The Myth of MythTV
[Note: Since this damn fool entry is showing up pretty high in Google for some searches, I thought I should preface it with at least a taste of accurate information. If you want MythTv to get output from your cable box, you get yourself an IR Blaster from here. It runs from your serial port to your cable box and emits the same signals that your remote control emits. Then you follow the step by step instructions here. (It didn’t work for me until I went into the BIOS and assigned serial port 1 – my only port – the address and IRQ of serial port 2 (i.e., com1 and com2).) Now onto the stuff I wrote when I knew absolutely nothing, as opposed to now when I have advanced to knowing relatively nothing. – July 20, 2006]
I believe my nephew Greg and I hit the wall last night trying to build a MythTV. MythTV is open source software that turns your PC into Tivo++.
KnoppMyth — MythTV that can run from a CD — didn’t run because it didn’t recognize the Linksys card in the computer. So then we spent the usual comical four hours trying to get to it to recognize the spare hard drive I’d installed. Ironically, the HD came out of our Tivo when I’d upgraded it. There’s something funky about how Tivo formats its drives, though. Plus it helps if you notice in the KnoppMyth documentation where it says that the HD has to be the first drive in the system.
We (by which I mean Greg) then got the MythTV installed on the HD and booted the machine. We got a lovely graphical UI, but no TV. That’s ok. We expected to have to spend another few hours poking around; the problem seems to be that mySQL isn’t starting up properly.
But then I had an enormous D’oh Moment.
MythTV requires you to put a card into your machine that handles the video in and out. I installed a standard Hauppauge 250, so that shouldn’t be a problem. (“Shouldn’t be a problem” in linux-talk means that it requires only one Linux Day to get up and running, where a Linux Day equals 8 hours of hacking by someone who knows linux inside out (Greg), 12 hours of “helpful suggestions” from a Windows user, and two pizzas.) No, the D’oh Moment came when I realized that MythTV is TiVo for the bottom 125 channels that come through your cable and only if all those channels are unencoded. Our cable TV provider, RCN, starts the premimum channels at 165, and they’re all encoded.
TiVo gets around this in a kludgy way by having you stick some IR-emitting plastic thingies in front of the IR receiver in your cable box. So, when TV wants to record the new episode of The O.C., it changes channels on the cable box by flashing the same IR signals you would have sent manually with the remote. MythTV takes the signal before it goes into your cable box because it has no way of changing channels on your cable box.
So, if we were able to get our MythTV working, we would still need our TiVo to record premium programs, such as The Sopranos and the commercial-free version of Police Academy VI.
Damn! MythTV is such a cool idea! Especially in light of the FCC’s Broadcast Flag requirement. (Support the EFF!) [Technorati tags: mythtv tivo broadcast flag eff]
Refer to the comments to this post to see how wrong I am.
Categories: Uncategorized dw
I’m in the process of building the same. First part is here. And the part where I give up on the Knoppix version MythTV and go for SageTV is upcoming.
As for the IR-Blaster, isn’t that a hardware rather than a software issue? In either case, for those of us on digital cable, it’s a non-issue–there isn’t anything readable cable-side of the set-top-box. While the IR blaster is a bit of a kludge, I’ve had it running for the last week, and since you end up watching very little TV live, it doesn’t really get in the way.
Linux’s Main Hurdle
Joho the Blog: The Myth of MythTV “Shouldn’t be a problem” in linux-talk means that it requires only one Linux Day to get up and running, where a Linux Day equals 8 hours of hacking by someone who knows linux inside out (Greg), 12 hou…
David,
Note “ir blaster” myth way of “having you stick some IR-emitting plastic thingies in front of the IR receiver in your cable box.”
See pictures and info here:
http://www.irblaster.info/
http://losdos.dyndns.org:8080/public/mythtv-info/MythTV_DISH_IR_LED_TX_via_Modified_LIRC.html
So you can’t quit yet.
And our install failed because 1) We didn’t read the docs first. Tried to install to hdc and knoppmyth is hard coded to install to hda. (David, this would have wiped out Anne’s hard disk if we had not unplugged it first.)
And we were trying to use a broken hard disk which came up as only 10MB in size in knoppmyth, but 13.5 gigs in vanilla knoppix. Even after dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdc about 5 gigs of zeros.
Have to read the docs before I show up at David’s next time.
Ugh
The Myth of MythTV
Just because it’s free doesn’t mean that it is going to be easy. As I read through this article about the attempts of getting MythTV working, I had to laugh. While reading about someone else’s frustrations in not a funny matter, the article describing …
I don’t think its exactly fair to make some of the assumptions. I myself know very little of linux and just recently setup MythTV on an old P266 with a 15gb drive (I don’t watch live tv on it). It did take me maybe 8 hrs though alot of that was waiting etc. I didn’t try to do it from scratch though, I used one of several great guides out there and it made it 100% easier.
Also I don’t think its fair to say its TIVO for the bottom 125 channels as TIVO uses an irblaster to change the channels and you can do the same with Myth.
Anyway just my 2cents worth, don’t give up on it as its a great application once you have it going. The web interface is slick and I wouldn’t give that up for the world. If you want links to some guides just let me know and I can point you in the right direction.
As someone has already pointed out mythtv also has the option to have one of the “IR-emitting plastic thingies” in front of a cable/sat box to control the channels.
Also Knoppmyth is making great strides with the new R5 alpha versions and by the time R5 is released should have a nice easy install with lots of features, however unfortunately linux will not have support for all hardware until the hardware manufactures start either writing linux drivers, or giving specs to the open source community. This brings me to the simple task of putting in a PVR250 card. I can understand that this would seem like a simple task for a card that has been out for quite a while and has a driver, but hauppage seemingly changes the tuner chip that they use between every manufacturing run. I know they have had at least 8 different chips in the last year, and not changed the name or model number of the card. While this is not a problem for hauppage writting windows drivers, they do not share the specs with the linux driver writers, and they have to reverse engineer every time there is a new chip on the card. All in all I’d say the IVTV (hauppage driver) guys have done an excellent job.
I read your post about MythTV and PVR Drivers. Most of the popular new PVR cards sold for Windows XP MC are based on Connexant’s “Blackbird” design, which hasn’t had drivers for Linux or Myth.
We have been working on these drivers and released an alpha version at http://plutohome.com. Pluto even has a self-booting kick-start CD that will automatically install & configure everything for you, including a ready-to-go Myth system. It’s the fastest and easiest way to get a MythTV PVR up and running, and also installs Xine, Asterisk and our own software to give you the most advanced media & entertainment, home automation, security, telecom & computing system, controllable with your Symbian Bluetooth mobile phone, as well as PDA’s and Webpads.
We’re working hard to harden the drivers as quickly as possible and would like as much feedback as possible. These 2nd generation “Blackbird” cards are lower in price and offer better picture quality than the current models supported in IVTV, so be sure to check them out.
visit: plutohome.com, click ‘support’, ‘support site’, and choose “CX88 Blackbird Drivers” from the projects menu
If you need firmware for MythTv Plugin under Pluto you can find them here
http://www.geocities.com/download2kx01
http://www.mythtvx101.as.ro/
I admit I am not all that well versed in Linux. Having said that I’m a big supporter. I’ve installed numerous distros on various PCs. My limited knowledge has been able to get me around an install on a laptop that would not go graphical, re-compiling my own kernal and basics like that.
I felt fairly comfortable building my own PVR and I wanted to go the Linux way. So I downloaded KnoppMyth R5A15 (eventually A15.1) and away I go right? Not so fast.
After two days I had KnoppMyth installed and what I thought was configured (yes I modified the lines I should have, at least all the ones I found mentioned scattered around in various websites).
Unfortunately viewing live TV doesn’t work and I can’t record. Putting in a DVD and attempting to view that…nada. I then switched to Gentoo but either the download wasn’t good or it didn’t like my components (NF2 mobo, AMD 3200+, PVR500) b/c it would not run.
At this point I am going to try the Fedora Core 3 guide to see if I have better luck. But while FC3 was downloading I wiped the drive, installed windowsxp, shrank it with XPLite then got GB-PVR up and running. I’m watching dvds, recording movies, scheduling, etc….
I hate running on windows but thats my ultimate fall back. I’ve imaged the drive so I can do a restore if my FC3 attempt fails.
I have set up a site with longer range irblasters.
http://mythblasterz.gotdns.com/