DVBStreamer 0.8

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 programs Program Map Table. Confusing DVB call this a service and MPEG a program (although there are reason for this difference which I wont go into).

DVBStreamer doesnt 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.