w_scan output(s)

[Peter Hillier-Brook]

On 02/08/2010 01:59, Basil Chupin wrote:
> On 02/08/2010 07:17, Peter Hillier-Brook wrote:
>> I recently discovered the above program and ran it against my DVB-T card
>> (Hauppauge), that it found without help. However the output appeared to
>> only go to standard out and no channels.conf file was produced. Can
>> anyone confirm that this is expected behaviour and that I need to
>> redirect the output to a file of my choice?
>>
>> Peter HB
>>
>
> Firstly, which part of the world are you at? You will need to know the
> 2-char abbreviation for your country.

Thanks for the response. I'm in England, but I can use 'GB' ;-) In fact 
I read the man page before posting and my query was only about the need 
to redirect stdout.

> Secondly, which TV application are you using with your DVB-T card?

I've tried to use a dedicated installation of Mythbuntu, but couldn't 
get out of the starting gate. Either yourself, or someone else recently 
identified VLC as a possibility and that is my intended route, but I'll 
certainly look at xine as well.

One of the few reasons that I still maintain a Windows installation is 
that Windows Media Centre gives me TV (Freeview) straight out of the box 
that, incidentally, establishes the functionality of my hardware.

> I am in Australia, and I am using vlc as well as xine for my TV viewing.
> Both use the (same) channels.conf file for the TV channels. To create
> channels.conf for vlc and xine:
>
> on a command line,
>
> /usr/bin/w_scan -c AU -X>  channels.conf [1]
>
> which will create the *.conf in you home directory.

Yes. The '-X' switch was useful info given the sparseness of the man 
page and the redirection to 'channels.conf' answers my original question.

> Then, for vlc, go to Properties>  Command and add at the end to what is
> now already there, ".... /home/<name>/channels.conf " [without the
> quotes of course]. Every time you click on the icon for vlc to start it
> it will start on the last TV channel you were last watching. The Command
> line will look like this, "vlc %U /home/<name>/channels.conf".

I agree that that will work, but it will have to be a second launch icon 
as I already enjoy some excellent jazz via some streamed radio channels.

> For xine, simply copy the channels.conf file into /.xine directory (and
> if you do then you can also use this as the additional info you put for
> vlc in Properties>Command - ie, /home/<name>/.xine/channels.conf)

That makes sense.

> [1] Note the use of the country code (AU for me) immediately after "-c"
> - replace this with your country's code; note the use of the capital
> "-X" which tells w_scan to produce the file in a format which xine
> recognises; and note the use of the single ">" and not the">>" shown in
> the w-scan documentation - using the double is to overwrite an existing
> conf file, somewhere, I don't know where, so use the single ">" and then
> you know where the file will be created (in you home directory).

I didn't notice the redirection append in the man page so that is useful 
also. Many thanks for your time. It is appreciated.

Apropos of nothing much, isn't it odd that the package is 'w-scan' and 
the executable is 'w_scan'?

Peter HB