What software is available to use TV tuner card?

I am looking for software programs to use my TV Tuner card in Ubuntu. I have mythTV installed and use it quite a bit. But I am looking for a program that can tune my tuner card in just a window, not only a full-screen.

E.g. - I would like to watch something in a browser, while having a TV channel playing in another window. Maybe a program like VLC that can control my tuner?


You're requesting to watch TV with VLC - well it is possible. See this answer.

  • TV with VLC Install vlc

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Else some illustrations of the other applications:

  • TV with Me-TV Install me-tv

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  • TV with Kaffeine Install kaffeine

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Me TV Install me-tv is a pretty decent under-appreciated application for DVB-* devices.

Has an EPG, even recording facilities. Much, much lighter than MythTV.

sudo apt-get install me-tv

MythTV Install mythtv can also be configured to run in a window. In the MythTV Frontend, go to Setup > Appearance and the first screen should look similar to the screen below. You can set the size of the menu here, and also if you want the playback to use the same size area. Setting the window border option will add or remove the window border, and setting fixed window size will make the windows either resizable or not.

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You could always use mplayer Install mplayer:

mplayer -fs dvb://[card_number@]channel 

The -fs flag enables full screen mode.