Ever since purchasing a full-featured DVB card, I always wanted to test the popular VDR package. As I don’t have a TV connected to the card, I had to analyze other options to visualize the VDR output somehow. After a disappointing session with streamdev, I started using xineliboutput and it works like a charm.

VDR seems much more robust than the other options I have been looking at so far. One thing I have been missing with xineliboutput is the Xine‘s bob deinterlacer for the xvmc and xxmc drivers. I prefer this deinterlacer as it does not reduce the framerate (unlike many others) and it utilizes the GPU, so watching TV with decent quality does not reduce my machine’s performance notably.

So I modified xineliboutput in order to use that deinterlacer – my little patch is available right here. To use it, you will have to install the xineliboutput plugin with my patch applied, and then activate the bob filter in ~/.xine/config_xineliboutput:

video.device.xvmc_bob_deinterlacing:1

Now, run 'vdr-sxfe --video xxmc' to watch comb free TV (on nvidia cards). To use xvmc instead replace ‘xxmc’ with ‘xvmc’ in the patch, note that I tested this with the xxmc driver only.