i should be working (but i'm fixing my computer).

My new HP has a tv card in it. Now, I don't much care about tv and don't watch it except for occasional basketball games.  But my wife wasn't happy about not having one in S.D.  So, I figured, "big monitor, may as well get tv card."

...

In the olden days, computers came with manuals that told you things about how to use the software, etc.  And, a specialized card would usually come with some specialized software to run it, usually the "lite" version so you would have to buy the real version.

Now, I have an old analog USB tv dongle that works -- and I have one of those free digital conversion boxes they gave away when they insisted on making everyone "upgrade" to digital.  I use the linux "TV Time" viewer.  In any event, even after attempting to use the YAST tv tuner setup wizard, which didn't, neither did the TV Time program.  So, I gave up and booted to Windows.

I was rather puzzled.  Where is the lite TV'o'Rama program I should be finding?  Did not find any, but then I tried Microsoft Media Center, which yes, has tv software.

I proceeded to actually try and read the 56 page licensing agreement, which is designed so that you have to read it in a six line window -- explicitly designed to PREVENT you from actually finding out which of your children you will have to give them in return for unnecessary addons, like the Microsoft tv guide.  Oh, sure, they tell you to "print this license out" -- but then you have to go to some website, yada-yada.  Like their lawyers actually think ANYONE reads these licenses.

Well, I partly did, and then I declined the two premium services to which the licenses apply anyway, on principle.

Seeiog as how I am surrounded by tall buildings, which channels I get is largely dependent upon the angle and location of the rabbit ears, so I had to rescan for channels successively until I had a small collection of them.  But the first channel my new tv card latched onto -- I kid you not -- was running a half-hour informercial in Spanish for a mechanical device to lengthen a penis.  So, yeah, I can truly see why they made us get digital tv, because of all the new and improved programming we would be presented with.

Once the channels are "found," the software remembers them, so thereafter I can switch to the channel I "want" to watch -- and in the event the rabbit ears are in the wrong location, I can commence walking about the room with them until I get some reasonable facsimile of a picture.

That was edifying.  Back to OpenSUSE.

I proceeded to YAST and installed everything that conceivably implied it had something to do with tv.  Thereafter I tested them, and most software simply reported to me that no video card was to be found.  That was frustrating, especially as YAST had specifically identified the card and had told me it was working.  But, I think there was some discrepancy as to whether it was on /dev/video1 or /dev/video0.

But, there is a package called MeTv or the like -- and to my surprise, it actually commenced finding the local stations.  Plus, for some stations, I received the upcoming program information.  Now, if I only wanted to watch any of these entirely useless tv stations, I could watch them.  Not sure on whether the remote is going to work or not, though.  (The wife will not like having to use the mouse to get to the station she wants to watch.)

So, cool -- the tv works.

No back to crashing KDE plasma, which means my last 20 minutes of setup are about to be wiped out.