[MPlayer-users] Radio questions

[Mary Strimel]

hi,
I've been able to get fm radio (well, static) to play from my Hauppauge TV
card using the following command.

mplayer radio://106.7/capture -radio adevice=hw=0

My goal is to be able to pause live radio and adjust the radio delay to
synchronize with a TV sports broadcast (my TV device is separate, not on
mplayer).  I will get an antenna to deal with the static, but I have a ton
of questions.

1. mplayer's general playback instructions allow "+" and "-" to adjust the
audio delay.  Does this work with FM radio?  I tried it and did not get any
visible response from the terminal, but it was hard to tell due to the
static.

2.  Radio doesn't play at all unless I use the "capture" flag. And yet, the
mplayer manpage states, "Using capture to listen is not recommended due to
synchronization problems, which makes this process uncomfortable."  If
radio capture is not for listening, what is it for? In order to adjust the
delay for playback of live radio (assuming that works, see #1 above), I
assume I must capture whether I like it or not, right?

3. I only get radio sound if i have an audio cable between the radio card
output and the line input of the sound card.  Yet Mplayer's documents
suggest that with a command like the one I am using, I should NOT need the
cable. (Manpage says "if the capture keyword is not given you can listen to
the radio using the line-in cable only";  also see here
<https://linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/MPlayer#Using_MPlayer_for_Radio_Listening>
discussing
the example command "mplayer -rawaudio rate=48000 radio://2/capture -radio
adevice=hw=2:arate=48000:channels=93.8-Radio_Zones,94.7-SSR_1"and stating
that a line-in cable is not necessary for this command.)  What am I doing
wrong that I need the patch cable?

4.  If capturing is indeed a bad idea for listening, is there some other
way to redirect the raw radio output from the Hauppauge to some other
program that can pause the playback?  Or maybe some totally other solution
I am not thinking of?

Thanks in advance,
Mary