DVBdirect: A C++ repository from lightful

DVB direct handling tools for Linux

Easily handle DVB captures from the command line. In fact easier than using many fancy desktop apps. You can watch a channel while recording it, or any other received in the same frequency.

'mpegts' tool

Determine the TV channels in any recorded MPEG-TS file
Show detailed information from any channel
Play, save or compress a separate program (including all audio tracks and dvb subtitles)
Actually it is a foolproof ffmpeg frontend to obviate the need for tens of parameters. It requires the ffmpeg package (which provides ffmpeg, ffprobe and ffplay) and python 3.4+ installed.

'dvbjet' standalone DVB capture utility

Tunes your TV card and saves the full plain MPEG stream for the selected frecuency, as with a radio.
For example, the 60+ DVB-T channels in Madrid use only 9 frecuencies (482, 514, 570, 618, 698, 706, 746, 770 and 778 MHz). The frequency 770000000 carries TVE1, TVE2, 24H and Clan TV channels (including standard and HD variants) plus a few radio stations:

$ dvbjet output.mts 3=770000000

The generated file (standard MPEG-TS format) can be processed by the mpegts tool. The frequencies used in your city can be found in configuration files (e.g. channels.conf) or running tools like w_scan.
Besides the option number 3 shown here, all Linux DVB parameters are selectable by their standard ioctl system codes, instead of the multiple names used out there. Run dvbjet without options for more information. For example, outside Europe the option 5 may be required to setup the channel bandwidth.
There is an option to schedule the unattended starting/end recording time. Recording is reliable and no data is lost under high disk load; even a disk full may not cause overrun errors (if space is freed soon enough).
There aren't build dependencies, it only requires a non-Methuselah C++ compiler (circa 2013: gcc 4.8+ or clang) and the system headers package (linux-api-headers in Arch, kernel-headers in Fedora, linux-libc-dev in Ubuntu or linux-glibc-devel in Suse):

$ git clone --recursive https://github.com/lightful/DVBdirect
$ cd DVBdirect
$ make

Please, do not forget the --recursive option to download a required submodule (otherwise the build would fail).