Kaffeine
Kaffeine is a very versatile KDE media player that, by default, utilizes Xine as its backend. It has a simple but intuitive interface (example screenshot) and is easy to setup. Amongst its list of supported formats are CDDA, VCD, DVD, .... and, since versions >0.5, it also provides full DVB support:
- TV and Radio
- Time Shifting
- Recording -- including unattended recording
- Network streaming (transmission and reception)
- EPG, EPG-driven recording timers, OSD EPG now and next.
- AC3
- DVB subtitles
- HDTV: Kaffeine will display HDTV delivered over DVB-S (e.g. BBC HD on Astra 2 at 28.8 degrees East). To use multithreaded ffmpeg decoding set the xine option video.processing.ffmpeg_thread_count equal to the number of CPUs, ie. 2 for a Dual-core or 4 for a Quad-core (in the GUI it is in Settings/Xine engine config/Video/Advanced). BBC HD and LUXE HD working. A patch (now in SVN) adding DVB-S2 support to Kaffeine (via S2API) is available here: http://linuxtv.org/pipermail/linux-dvb/2008-October/029839.html.
- Remote control
- Handles multiple devices of any type (DVB-{C,S,T} and ATSC1 ).... and even if you have only one DVB device, Kaffeine can simultaneously play and record different channels within a same transponder).
- Handles mutiple frontends on a single device (for example a multi-standard card supporting say DVB-S and DVB-T).
- Channel scanning on multiple devices/frontends, and multiple satellites.
- Channel favourites lists.
- DiSEqC 1.x switches, DiSEqC 1.2 rotors and USALS type goto longitude feature.
- Supports both Low and High level CI.
- KDE application style, rather than set top box (like MythTV or VDR)
Note 1: Scanning with ATSC hardware is supported since version 0.8.7. For older versions, to configure tuning support for ATSC devices, refer to the directions contained in this thread.
Available Flavours
Bleeding-edge KDE3 Version
To make use of the latest features (e.g. HDTV and S2API support) you might need to compile bleeding-edge versions of ffmpeg,xine-lib and kaffeine.
Remove old versions of ffmpeg,xine-lib and kaffeine first.
Get SVN ffmpeg, compile and install
svn checkout svn://svn.mplayerhq.hu/ffmpeg/trunk ffmpeg
Get latest xine-lib, compile with --with-external-ffmpeg option, install
hg clone http://hg.debian.org/hg/xine-lib/xine-lib cd xine-lib ./autogen.sh ./configure --prefix=/usr --with-external-ffmpeg make sudo make install
Get SVN kaffeine, compile and install:
svn co svn://anonsvn.kde.org/home/kde/branches/extragear/kde3/multimedia
Remove all projects (subdirs) you don't want to build. At least you need admin and kaffeine of course.
make -f Makefile.cvs ./configure make cd kaffeine sudo make install
KDE4 Version
The latest Kaffeine release is a KDE3 application although it runs with no problems under KDE4. A KDE4 version (kaffeine4) is under development here http://websvn.kde.org/trunk/extragear/multimedia/kaffeine/ . As of September 2008 it's alpha, but plays DVDs and videos. Try it out: get KDE4.1 (http://kubuntu.org) and do the following:
svn co svn://anonsvn.kde.org/home/kde/trunk/extragear/multimedia/kaffeine mkdir kaffeine-build cd kaffeine-build cmake ../kaffeine make ./src/kaffeine4
The authors claimed a while ago that they required new features in Phonon, although this was disputed by Aaron Seigo. See http://dot.kde.org/1166377123/1166385374/1166438293/ and http://hftom.free.fr/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=18.
KDE4 Version with OpenGL OSD
Some work has been done on a better on-screen display (OSD) using OpenGL. It is under development here http://websvn.kde.org/trunk/extragear/multimedia/kaffeinegl/. It looks like this repo is for testing the interface rather than a full Kaffeine program. Hopefully the result will be an improved OSD in Kaffeine4. Try it out and contribute: get KDE4.1 (http://kubuntu.org) and do the following:
svn co svn://anonsvn.kde.org/home/kde/trunk/extragear/multimedia/kaffeinegl mkdir kaffeinegl-build cd kaffeinegl-build cmake ../kaffeinegl make ./src/kaffeinegl