From Linux Man Pages
fbtv - a console program for watching TV
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/console-
fonts. 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 pic-
ture while working on another console. This is more or less a dirty hack. Works only if all your con-
soles 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 accom-
plished with the fbset(1) utility, which is availabile at various locations. See: http://www.cs.kuleu-
ven.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-lat-
est/fb.modes.vesa60.gz
RELATED
xawtv(1)
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.
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