MythTV AGAIN!

well last night I gave up on Myth, decided to sell all the hardare that I have purchased and was going to buy a Tivo with a year subscription.

I woke up this morning, with a bit of information via the Ubuntu Forums. I decided ONE more time.

Here is what it is..Ubuntu 6.06 LTS Alternate Install per the Instructions at the Ubuntu Wiki https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MythTV_Dapper_Backend_Frontend

With a little help from http://parker1.co.uk/mythtv_ubuntu.php . Now I say a little, but in reality, my stuff is working because of that with the help from the Wiki. The wiki has you create a user, then lets mythtv-setup create a user called mythtv and you add yourself to that group. I couldn’t get that to work. With the parker how-to, I created a user called mythtv, log in as that user, run everything all is well as far as installation.

Here is where I’m stuck –

• No Remote — Hauppage 45-button silver remote with the 4 colored buttons at the bottom. IRW outputs nothing, but LIRC does start w/o errors. Batteries are good. Steps followed from here https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Install_Lirc_Edgy Again, IRW throws nothing out, I found lircrc.conf, lircd.conf and lircmd.conf all from the LIRC’s remote page. Per the link, the command ‘irrecord’ was used to record the buttons on my remote. Now this was my first attempt, and I missed a few buttons and as I learn Myth more, I may change a few things, but now I am able to navigate the menus, select things, and change channels.
• No Video-out on S-Video. Motherboard has an Nvidia Chipset MX440 with S-Video, upon boot, s-video works, X starts and video is gone. I did follow the instructions found here, but the TV does not display properly. I also have a PVR-350 card, S-video out does not work. Per the Ubuntu wiki https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MythTV_Edgy_hardware_pvr-350_TV-out, all troubleshooting steps are successful to determine that ivtv is installed correctly, but when I go to do the /sbin/rmmod saa7127 and /sbin/modprobe saa7127 test_image=1 Nothing happens on my TV. Here is the great thing about the last line on that wiki “If it’s not working check your cable Connections and then retry the steps. If it’s still not working, google IVTV, or post on a forum.”
• Note Set-Top Box. I have Digital Cable, a Motorola DTC-2244, PVR-350 gets no video period when hooked to the box, run it off of straight cable, and all is well in the world.
• Only local programming. Channels 2 – 15 are viewable, everything else is snow. Running on local programming, I’d hope I could get Channels up to 100 or wherever it goes. Digital cable I have over 500 channels, and I definitely need them or Myth is again worthless to me. This was resolved by ‘Mythtv-setup’ -> General -> Channel Frequency. By Default it was set it us-bcast, I changed it to us-cable and I was able to past local programming.
• USB-UIRT — I wanna be able to control my Motorola DTC-2244 Cable Box. I purchased the USB-UIRT thinking I was going to use Sage when I gave up on Myth a while back. Had I known it wasn’t as well supported as I would have liked in Linux, I wouldn’t have bought it. Reading over on MythTV Talk forums there seems to be a number of people who have been successful getting it to work. Now weeather they’re getting it to just recieve or if they’re able to get it to send that is the question. I was able to plug the USB-UIRT in, and with lirc-0.8.1, run the setup to configure a USB device, specifically a USB-UIRT from the menu. After the setup, I can press buttons on my remote, and I get a light, which means it is getting something. If I do a ‘cat /dev/ttyUSB0′ I get Â
  %-ü
  ^X
  Which makes me believe that it is seeing the buttons being pressed, it just doesn’t know what those buttons are yet. I’m thinking I need to do an irrecord for this device.

O verall, performance between menu screens is slow at best on an AMD XP 2400+ with 512MB of RAM. Video on the monitor is not digital quality, but I’ve seen worse.

I’m happy I’ve made it this far, but I’m not sure if it is all worth it. For the time and the amount of money I have in this box now, I could have had a less stressful life and bought a Tivo. I love linux, I love open source, but some things just don’t work ‘out of the box’ just yet.

I’ll update this post as I knock down the list above trying to get everything resolved. If I don’t have everything resolved by Sunday night before I go to bed, all parts will be on e-bay and a Tivo will be ordered.

UPDATE: 7/11/07 :: 11:54AM MST

Box ran all night, I should have scheduled a recording just to test that. Everything has been running great, no issues with video playback or sound. The picture is a little dark, but it could be my monitor. I still don’t have TV-Out working yet.

MythTV Again

Well Ubuntu 6.10 has MythTV 0.20 supported in the repositories, and installation is definitely much easier than it has ever been.

But I still can’t get Lirc to work Testing it, I can press buttons, and get an output in my terminal, but in Myth, nothing works.

I’ve given up for the time being…maybe in 7.04 it’ll be even better.

MythTV Revisted

If you scroll down, you’ll see my first experience with MythTV earlier this year…I took another whack at it this last weekend.

No this is not an I hate linux rant, I actually have it on one of my desktops, and on my notebook. I very much like Linux, and am awaiting the day when I can convert 100%.

Anways, my little trek with MythTV started a number of months back, and at that time unsuccessful, moreso because of hardware issues I was facing, than the software.

Move to this past weekend…Hardware is working well, and I’m off. I had downloaded ZenWalk linux and wanted to see what it was all about. Hardware detection was great, everything functioned as I could hope it would, so I said, what the hey, lets see if we can get MythTV installed. Found that ZenWalk was based on Slackware, and though new to me (slackware), I figured again why not. I have to say, there seems to be a lack of a how-to for something more recent (hardware/software available). The how-tos seemed out-dated. I know, I’m bitching and should do it myself. Anyways, I’m too dependable upon apt-get, and was lost with packagemanagement with Netpkg. Strike 1.

I had the latest version of KnoppMyth downloaded and burned to a CD, when trying to install I initially encountered an error — uncertain what, tons of characters (not letters or anything of the sorts) on the screen that made no sense. I figured it was a bad burn.

Burned new disk for KnoppMyth and it installed. Everything was running smoothly, no complaints — Until I rebooted. As previously in the past when I had tried to install KnoppMyth, after a reboot on it’s booting up, it seemed to ‘tank’ (for a lack of better terms) on the ivtv initilizing. I’m uncertain what caused this, everything functioned fine, but after that reboot, it was done for. I was getting stressed at this point. Strike Two!

I like Ubuntu, and always seem to come back to it. It has actually been on my notebook for almost a year now (if not longer), and I’m very pleased with it. So I figure, why not use the distro I like the most? Well I started with a copy of 6.06 I had burned here. I did the cdtest and was successful with no errors. Everything installed fine and functioned as it should.

First attempt of install MythTV, failure. Per the number of how-to’s on the WWW, I seemed to get stuck at the linking of directories when uncompression/compiling ivtv drivers. No big deal, lets start over.

2nd attempt…Failure. Environment all set up, everything seems to be going smoothly (I’m excited), but for some reason I am unable to connect to the database. After a number of attempts to COMPLETELY uninstall Mysql/phpmyadmin and everything associated with it (as well as Mythtv at that time), I was unsuccessful, and felt like I was running around in circles. Still not giving up. Per a few searches on this site, one that said that MythTV .20 was supported in Edgy, why not upgrade?

Upgraded to Edgy, personally I cannot tell a difference between Edgy and Dapper, but that’s for another topic. MythTV .20 is in the repositories and everything appeared to be functioning wonderfully, again until MySQL setup. I’m not sure why I’m lost here. I have setup and used Mysql on a few servers that hosted wordpress, phpbb as well as Invisionboard. So though I am not a ‘master’ when it comes to Mysql, I knew that I should be able to successfully setup mysql w/o issues. Stike 3 — I gave up on Ubuntu

Now this is like 10PM Sunday night, I’ve been sitting in front of this computer for a LONG time hoping to make something work. Google showed me Mythdora. Now I had Fedora Core 3 on a small server set on my home’s DSL for over a year w/o ANY issues, so I liked it, but left it for Ubuntu 5.04/5.10. Again, I liked apt-get, and hated rpm-based distributions. But I wasn’t really worried about the distrobution as I was getting a solid/functioning MythTV box up and running.

Typical Fedora Core install, nothing spectacular, longer than KnoppMyth, like the GUI installer a lot, very professional. A step ahead of Ubuntu, and a step behind SuSE. Installed, restarted, configured….SUCCESSFUL.

Here are my final thoughts on this little adventure.
KnoppMyth is a great idea, love that it is based on Knoppix (debian based), it seems dated though (compared to Zenwalk, Ubuntu, MythDora). I personally cannot say much more as I could never seem to get a good install.

Per the ‘how-to’s on installing/configuring MythTV, there is no consistency from one how-to to another. I realize that there is always more than one way to do something, but for a ‘newbie’ it is challenging and confusing making heads or tales on what the next step should be per the how-to you’re following. And if you messed up somewhere along the lines during the install, and look at another how-to, which one is right, which one is wrong? Essentially neither are wrong or right because I’m assuming the author was successful in their installations because that is why they’re writing they’re how-to. It was also sort of evident that either a couple of how-tos were written by the same person verbatim or a copy/paste had taken place.

So why did I write this. I needed to vent to ppl I hope could understand the stresses. This is not so much a rant/hateful post in anyway.

I like Ubuntu too much to give up. I’m gonna take what I’ve learned, what I CAN learn and try and create Mythbuntu. I recently read on Digg that KnoppMyth was going to be converted over to Ubuntu, but no official release had been given yet, and I don’t believe everything on the internet, so I’ll believe it when I see it.

This is something I’ve wanted to do, I honestly have no idea what I’m getting myself into, but i hope a great experience that with a great return. I want to create something that is based on *buntu, and allows for a simpler means of installing/configuring MythTV.

So for those of you who are still reading…Thanks! For those of you who scrolled to the bottom, you didn’t miss anything.

Shuttle SN41G2 — New Myth Box

So…A coworker upgraded his sister’s computer to something a little newer and left behind a Shuttle XPC SN41G2 Barebones system (except it isn’t barebones!!).

AMD 2500+ XP Processor

512MB PC2700

Needs a HDD to be complete. I’m gonna make this my new MythTV box.

Will update as time/progress happens

8/7/06

Failure…Complete and 100% failure.

I can’t get the onboard nice or a USB NIC to function properly, so I’m unable to update MythTV.

BTW, KnoppMyth is GREAT. I love it! Just wish I had network connectivity.

More to follow as I learn more soon.

MythTV — Coming SOON!!!

Well my PVR-350 card showed up today, and I had an Ubuntu Breezy box laying around (PIII ~800mhz, 256MB and an entirely way too small HDD). Popped the card in, and started following a few online tutorials before I had to go to work. I’m at work now.

I got stuck in the ivtv stuff, but believe I might have figured it out right before I left (need to verify when I get home). I’m working a 12 hour shift today, so it’ll be a long one, probably won’t look at the box until Saturday.

Stay tuned for updates, reading the tutorials, Myth seems enitrely way too complicated for a ‘newbie’ (even though I may not be one, I can see why it might not be as wide spread as it could be).

5/26/2006

Well I got Myth going…After a few hiccups and a couple of errors on my part — the card is recognizeable, I’m able to schedule programming and life is well. I’m sure there is still a fair amount to do, but one step closer. I’m gonna be working all weekend so I probably won’t touch the box until later next week.