About 4-5 years ago I bought a dirt cheap generic USB DVB-T digital TV tuner (via e-bay)…
Had mixed success getting it working back then… the Linux app I used back then (me-tv) hasn’t been maintained since Trusty Tahr (14.04) was still wet behind the ears… I thought I’d documented the process somewhere, and saved the config file for “me-tv” but couldn’t find it anywhere…
So anyway put DVB dongle away… for a few years… the PC I got it working on orginally has probably gone through several iterations of installing Ubuntu / Fedora / elementary / Ubuntu - I remember it was quite painful…
So come late last week - I wanted to watch a game of Aussie Rules football (“AFL”) on Friday - and was unable to find a single site to stream it from, ended up listening to an audio stream - but I don’t know half the players names, so had no idea who had possession of the ball or who was defending and who offending, an which end of the ground the ball was in play…
So - anyway - the team I like to follow, The Richmond Tigers are playing an elimination final this coming Friday - and I really want to watch it - mainly because my deceased younger brother was a HUGE Richmond fan / follower, and my surviving brother is also a huge fan of Richmond too (as far as the AFL is concerned, I “used” to support Carlton, but lost interest in them a few years back)…
So bit the bullet this evening and dug out the DVB-T receiver… thinking/groaning “this is going to take me ages of painfilled anguish to get working again…”
Device shows up in lsusb :
Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTL2838 DVB-T
But then I find out me-tv is unsupported, can’t get it to run / install from DEB package on 20.04, tried a few tricks and stuff… gave up, more groans…
A few guglefu searches later and I found some source code to a binary called “w_scan”, configured it then made it (make) and run it :
tar xvf ~/Downloads/w_scan-20170107.tar.bz2
cd w_scan-20170107
less README
./configure
make
./w_scan -ft -c AU -L > ../vlcchans.xspf
Then :
vlc ../vlcchans.xspf
and I’m watching Free To Air Digital TV - and the channels I need to watch the footy on come up first!
Seriously - everything is getting easier and easier to do on Linux these days…
Sure - it was a bit of CLI and stuff, but no messing around with udev rules or white listing or blacklisting devices - apart from the make from source bit, and a bit of CLI startup for VLC - it was a piece of cake… a walk in the park… almost too easy…
So come Friday, I’m no longer on-call for, I’ll be necking (Aussie slang for drinking from a bottle) a few cold frothies and watching a game of marngrook (an Indigenous Aboriginal game Aussie rules was partly based on) - only issue is the tuner only seems to work with a cumbersome pair of rabbit ears antenna and cable - so it’s not exactly “portable” - but I reckon I’ll be watching the game that way on Friday, each time I duck outside for a cigarette…
PS It does not have to be Firefox you can use whatever browser you like. PPS If you are using Firefox make sure you switch off extended tracking, though if you have Ultimate Advert blocker add-on installed in Firefox it blocks All-4’s adverts. 
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- but some AI is going to snitch on me that I used threatening language).
It’s evolution (but not necessarily Darwinian)…