Hidden TV Tuner metadata from last decade
MediaI 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?