Digital TV on Linux? Easy!

Not too long ago, getting a DVB-T Terrestrial Digital Television card to work with the Linux operating system was a time consuming, technically involved and frustrating task.

Thanks to a team of dedicated developers and enthusiasts, all of whom donate their time and efforts to the Linux community, getting Digital TV to work with Linux is becoming mainstream.

Most Digital TV cards and USB receivers for the PC are designed to work with Windows and the manufacturers and their software developers care little about the relatively small market of Linux users.
This is changing, as each successive Linux distribution is an improvement on the last.
More users are reaping the benefits of an amazing pool of free software applications, many of which offering better performance and functionality than their commercial Windows based counterparts.

MythTV is a free Linux based Digital TV and Media Center application that can be added to an existing Linux distribution, such as Ubuntu, or as a distribution in its own right. The popular Ubuntu based derivative is MythBuntu.

There are also basic Digital TV Viewer add-ons like MeTV that can be installed using Ubuntus software manager.

So, how to get a digital TV device up and running in Ubuntu/Mythbuntu?

Here's how.

Probably one of the easiest device of all is the Leadtek Winfast Dongle Gold.

These can be sourced from specialist online digital TV sites like DPandA

Get the latest version of Ubuntu (version 9.10 - Karmic Koala) from here :-
http://www.ubuntu.com/GetUbuntu/download

If trying Ubuntu for the first time, you can install to spare hard drive. It is recommended you disconnect any other drives in the PC so that you can be sure you are installing to the correct drive and that other drives are unaffected by the installation.

Once the installation is finished, plug your Winfast Dongle Gold into a spare USB 2.0 port and boot into Ubuntu 9.10.

In the menu system go to System -> Administration -> Hardware Drivers

The system will connect to the internet to check for drivers and then display a list of those that it finds.

Look for an entry that says "Firmware for DVB Cards"

Select the entry by clicking on it the "Activate" button.

You could also install the recommended restricted video drivers for your Video Adaptor at this stage, if they are listed under hardware drivers.

Once activated, the drivers will be available to any viewer application that supports DVB-T, such as MythTV, MeTV, Xine, Mplayer and more.

Choosing and configuring a player is something we'll cover in another post.