!
I'm pretty short on time ATM, and about to move to another place, but
I'll ask around as to which HW board is a good choice (in order to support as many others as well) and see if I can bend it to fit in with the rest in kbtv. Hopefully during or after the summer.
Thanks!
Yeah, this looks pretty much correct to me except the device name. For me it is /dev/video0. I can do a :
#cat /dev/video0 > test.mpg
CTRL-C
and play this file with mplayer or equiv.
Here is a list of the different devices with the card form the IVTV wiki:
/dev/video0
MPEG2 encoder device (most people want this)
/dev/video16
decoder device for CX23415 cards (tv-out)
/dev/video24
audio only output
/dev/video32
raw YUV (uncompressed) encoder device
/dev/video48
raw YUV decoder output stream (currently doesn't work)
/dev/radio0
radio device
/dev/vbi0
vertical blank interval (cc and teletext, etc) for the encoder
/dev/vbi4
reproduced vbi data sent to video16
/dev/vbi8
sends data to the tv-out port (CX23415 cards)
/dev/fb[x]
framebuffer device
Note not all cards have a radio. Only certain models of the PVR-150 and the PVR-350 have the radio. The PVR-500 is basically two PVR-150s on one card as it has 2 tuner devices.
As for what card to test with, I think that the PVR-150 is a good way to go. They all work the same way and use the same drivers, but the 150 is newer then the 250 and 350 and is the cheapest.
Whether inclusion of support " DMA transfers straight to video card " is planned? Earlier, it was possible to use the program "fxtv", but now, it does not work with the driver "nvidia". And that, without " PCI to PCI dma transfer ", the videoimage very much not qualitative.
It uses the bktr driver that comes with FreeBSD unmodified, so if and how you can set it up like that is a bktr issue. If possible at all you'd have to do it with kernel options I reckon.
If you have poor (slow) image quality and/or high CPU usage, make sure you have some hardware acceleration enabled in your Xorg. Xv is the default used by SDL and it seems to work fine for most people. This is not bktr specific.
HTH
Ratings & Comments
10 Comments
On my website you can find the source and ports for the first beta of kbtv2 (version 1.91). The GUI uses PyQt4 (not KDE4). I have developed and tested on FreeBSD6 for now. Saa tuning seems broken ATM, intend to fix this for beta2. After that I will move to FreeBSD7. Added support for Hauppauge pvr150/500 (maybe also 250/350). See README. Works fine for me (except slower startup than other backends). Viewer uses ffmpeg and it is faster and uses less resources than mplayer AFAICT. I have PAL B/G television signal, so that's the only one I can really test. WWW: http://freebsd.ricin.com/kbtv2 I want to do several betas and RCs until I have version 2.0. That version will be submitted to the official FreeBSD ports.
Hello, I would like to test your kbtv2 on Linux. Please, could you provide support for Linux as well as for FreeBSD? Cheers, Jiri
That's up to Linux people. Kernel modules and support are quite different.
Any chance that you'll be adding support for ivtv cards such as the hauppauge wintv-pvr-150?
Maybe. The ports have been shaping up lately. But it would depend on how much leeway I have, it's my understanding that the driver is a blob and if I don't have any API to do the same things than with the other supported HW then I would feel like I'm not adding anything and people get a crippled GUI. So I'm not sure. I may look into it, but need to buy some (representative) HW too then. No promises made.
Actually the driver is open source!! http://ivtvdriver.org/index.php/Main_Page Hopefully this helps out
That's for Linux. It can't be used as-is. You should look at the multimedia/pvr250 and pvrxxx ports. They use quite some Linux code too but the firmware and -worse- the actual capture driver (.sys) are binary blobs. Tuning not, that's implemented from datasheets, most of it via v4l I think. Probably from the ivtv codebase. From what I gathered, the ports make the hardware behave like a bktr, that is you can use bktr-ish sysctl for tuning and some other things. Only the framebuffer itself can not be accessed directly in the "normal" way such as mmap, but 'cat /dev/cmx0' is supposed to yield the YUV (MPEG) data and it can be played directly with mplayer. I think it should be possible to work with this (I use SDL in kbtv for rendering), albeit a bit clunky using read(). So indeed, it looks a lot better than I'd thought. Correct me if I'm wrong! I'm pretty short on time ATM, and about to move to another place, but I'll ask around as to which HW board is a good choice (in order to support as many others as well) and see if I can bend it to fit in with the rest in kbtv. Hopefully during or after the summer. Thanks!
Yeah, this looks pretty much correct to me except the device name. For me it is /dev/video0. I can do a : #cat /dev/video0 > test.mpg CTRL-C and play this file with mplayer or equiv. Here is a list of the different devices with the card form the IVTV wiki: /dev/video0 MPEG2 encoder device (most people want this) /dev/video16 decoder device for CX23415 cards (tv-out) /dev/video24 audio only output /dev/video32 raw YUV (uncompressed) encoder device /dev/video48 raw YUV decoder output stream (currently doesn't work) /dev/radio0 radio device /dev/vbi0 vertical blank interval (cc and teletext, etc) for the encoder /dev/vbi4 reproduced vbi data sent to video16 /dev/vbi8 sends data to the tv-out port (CX23415 cards) /dev/fb[x] framebuffer device Note not all cards have a radio. Only certain models of the PVR-150 and the PVR-350 have the radio. The PVR-500 is basically two PVR-150s on one card as it has 2 tuner devices. As for what card to test with, I think that the PVR-150 is a good way to go. They all work the same way and use the same drivers, but the 150 is newer then the 250 and 350 and is the cheapest.
Whether inclusion of support " DMA transfers straight to video card " is planned? Earlier, it was possible to use the program "fxtv", but now, it does not work with the driver "nvidia". And that, without " PCI to PCI dma transfer ", the videoimage very much not qualitative.
It uses the bktr driver that comes with FreeBSD unmodified, so if and how you can set it up like that is a bktr issue. If possible at all you'd have to do it with kernel options I reckon. If you have poor (slow) image quality and/or high CPU usage, make sure you have some hardware acceleration enabled in your Xorg. Xv is the default used by SDL and it seems to work fine for most people. This is not bktr specific. HTH