DVBStreamer 0.6 review

DVBStreamer is a Linux application to stream a service from an off-air DVB transport stream over UDP. A service in this context is

License: GPL (GNU General Public License) File size: 0K Developer: Adam Charrett

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DVBStreamer is a Linux application to stream a service from an off-air DVB transport stream over UDP.

A service in this context is an MPEG2 'progam' which includes all of the PIDs listed in the 'program's' Program Map Table. Confusing DVB call this a 'service' and MPEG a 'program' (although there are reason for this difference which I won't go into).

DVBStreamer doesn't transcode the incoming service but simple forwards all the transport packets belonging to the service over UDP to a reciever. The receiver could be a display application like mplayer/xine/video lan client or it could be a simple recording application to store the received packets to file.

What makes DVBStreamer different from similar applications?

First of all DVBStreamer streams the entire service, that includes the PCR PID which some other applications assume is embedded in the video or audio packets.

Secondly the channels.conf file produced by the linuxtv.org scan application is only used to initialise the list of services and multiplexes, the PID values in file are not used. Instead the SI in the transport stream is monitored and updated when the PAT and PMT tables are updated.

Finally DVBStreamer only retunes to a multiplex, if when switching services the new service is on a different multiplex. This speeds up channel change quite considerably.

Requirements:
libdvbpsi 0.1.5
SQLite 3.2.0

What's New in This Release:
New scan command, to rescan a specific multiplex for changes.
New setsfavsonly command, to enable streaming of only the audio/video/subtitle pids. Also rewrites the services PMT to only include these.

Database changes
Descriptors now stored for PIDs in a service.
PCR pid moved into Services table from PIDs table.

Bugs fixed.
Memory leak in cache.c
service deletion bug in cache.c
other stability fixes I've forgotten about
File output changed to use fopen64 for large file support (files greater than 2GB)