Hidden TV Tuner metadata from last decade
I recorded lots of television in the mid to late 2000s. Most of it was advertising for my sister’s media course, but also lots of one off stuff.
Incidently, I blogged about the Elgato TV Tuner I used to do it, and it got my little blog here a mention on the company’s press page. Pretty cool, I thought.
Fast forward almost a decade later, and I found a ton of these old recordings on a backup drive. I didn’t have the heart to delete them, so I re-encoded them with avconv in as h264/aac to shave close to 90% of their space with no discernable difference in quality.
Running it through ffmpeg, I noticed something interesting. Each of these files had metadata, rught down to the original digital broadcast stations! Here was a file recorded from Channel 9:
Input #0, mpegts, from '000000000ed96070.mpg':
Duration: 00:02:06.26, start: 14817.417544, bitrate: 6649 kb/s
Program 1105
Metadata:
service_name : NINE Digital
service_provider: Nine Network
Stream #0.0[0x200]: Video: mpeg2video (Main), yuv420p, 720x576 [PAR 64:45 DAR 16:9], 15000 kb/s, 25 fps, 90k tbn, 50 tbc
Stream #0.1[0x28a](eng): Audio: mp2, 48000 Hz, 2 channels, s16p, 256 kb/s
Stream #0.2[0x240](eng): Subtitle: [6][0][0][0] / 0x0006
Program 1112
Metadata:
service_name : NINE HD
service_provider: Nine Network
And here’s one from Ten:
Input #0, mpegts, from '0000000010569747.mpg':
Duration: 00:02:20.34, start: 16243.436922, bitrate: 6002 kb/s
Program 1617
Metadata:
service_name : ONE HD
service_provider: Ten Adelaide
Program 1621
Metadata:
service_name : TEN Digital
service_provider: Ten Adelaide
Stream #0.0[0x200]: Video: mpeg2video (Main), yuv420p, 720x576 [PAR 64:45 DAR 16:9], 9000 kb/s, 25 fps, 90k tbn, 50 tbc
Stream #0.1[0x28a](eng): Audio: mp2, 48000 Hz, 2 channels, s16p, 256 kb/s (clean effects)
Stream #0.2[0x240](eng): Subtitle: [6][0][0][0] / 0x0006
Program 1623
Metadata:
service_name : ONE HD
service_provider: Ten Adelaide
Program 1624
Metadata:
service_name : ONE Digital
service_provider: Ten Adelaide
And another from 7:
Input #0, mpegts, from '0000000010627706.mpg':
Duration: 00:02:02.60, start: 89862.635622, bitrate: 6851 kb/s
Program 1360
Metadata:
service_name : 7 Digital
service_provider: Seven Network
Stream #0.0[0x501]: Video: mpeg2video (Main), yuv420p, 720x576 [PAR 64:45 DAR 16:9], 15000 kb/s, 25 fps, 90k tbn, 50 tbc
Stream #0.1[0x502](eng): Audio: mp2, 48000 Hz, 2 channels, s16p, 256 kb/s
Stream #0.2[0x504](eng): Subtitle: [6][0][0][0] / 0x0006
Program 1361
Metadata:
service_name : 7 Digital 1
service_provider: Seven Network
Program 1362
Metadata:
service_name : 7 Digital 2
service_provider: Seven Network
Program 1363
Metadata:
service_name : 7 Digital 3
service_provider: Seven Network
Program 1364
Metadata:
service_name : 7 HD Digital
service_provider: Network Seven
I wonder if those stations still exist, or with the same names, now?