One part of the installation was also a module called mythweb and this results in delivering your back-end services and all the TV guide in a web accessible format. I use this all the time either from my notebook I have set on the coffee table I can view the  guide for what is showing and easily select programs and assign more recordings.

Also from here I find that the configuration part of this provides a much easier channel editor list. You can more easily select the channels you want disabled and alter their titles easily but beware, this can lead to tricky config items that you should not touch.

You can also see the recorded programs in here and it shows some wonderful information. Even a regular 1 hour show takes around 3 Gig of drive space, but here it shows that there is an auto-expiry on most of these recordings meaning that when the drive gets full, new programs will push off the oldest programs as required.

Also, I have allowed this to be available externally which allows me to make changes to my schedule from work or even from my web-enabled mobile phone.

When selecting shows for recording you have access to many options. Some of those I like to use is to extend recordings automatically to start 2 mins early and finish about 7 mins late ensuring that the station doesn’t make my shows get cut-off. This is normally great but it also means I need two capture cards as they often overlap. You can set priorities on shows so regular items like reruns of Seinfeld I may put on a low priority that get bumped if there is a conflict.

When you have two cards (and if your not recording anything) you can even do PIP (or picture-in-picture) where one channel is shown full screen and a secondary one is shown in a smaller window.

To get to this and many other options, while viewing a channel hit the ‘m’ key for a menu. In here you can change the picture mode and adjust audio syncing if your having any issues with that. You can even view the TV guide while watching TV, it’s all very easy to access and try.

NEXT: References for more help

The MythTV back-end setup program is mainly focused around configuration of the DTV card and the station channels that are linked to it. Once this is done then there is little reason to go back to this area of the program. This also contains the on-screen settings for the theme displayed while in playback/viewing mode.

Most of the setup options though are available from within the front-end program itself, and there are many to consider. Feel free to try out other themes that are installed, particularly wide-screen ones and others that may be to your liking.

There are a lot of options and things you can change, but do be careful with what you play with and do things your unsure about one change at a time before your try them.

If this is your first real venture into linux like me you may find a few areas that you need to develop your skills on, as mentioned before, access to the terminal program and navigating around is a new experience. Compiling and installing fixes and changes can be an experience, but I have found that if you hunt around a bit, many of the helpful people who provide answers to these questions usually asked before, or perhaps sought by you are good in providing step-by-step answers, some of which I point to in the reference section later on.

Personally I am very happy with the basic installation, addition of the DTV cards, TV Guide data as described and a nice theme is basically the main things I have configured. From there it’s a matter of using it and getting the most out of you media experience.

NEXT: Enjoying the experience