NAME
fbtv - a console program for watching TV
SYNOPSIS
fbtv [ options ] [ station name ]
DESCRIPTION
fbtv is a program for watching TV with your linux box. It runs on top
of a graphic framebuffer device (/dev/fb0). You’ll need a new 2.1.x
kernel to play with this. fbtv shares the config file ($HOME/.xawtv)
with the xawtv application. Check the xawtv(1) manpage for details
about the config file format.
OPTIONS
-o base
set basestring for the snapshot output files. The filename will
be "base-timestamp-nr.ext".
-v Be verbose.
-c device
video4linux device (default is /dev/video0).
-d device
framebuffer device (default is $FRAMEBUFFER; /dev/fb0 if unset)
-g grayscaled display (works for 256 color mode only)
-s widthxheight
display the TV picture in width x height size in the upper right
corner.
-f font
font for text. Default is to look for lat1-16.psf in
/usr/lib/kbd/consolefonts and /usr/share/consolefonts. If you
have a local X11 font server running (or the FONTSERVER
environment variable set to some working server), you can also
give X11 font specs here.
-m mode
video mode for TV. fbtv will look up the mode in /etc/fb.modes.
-j joydev
joystick device to use for controlling fbtv.
-k keep capture on when switching consoles. Might be useful
together with -s switch, you have a video picture while working
on another console. This is more or less a dirty hack. Works
only if all your consoles have the same video mode and fbcon
does not use panning to speed up scrolling. For a multiheaded
setup this is useful too.
-q quiet mode. Doesn’t reserve space for the status line at the
top, doesn’t display the status messages and clock. You can
toggle this at runtime too (’F’).
-M EXPERIMENTAL: Turn on backend scaler mode (write yuv to
offscreen memory and let the gfx board scale up the video).
Supported hardware: Matrox G200/G400 (with matroxfb) and ATI
Mach64 VT/GT (with atyfb, 16bpp only). You’ll need at least
bttv-0.7.16 or kernel 2.3.50.
USAGE
fbtv is supported to work much like xawtv from user’s point of view.
You might have noticed that xawtv has a lot of keyboard shortcuts.
They work in fbtv too (if it useful). Here is the list:
G Grab picture (full size, ppm)
J Grab picture (full size, jpeg)
F Fullscreen. Toggle quiet mode (see above).
up/down tune up/down one channel
left/right fine tuning
pgup/pgdown station up/down
ESC,Q Quit
X Quit, but leave sound on.
+/- Volume up/down
Enter mute
The channel hotkeys defined in $HOME/.xawtv are supported too, with one
exception: modifier keys (something like "key = Ctrl+F1") do not work.
FULLSCREEN TV
Some hints from Dag Bakke <dag.bakke@riksnett.no>:
The BT8xx cards can produce images up to 768x576 pixels. In order to
have fbtv make use of your entire monitor-size and get maximum image
quality, you need to create a 768x576 pixels framebufferconsole. This
can be accomplished with the fbset(1) utility, which is available at
various locations. See: http://www.cs.kuleuven.ac.be/~geert/bin/
Or, you can let fbtv handle the videomode changes with the -m switch.
This requires that you have a small database with the various
videomodes availabile. The file containing the videomodes is normally
named /etc/fb.modes. For example, the following entry produces a
768x576x32bpp mode, with 75Hz refresh on a Matrox G200.
mode "tv"
# D: 49.188 MHz, H: 46.580 kHz, V: 75.008 Hz
geometry 768 576 768 576 32
timings 20330 128 32 32 8 128 5
endmode
The command "fbtv -q -mtv" thus gives you crisp clear (well, as good as
the received signal anyway) tv on your entire screen. Alias this
command to ’tv’, and you’re set.
NB! Please note that your monitor may or may not be able to handle
such a "custom" resolution. And that misuse of the aforementioned fbset
utility can toast your monitor. It is a lot easier to pull smoke out of
electronic components, than to put it back in.
A database of the standard VESA-modes can be downloaded from:
ftp://platan.vc.cvut.cz/pub/linux/matrox-latest/fb.modes.vesa60.gz
SEE ALSO
xawtv(1)
AUTHOR
Gerd Knorr <kraxel@goldbach.in-berlin.de>
COPYRIGHT
Copyright (C) 1997,98 Gerd Knorr <kraxel@goldbach.in-berlin.de>
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the
Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your
option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along
with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
(c) 1998 Gerd Knorr fbtv(1)