You can capture streams with UNIX pipes, MPlayer, and 101 dvb utilities.

You don't want 10 video players because fragmentation is a Bad Thing. Even _if_ you're OK with that, you don't want too much double/triple work. Which is why you want a modular design.

Which is precisely the problem with everything in one monolithic application: 1) bloat 2) others cannot reuse 3) when you don't want to use that application you're fscked.

Now, Totem isn't good with DVB. It can't scan the channels. So you need to do that manually. Kaffeine however, has this well integrated in GUI. So on GNOME, we wait for GNOME DVBD to mature... which has Totem integration.

As for the set top boxes in France by Free: either its proprietary crap or it uses an open protocol which means other media players also can read (and hence capture) from it.