When I first started with Linux I found it frustrating as there was too much information available. All I wanted to do was to play a DVD and get Digital TV going.

What I needed was a quick start guide that got me going and allowed me to build up some confidence. So here is my attempt at just that!

There are many choices for Media Players today, but not many that do DVB TV and DVD as well.  I have chosen to go with Kaffeine the KDE Media Player which has a very easy setup for DVB TV. You will also want to install mplayer  and the firefox mplayer plugin which will give you access to web embedded media such as apple quicktime. For those of you that use the Gnome desktop Kaffeine works just as well here.

My personal preference is to use MythTV, which has much more capability as a full blown media centre. Its WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor) is sky high. It is however a little more involved to setup. I have included setup guides for MythTV also for those that want to go a bit further than Kaffeine.

Once Kaffeine is working, the system will play all the types of media, including CD, DVD, DVB, Windows media, real media, Quicktime and MP3.

Lets get Started

It's worth putting in a few minutes to set things up that will make life easier in the long term. Under Linux we need to use a Text editor quite often. Also installing software is very easy as long as we tell the system where to get the installable applications from.

1. As we will need to edit the odd configuration file, you might want to just check out Gedit the gnome text editor. Sometimes you may need to edit a file as super user. Just open a terminal window type "su". Then you can just edit a file like so  "gedit filename" where filename is the name of the file you want to edit.

2.  Setup Software Repositories in openSUSE 11.1
This tells the system where to get software packages from. Bring up YaST Control Centre and select Software->Software Repositories
You will see a collection of Repositories that are enabled by default.
Click on Add->Community Repositories and select the ones that you want. Here are mine.

-Main Repository (NON-OSS)
-NVIDIA Respository
-openSUSE 11.1-0
-openSUSE 11.1-Oss
-openSUSE 11.1-Source
-openSUSE-11.1-Update
-Packman Repository
-VideoLan Repository

All of the above are enabled and all Autorefresh

Now you can just go into YaST->Software Management and do a search of the package you want.

The following packages will give you full DVD and  DVB playback.
openSUSE  includes many of these packages. I would recommend that you still use the RPMs in the links below, as the versions from SUSE do have some limitations.

Kaffeine is based on the Xine Multimedia player and needs the following pre-requisites before it will install cleanly.

Also you will need DVB-Tools if you want to try some manual tuning as in the Testing Drivers tab above.

Just for completness go to the updates tab, and update all listed packages

Known Issues

PulseAudio seems to take a lot of CPU. Remove the pulse audio server with the following command
>Sudo Zypper rm pulseaudio

There appears to be some problems with playing dvds in opensuse 11.1.
You need to make some changes to the default permissions for your user.

Go into YaST->User and Group Managment
Edit your default User Group permissions and add groups audio,disk,cdrom,users

I also have a problem with playing region 2 DVDs on a region 1 DVD drive in Xine. no issues in VLC or Mplayer. Using a region 2 enabled drive has solved this problem. I have not noticed region coding issues prviously in Linux.

openSUSE has goodsupport  for  DVB-T/S card drivers Out Of the Box (OOTB). You can install these from YaST if it matches what you have. 

NOTE. There are two types of Hauppauge Nova-T PCI cards, the older BT88 based one (also called budget card) and the newer Connexant based one also called the 90002.  See review Here.

If you are having problems with your drivers, then go to the "Testing Drivers"  under the "TV Cards and Drivers" section.

Let's get some Live TV!!!

Click on your "Computer"->More Applications-> "Multimedia"-> "Kaffeine"

(NOTE Kaffeine will ask you for initial tuning data if your TV card does not support autoscan. You need to select the transmitter closest to you (UK CrystalPalace in my case).

When Kaffeine starts select the DVB Tab and click on the TV Screen icon.
If you do not have a DVB Tab, then Kaffeine cannot see your card and drivers
The TV Tuner should come up
Scan your channels
Add to your favorites
and click "Done"

Set the Kaffeine  player engine, in Kaffeine
click Settings ->Player Engine ->Kaffeine


Select the channel you want to watch and hey presto Live TV!
Press "g" on the keyboard to get the programme guide

If you are not able to get any TV Stations try the "testing drivers tab" under the TV Cards section of this website.
If you dont get a picture your video card may not be set up with Xv Video acceleration. Go to Settings->Xine Engine Parameters->Video->Video Driver, and change from auto to xshm. This is the software video driver, will be slow but should produce a picture.

Not as good as MythTV but you should be up and running in about a total of 30 minutes

Setup Kaffeine as your default player

In the KDE Control Centre select KDE components-> File Associations, and change the default player to Kaffeine, for video file types.