vbishow
vbishow is a program to read teletext data from a IVTV television card (e.g. Hauppauge PVR-350) and present the teletext pages in an xterm or Linux console. This is a test program with the goal to determine what is being transmitted in teletext pages. vbishow was written to help develop vbi2srt.
Here are some screenshots showing the output from an xterm. (Click on a graphic for a full screen view)
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| France 2 Page 272 | Kinderkanal Page 151 | BBC Prime Page 143 | BBC Prime Magazine 8 | Character Chart |
Installation Notes
To display the output correctly two fonts need to be installed, it is better to use unicode font because it supports more characters. However, not all distributions have a glibc that supports unicode. The location where the fonts are installed depends on the Linux distribution. vbishow can run from a console window or an xterm window the.
To install the console fonts copy vtxtu.psfu and vtxt.psfu into console fonts (/usr/share/consolefonts). To install the xterm fonts copy vtxtu.pcf and vtxt.pcf into a xterm fonts directory (/usr/share/fonts/tv).
Load the console font with:
# setfont vtxt
The xterm fonts are enabled by running mkfontdir:
# mkfontdir /usr/share/fonts/tv
A unicode xterm can be started with:
# uxterm -font "-vbi-teletext-medium-r-normal--15-140-75-75-c-90-iso10646-1"
and a non-unicode xterm started with:
# xterm -font "-vbi-teletext-medium-r-normal--16-1-75-75-c-90-fontspecific-1"
To permanently enable the font for the xterm add to ~/.Xdefaults either for unicode
xterm*VT100*font: -vbi-teletext-medium-r-normal--15-140-75-75-c-90-iso10646-1
or for non unicode add:
xterm*VT100*font: -vbi-teletext-medium-r-normal--16-1-75-75-c-90-fontspecific-1
The fonts are included in the archive, vtxt.bdf and vtxtu.bdf are the font sources.
Usage
| -h | --help | print help and exit |
| -V | --version | print version and exit |
| -C | --chart | print character mapping chart and exit |
| -v | --verbose | print verbose information |
| -d | --debug | print debug information |
| -x | --hex | print HEX codes |
| -a | --ascii | print ASCII characters |
| -c | --control | print control codes |
| -s | --special | print special teletext rows |
| -e | --escape | print escape sequences (sgr) |
| -w | --wss | print decoded WSS data |
| -P | --vps | print decoded VPS data |
| -mNUMBER | --magazine=NUMBER | print only pages on the magazine (1-8) |
| -pNUMBER | --page=NUMBER | print only pages for page number (100-899) (900 no pages) |
| -bSTRING | --vbi-device=STRING | VBI device (default /dev/vbi0) |
| -tSTRING | --ctrl-flags=STRING | print only pages that match (default any) |
| -fSTRING | --font=STRING | use font (default current terminal font) |
Example Usage
vbishow -h
prints the usage.
vbishow -p 100
prints page 100 every time it is sent.
vbishow -m 8
prints every page on magazine 8 (800-899)
vbishow -t S
prints every page with the subtitle bit set
Downloads
vbishow-0.1.11.tar.bz2 added --control-flags
option, useful for tracking down subtitle pages.
vbishow-0.1.10.tar.bz2 added Swedish character sets, thanks to Anders
Semb Hermansen for a patch.
vbishow-0.1.9.tar.bz2 added BTTV card support, added arguments.
vbishow-0.1.8.tar.bz2 works on non-Unicode xterms, limited character
sets.
vbishow-0.1.7.tar.bz2 added time to header packet, es+it character
sets.
vbishow-0.1.6.tar.bz2 added VPS and WSS decoding.
vbishow-0.1.5.tar.bz2 added output file option.
vbishow-0.1.4.tar.bz2.
vbishow-0.1.3.tar.bz2.
vbishow-0.1.2.tar.bz2.
vbishow-0.1.1.tar.bz2.
To Do
There are several thing that should be done including using libzapping to teletext capture and Updating the remaining languages.