freetuxTV, VLC, Miro etc. on openSUSE 12.3

During the last couple of months I have been trying to run one of those Internet-TV-programs on my system openSUSE 12.3 (32-bit), unfourtunately without success.

First of all, VLC does only play Audio-CDs, but fails to play any Internet TV or Radio program (Freebox TV, Channels.com). The error message reads for all kinds of files in FreetuxTV WebTV Manager

http://webtv-aarh-9.stofa.dk:80/179_01.m3u8
Kein passendes Decodermodul:

VLC unterstützt das Audio- oder Videoformat “h264” nicht. Leider können Sie daran nichts ändern.

Kein passendes Decodermodul:

VLC unterstützt das Audio- oder Videoformat “mp4a” nicht. Leider können Sie daran nichts ändern.

Secondly, freetuxTV 0.6.5 ist installed and starts up well, however, there is no video nor audio when a WebTV or WebRadio channel is selected: it says playing … and for some channels the time is running but there is no output at all. The database was syncronized and some Web TV / Web Radio channels / groups added.

An error occurred while playing channel ‘Arte WebTV’ : http://webtv-aarh-8.stofa.dk/180_01.m3u8
If the problem persist, you can report that the link is dead at FreetuxTV WebTV Manager

Thirdly, Miro does not install at all. YaST terminates during the installation process

File ‘./Essentials/i586/gstreamer-0_10-utils-0.10.36-11.11.i586.rpm’ not found on medium ‘ftp://ftp.halifax.rwth-aachen.de/packman/suse/12.3
http://packman.links2linux.de/download/Miro/1476090/miro-5.0.4-1.38.i586.rpm
PackMan :: Informationen zum Paket Miro

And, MediathekView (installed via YaST) crashes. I also tried amarok, MPlayer, …

Effectively, there is no single working program to watch internet tv or listen to internet radio for quite some time. FreetuxTV would be the preferred one to use. Does anybody know some advice how to proceed? Must a user’ account be part of a special group like dialup, audio, video or so in order to use these software? Thanks a lot.

linux:~> rpm -qa | grep vlc
phonon-backend-vlc-0.6.0-1.6.i586
vlc-qt-2.0.8a-165.1.i586
libvlccore4-1.1.13-13.10.i586
libvlc5-2.0.8a-165.1.i586
vlc-2.0.8a-165.1.i586
vlc-noX-2.0.8a-165.1.i586
libvlccore5-2.0.8a-165.1.i586

linux:~> zypper lr -d (update is done manually via zypper ref, zypper up usally on weekends)

| Alias | Name | Aktiviert | Aktualisieren | Priorität | Typ | URI | Dienst

—±----------------------------±-----------------------------±----------±--------------±----------±-------±----------------------------------------------------------------------------------±------
1 | Education-12.3 | Education-12.3 | Ja | Nein | 99 | rpm-md | Index of /repositories/Education/openSUSE_12.3 |
2 | KDE:KDE3-12.3 | KDE:KDE3-12.3 | Ja | Nein | 99 | rpm-md | Index of /repositories/KDE:/KDE3/openSUSE_12.3 |
3 | X11:QtDesktop-12.3 | X11:QtDesktop-12.3 | Ja | Nein | 99 | rpm-md | Index of /repositories/X11:/QtDesktop/openSUSE_12.3 |
4 | devel:languages:perl-12.3 | devel:languages:perl-12.3 | Ja | Nein | 99 | rpm-md | Index of /repositories/devel:/languages:/perl/openSUSE_12.3 |
5 | devel:languages:python-12.3 | devel:languages:python-12.3 | Ja | Nein | 99 | rpm-md | Index of /repositories/devel:/languages:/python/openSUSE_12.3 |
6 | graphics-12.3 | graphics-12.3 | Ja | Nein | 99 | rpm-md | Index of /repositories/graphics/openSUSE_12.3 |
7 | home:Rallaz-12.3 | home:Rallaz-12.3 | Ja | Nein | 99 | rpm-md | Index of /repositories/home:/Rallaz/openSUSE_12.3 |
8 | home:heimdall78-12.3 | home:heimdall78-12.3 | Ja | Nein | 99 | rpm-md | Index of /repositories/home:/heimdall78/openSUSE_12.3 |
9 | home:sdteffen_de-12.2 | home:sdteffen_de-12.2 | Nein | Nein | 99 | rpm-md | http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/sdteffen_de/openSUSE_12.2/ |
10 | home:sdteffen_de-12.3 | home:sdteffen_de-12.3 | Ja | Nein | 99 | rpm-md | Index of /repositories/home:/sdteffen_de/openSUSE_12.3 |
11 | packman-12.3 | openSUSE-12.3-Packman | Ja | Nein | 99 | rpm-md | ftp://ftp.halifax.rwth-aachen.de/packman/suse/12.3 |
12 | repo-12.3-debug | openSUSE-12.3-Debug | Ja | Nein | 99 | yast2 | Index of /debug/distribution/12.3/repo/oss |
13 | repo-12.3-non-oss | openSUSE-12.3-Non-OSS | Ja | Nein | 99 | yast2 | Index of /distribution/12.3/repo/non-oss |
14 | repo-12.3-oss | openSUSE-12.3-OSS | Ja | Nein | 99 | yast2 | Index of /distribution/12.3/repo/oss |
15 | repo-12.3-source | openSUSE-12.3-Source | Ja | Nein | 99 | yast2 | Index of /source/distribution/12.3/repo/oss |
16 | repo-12.3-update | openSUSE-12.3-Update | Ja | Ja | 99 | rpm-md | Index of /update/12.3 |
17 | repo-12.3-update-non-oss | openSUSE-12.3-Update-Non-Oss | Ja | Ja | 99 | rpm-md | Index of /update/12.3 |
18 | science-12.3 | science-12.3 | Ja | Nein | 99 | rpm-md | Index of /repositories/science/openSUSE_12.3 |

[1] Article in linux-community.de about Miro and freetuxTV in german
Freie Internet-TV- und Webradio-Player / 01 / 2013 / LinuxUser / Print-Artikel / Artikel / Internal / Home - LinuxCommunity
[2] Miro Miro - Free, open-source music and video player.
[3] FreetuxTV http://code.google.com/freetuxtv/
[4] freetuxtv database FreetuxTV WebTV Manager
[5] Stationen › Internet-TV › Wiki › ubuntuusers.de

In addition I tried the small bask-script given in Stationen › Internet-TV › Wiki › ubuntuusers.de with the following result.

linux:~/bin> tv.sh

  1. ARD
  2. ZDF
  3. ZDF_neo
  4. ZDFinfo
  5. ARTE
  6. quit
    #? 5
    tv.sh: Zeile 22: rtmpdump: Kommando nicht gefunden.
    MPlayer dev-SVN-r35127-4.7-openSUSE Linux 12.3 (i586)-Packman (C) 2000-2012 MPlayer Team
    Can’t open joystick device /dev/input/js0: No such file or directory
    Can’t init input joystick
    mplayer: could not connect to socket
    mplayer: No such file or directory
    Failed to open LIRC support. You will not be able to use your remote control.

Playing -.
Reading from stdin…
libavformat version 54.25.104 (internal)

Exiting… (End of file)

Well, in the meantime i did some testing and found the following. I understand freetuxTV uses VLC

linux:~> vlc --ignore-config
VLC media player 2.0.8 Twoflower (revision 2.0.8a-0-g68cf50b)
[0x847b628] main interface error: no suitable interface module
[0x83763f0] main libvlc error: interface “globalhotkeys,none” initialization failed
[0x83763f0] main libvlc: VLC wird mit dem Standard-Interface ausgeführt. Benutzen Sie ‘cvlc’, um VLC ohne Interface zu verwenden.

Right now I follow the instructions given here “Multimedia the Easy Way” [6], [7] and hope this will solve the problem.

For the KDE Desktop Environment:
1-click installation

codecs-kde.ymp

Note: You might get a conflict dialog. Don’t worry. Just select to install one or more packages with vendor change.

[6] https://forums.opensuse.org/english/get-technical-help-here/multimedia/452884-multimedia-one-click.html
[7] Restricted formats/12.3 - openSUSE Community Wiki

Nope, the last installation process does not solve a thing. Neither VLC, freetuxTV nor kaffeine.

So, I eventually managed to fix the problem following the instructions given by caf4926 in https://forums.opensuse.org/blogs/caf4926/opensuse-12-3-multi-media-restricted-format-installation-guide-126/

FreetuxTV now runs without reboot, the first channels i tried look promising.