My MythTV – The return of the king

You may have seen previously that I have been running MythTV as a service at home, it’s like a home-brew version of a Tivo, but it has been around much longer and it has many improved features. Best yet, it’s open-source and flexible.

Seriously, with a decent PC attached to a TV and a Digital Decoder Card it will provide you with digital TV viewing, recording and many other multi-media features.

But is it that simple?

The reality is no. It takes a bit of tinkering and fiddling to get the setup right and have everything working the way that you want it to.

But are those issues unexpected?
Also the answer is no. If a buy a Tivo I would expect to bring it home, plug it in and turn it on and play with all the menus to set it up. Usually this would just be easy and work, I would be slightly disappointed with the options available to me, the limitations and restrictions placed on the system, knowing that it could allow more if they let me. I would be pushed toward buying and pay-per-view add-ons, all those things that would make me shrug my shoulders and say, well at least the family can use it and it’s recording/playing stuff and I have another remote control on the coffee table now.

However I am a techie-tinkerer and I know there are better things out there, and there is.

MythTV is a constantly developing piece of software that runs on Linux (a unix operating system, which is not windows or mac) and does all these things and more. I have a dedicated PC next to my TV setup and running just for this purpose.

Is it good value?
My PC probably would cost me about $800 today to build from scratch and you can get a Tivo for about the same price (plus some subscription costs) but one is easy (tivo) and one is flexible (mythtv)

Most of my system (the motherboard) is one I used to have in my main desktop pc and then on upgrading that, I had this one left over. I got a special media-case, did some selections on an appropriate video card, a big hard disk and the important part, a digital decoder. So you don’t need exclusive new hardware to do this, you may be able to get something going for practically nothing using off-cast items from older pc’s.

How is it flexible beyond a Tivo?
MythTV is a tv decoder/recorder in the same way a Tivo is, but it also will store and catalogue Photo’s, Music, DVD’s and much more, so it does all the wonderful media basics, of course.

Two things set MythTV apart…

The capacity: You can put in as many hard discs as you want. I have 1Tb storing up to 440 hours of tv! (do that Tivo)

Duplication: You can have multiple front-ends, more players around the house to manage and view your media content elsewhere on your network.

Ok, maybe that sells it for you, but I now have to warn you, it’s a fair bit to understand fully and make it all work right and be happy with it. Then you have to teach the family how (and why) to use it, which is harder than a Tivo because the documentation is terrible.

That is always going to be the problem, the documentation for this and the complexity of the systems involved is the stumbling block. Technical people (beyond my abilities) have been playing with this for years ad they can make magic happen. I can’t get my wife to really be confident to use it and watch recorded stuff when I am not there to help out.

If I haven’t turned you off it though, I now bring good news. New versions of the software make the basic setup and go process fairly straight forward. If you have installed windows or mac os’s a few times and if you have got your toes wet with linux before then you are probably ok to give this a try.

Get Mythbuntu
This is available as an all-in-one package from mythbuntu.org and it includes the Ubuntu version of linux with the MythTV application and makes the installation complete and as easy as it could perhaps be. From this site you get an ISO from which you can make an install disc, just like when you buy windows.

Put the disc in your new pc and turn it on.
This boot disc will give you the option to install the software onto a clean pc. It asks you basic questions about your language and location (time zone).

Then it may get tricky.

Machine name and User accounts.
All operating systems require this stuff, a pre-set computer name, username and password. I set a generic name like ‘mediapc’ and a simple password to start with. Don’t make this complicated or too personal (like using my name for a login)

The video card.
I have an NVIDIA card in my pc, one that does not have a fan (to reduce noise form the box) and this type of card is one of the best supported. The option I was presented with was open-source or NVIDIA, and I chose the latter. I have this connected directly from the main DVI connector through a cable going to the HDMI of my TV.

Audio.
My motherboard has audio out (like most) and in my case I also have the SPDIF optical output which I attach to my amplifier directly. This should be detected and setup during the install, nothing tricky here (yet)

The hard disc.
For a new install let it format and use the whole hard drive.

Frontend, backend or both.
Mythtv comes in two parts. A backend to store and manage all the media, and the frontend to play, view and control what the backend does. For single systems using the first option of ‘both back and front end’ would be the right choice but if your planning to use multiple front ends and have an abundance of systems and hardware at your disposal, then the other options are up to you.

TV Guide.
Like the Tivo, mythtv depends on getting information about the upcoming programs that you may want to watch or record. By default it lets you register and select from a US based source for this information, but I am in Australia and things are a bit harder here, so for now I skipped this option as I am to establish my guide data services later using ‘shepherd’.

That is about it for now, after this the software will format the drive (which can take a while with 1TB) and go about copying files, installing the applications and setting itself all up.

After about 20 minutes the system will ask you to remove the CD and reboot. If you got your display settings (the video card) right you should get a display going and the MythTV frontend will load. We are not done getting this configured yet though, so far this is a basic install and there is more to do to make it work.

Digital TV.
Most tv or set-top-boxes handle this already. They get the analog tv signal sent over the airwaves, though your aerial and decode that indo a digital stream containing the pictures and sound for your tv. MythTV requires the same thing as part of the PC to allow it to see and manage the pictures all around us sent from our local tv stations. A single decoder can tune into a single tv station and send the pictures and sound into the computer for Myth to record and display. In my pc, I have three decoders so I am able to record up to three different programs at once but at least two would be a big advantage over a single one. To get started though you only need one, and make sure your get a compatible video capture card referring to this list before you buy. You can get them for satellite pictures, but for me I am just happy with the terrestrial (land based) signals. Hauppage are popular but I have some Twinhans ones myself which are getting a bit rare. Be very careful of the models and chipsets identified on this, there are so many that don’t work.

The TV guide.
Myth needs to know what programs are
on and when so it can start recording the right channels for you. The US provides some easily available sources of this, but in Australia different laws make this a very limited and restricted commodity. Companies like IceTV actually provide a pay-per-download service, but I like free and cheap and more recently ‘shepherd’ has risen to the challenge to provide this support.

The outlining installation for shepherd (seen here) is all that you need to put the two together, it documents the need to setup your tuner cards in the MythTV backend configuration, setup the TV guide source, install the software where it will go and collect TV guide information and store it in a tvguide.xml file and then mythtv will import that through a function known as ‘mythfilldatabase’ to bring all this together as a viewable guide, and manageable index and a system for Myth to refer to for shows you want recorded.

These instructions are well written to guide you though all the steps, follow them to the letter and it will work.

When all that is done, the result is that ‘shepherd’ will gather information about the tv guide and programs from various places on the internet, this is imported into mythtv using ‘mythfilldatabase’ and then myth will provide the tv guide and select programs for recording at any time, day or night.

I am writing this because I have just got a new hard drive and re-installed the latest version, fresh and clean onto my old Myth box. The process above took me close to a week to get right, tweaking many options and switches to output digital tv to my plasma nicely and clean up the rough edges. It took me days to get the tv guide data stuff working.

However after this, my old Mytv system was working for a good 18 months without a glitch. It would record tv while I was on holidays, I could watch my favourite car shows when I wanted to, my wives gardening programs where there when she wanted to watch them and when the three major channels programmed three different comedy shows to be on at the same time and compete for my viewing attendance, I flipped them the bird and recorded all three to watch later. Best yet, I skipped the ads on each of them and enjoyed the show.

With this new version (and with some knowledge too of course) I had it setup on the new larger hard drive in under 1 day. there are a couple of minor backend things that are still not quite working right, and I am going to get a unix guru in to fix for me (perhaps) but overall I was recording shows by the days end and starting my collection.

What can go wrong.
Well what can go wrong probably will, this will put your patience to the test. Many of the parts are hard to figure out when they are not working, is the decoder working, why can’t I select it in the config. Why do I get no audio and many other possibilities of failure await you.

Most of the bugs and wrinkles have been ironed out now, but let me detail some of my experiences.

Location, location location.
Have your computer setup and connected the way that your going to leave it.
It is a good idea to setup this machine while being connected to the final equipment, tv’s and amplifiers etc. To do this in a workshop on a little lcd monitor etc is going to require a lot of re-configuring when you relocate it later.

Audio output.
I mentioned above that I use SPDIF (digital) audio output, which uses ALSA audio support in the system. For some reason this is all back-to-front and you need to go to the audio mixer and turn down the ALSA:{iec97} audio (yes, that’s a real tag) to zero to make it come on. Yes backwards.

Phone a friend.
Linux is not my strong point, so I am lucky to have friends around that can offer some advice here. Don’t let your nephew free to tinker, just limit fixes to the problems and don’t do it after three beers.

Even with this knowledge, the latest install took me three shots. The first I mucked up with a stupid video selection, the second the automatic updates killed my audio (which I still don’t understand) and the third ones was a charm.

If you decide to pursue this challenge, good luck and treasure awaits the brave.