Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Multilingual DVB-T Experience for Free

Last week we got ourselves a new DVB-T stick. Unfortunately the software that was provided with it only allows to watch TV in German, even though an English audio stream is attached on some programs.

Even free programs like ProgDVB do not allow changing the audio channel to a foreign language - they want you to buy the Pro version which has this feature enabled.

But I found one program that allows DVB programs to be viewed with all audio streams enabled: Video Lan Client!

Newer versions have a DVB-T access module plus GUI that enables full access to DVB television. The only thing I haven't found so far is a channel list editor that works. Nevertheless the only thing you need to enter is the frequency and bandwidth of the program you want to watch. It should work with most USB DVB-T sticks on the market.

From the Media menu select the Open Capture Device... item. Then select DVB DirectShow option from the Capture mode. Now enter the correct frequency of your provider and set the bandwidth. You can either copy these settings from another DVB program or look them up on the internet.

Now you can select a program stream via the Playback menu. I noticed that the default settings do not enable deinterlacing. This can easily be changed from the Video menu. Finally, the most important setting for me is in the Audio menu where I can set the Audio Track to any available stream.