MythTV Paully

Introduction
Hello. My name is Paul Littlefield. This web page has all my tips, tricks, help and notes for MythTV. Some of the data is based upon my geographical location - which is Folkestone, Kent, UK.


 * Installation Medium: Mythbuntu 8.10 CD
 * Installation Date: Wednesday 17 December 2008
 * MythTV Version: 0.21.20080304-1 18722

Package: mythtv Versions: 0.21.0+fixes18722-0ubuntu1
 * 1) apt-cache showpkg mythtv

Just Five Steps To A Perfect MythTV Channel Setup

 * 1) Scan for available channels
 * 2) Change to the Radio Times XML feed
 * 3) Answer the questions
 * 4) Tweak the database
 * 5) Run 'mythfilldatabase'

Cannot Play Or Rip DVD Movies / 'Missing' DVD-ROM Drive
Problem - You cannot play or rip DVD movies. It just quits back to the menu.

Reason - This is due to the UDEV software rediscovering the PCI bus and not creating the correct symlinks for /dev/dvd. This can happen if you have changed the hardware inside your computer (e.g. new DVD-ROM drive or motherboard) since you first installed the MythTV software.

Solution - Removing the file /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-cd.rules and reboot will recreate the file with default udev rules and the cdrom, cdrw, dvd and dvdrw symlinks will be restored and pointing to the right device.

Missing MythWeb Posters
Problem - The Internet Movie Database posters are shown as 'Missing Cover' from the Videos section of MythWeb.

Reason - This is due to a bug in the setup of MythWeb and matching the user who grabs the posters.

Solution - Find out where the posters / covers are being stored by looking in the MythWeb settings for VideoArtworkDir (http://your.mythserver.ip.address/mythweb/settings/mythtv), then update the symlink...

cd /usr/share/mythtv/mythweb/data/ rm video_covers rm: remove symbolic link `video_covers'? y ln -s /home/mythtv/.mythtv/MythVideo video_covers ls -l video_covers /usr/share/mythtv/mythweb/data/video_covers -> /home/mythtv/.mythtv/MythVideo

Signal Lock Error
Problem - After some time, you will not be able to watch television because MythTV cannot lock onto a signal being broadcast. You will also not be able to record any of your programs. They will show as 0 bytes of data.

Reason - Unknown.

Solution #1 - Reboot the MythTV computer. This can be automated every 12 hours with the following crontab for root...

0 6,18 * * * /sbin/reboot
 * 1) mythtv signal loss fix

Solution #2 - Change your Video Source option in the MythTV Backend Setup to the Radio Times XML feed...

Radio Times XML Feed

 * Introduction
 * Give Me The Feed
 * Missing Listings Data On Some Channels
 * MySQL Database Tweaks

Introduction
"Why do I want this?" - because you get 14 days of programme listings, you get LOADS more information on each programme (including detailed film ratings and cast members, etc.), plus it appears to fix the signal lock problem mentioned above!

Give Me The Feed
ROUGH DRAFT - editing all day


 * Go to the MythTV Backend Setup
 * Choose Video Sources
 * Choose your Video Source (probably named EIT or similar)
 * Change the Video Source to 'Listings grabber' and United Kingdom/Republic of Ireland (Radio Times)
 * Tick the option for Perform EIT Scan
 * Click Finish and exit the MythTV Backend Setup.
 * Don't run mythfilldatabase right now.

Missing Listings Data On Some Channels
Problem - There are no programmes shown for some television channels and all the radio channels.

Reason - You have chosen to receive your listings by the Radio Times XMLTV grabber, and unfortunately the Radio Times does not provide XMLTV listings data for some television channels (like Setanta Sports) and (bizarrely) none of the radio channels!

Solution - Enabled the Perform EIT Scan option in Video Sources of the MythTV Backend Setup. Then, tick the useonairguide box in http://your.mythserver.ip.address/mythweb/settings/tv for each of the channels you wish to receive over-the-air EIT listings data for.

Caution - Make sure you have used the MySQL script below or personally unticked the useonairguide boxes for all the other channels, otherwise you will be going over all the XML feed for those!

MySQL Database Tweaks
This is a MySQL script to perform all the updates needed for a perfect MythTV database, and does the following:-


 * Set the correct channel numbers
 * Set the correct channel names
 * Set the correct channel call signs
 * Set the correct option for commercial free channels
 * Set the correct XMLTV id for channels

For it to work, it is completely dependent on the correct matching serviceid field in the database table. If this differs in your database, then just change it accordingly. This is some MySQL output to show you what I mean...

+-++--+---+---+ | channum | callsign      | name                         | serviceid | xmltvid                       | +-++--+---+---+ | 1      | BBCON          | BBC One South East           |      4172 | south-east.bbc1.bbc.co.uk     | | 2      | BBCTW          | BBC Two South East           |      4236 | south-east.bbc2.bbc.co.uk     | | 3      | ITVME          | ITV1 Meridian                |      8272 | meridian.itv1.itv.co.uk       |

...and here are the first 2 lines from the script...

use mythconverg; update channel set useonairguide=0, visible=1, commfree=1, channum=1, callsign='BBCON', name='BBC One South East', xmltvid='south-east.bbc1.bbc.co.uk' where serviceid='4172';

To use the script, download the file below and run the following command...

sudo mysql -u root < mythtv_update_channels_v3.sql

Latest version: 2009-04-06

'''Caution - I accept no responsibility for this damaging your MySQL database. It should be fine, but check the syntax. You have been warned.'''

You should end up with a channel table similar to this http://www.littlefield.info/linux/mythtv_channels.txt

Wired and Wireless Networking
The frontend players for MythTV can work with either wired or wireless ethernet connection. I have had success using wireless to stream both live television and recordings, although the sound and picture do break up a little sometimes. A wired connection will give you no problems and the greatest quality of picture and sound... the faster, the better! Just to be sure, I have a 1000Mb network card in my mythtv backend server, a 1000Mb switch which then goes to a 200Mb powerline-lan point to the bedroom... :-)

Linksys Powerline
Turn your existing power lines into a high-speed network. It’s the perfect solution for high-speed, "no new wires", home networking.

Official Web Page - http://www.linksysbycisco.com/UK/en/products/PowerLine

Introduction
MediaMVP stands for 'Media Movie Video Pictures'. It is a Linux based digital media receiver. Inside MediaMVP is a high performance IBM PowerPC processor and a hardware MPEG audio/video decoder for MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 videos and MP3 music. MediaMVP receives digital media from the PC via the Ethernet LAN, decodes the media and outputs audio/video to the TV set through the SCART connector in RGB, Composite or S-Video. Digital pictures are software decoded by MediaMVP’s processor.

Official Web Page - http://www.hauppauge.co.uk/site/products/data_mediamvp.html

Where To Buy One - http://www.google.co.uk/products/catalog?q=MediaMVP&hl=en-GB&cid=6680662832027657979&sa=button#ps-sellers

To make it work with MythTV, a special Linux mini-distribution has been written called 'MediaMVP Media Centre' which boots via TrivialFTP to the box itself over the Ethernet LAN.

The MediaMVP Media Center (mvpmc) is a media player written in C. It currently runs on the Hauppauge MediaMVP hardware. It can play video (including live TV), audio (including live radio), show pictures, and retrieve Yahoo! weather. mvpmc can access media from a MythTV, ReplayTV, Hauppauge, VLC, or SqueezeCenter (aka SlimServer) server. It can also access media via UPNP, HTTP, NFS and CIFS. There is a VNC viewer built in. It understands MPEG1 and MPEG2 video, MP3, OGG, WAV, AC3 and FLAC audio and JPG, BMP & PNG images.

Hardware
Model: 86002 Rev: D3A Lot: 4503 Version: 1004

Getting it to work

 * Install Dnsmasq
 * Edit the Dnsmasq configuration file
 * Start the Dnsmasq daemon
 * Download the MVPmc firmware
 * Create the firmware configuration file
 * Power on the MediaMVP (watch those 5 bars go!)

Keeping the firmware up-to-date
If you would like to load the latest daily build of the mvpmc firmware every time you reboot your MVP, first create a symbolic link to the file called 'dongle.bin.mvpmc-latest' in the /var/ftpd directory...

total 3.5M drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4.0K 2009-04-10 14:57. drwxr-xr-x 16 root root 4.0K 2009-04-01 23:29 .. lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root   23 2009-04-10 14:57 dongle.bin.mvpmc -> dongle.bin.mvpmc-latest -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3.5M 2009-04-10 08:20 dongle.bin.mvpmc-latest
 * 1) cd /var/ftpd
 * 2) ln -s dongle.bin.mvpmc-latest dongle.bin.mvpmc
 * 3) ls -lah

then put the line below into root's crontab...

25 6 * * * cd /var/ftpd && wget --quiet --timestamping http://uk.mvpmc.org/builds/dongle.bin.mvpmc-latest

or as a script file in the /etc/cron.daily directory...

cd /var/ftpd && \ wget --quiet --timestamping http://uk.mvpmc.org/builds/dongle.bin.mvpmc-latest
 * 1) !/bin/bash

Review
Overall, I like this cute little device. For £50 you can have your MythTV library and live TV in another room. I have it in one of my bedrooms connected to a Samsung 18.5" SM933HD DTV Monitor via SCART and it does the job. Pros: small, inexpensive, completely silent, remote control, and it all* works. Cons: picture not great. Score: 7/10. * at least what I have tried to get working :-)