More reviews

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I just got back from a lovely four days in Tasmania, and am just now catching up with the resulting email backlog. There are some new alerts about reviews of the MythTV book in there which are worth pointing out: I'm surprised and disappointed that the installation of MythTV through pre-built packages or a CD distributions like KnoppMyth or MythDora were not covered deeper than a sentence or two in passing. This is likely to be a turn off for readers who were hoping for a quick and simple method of getting MythTV up and going. ... On the whole I consider this a good book that is excellent for the new to intermediate MythTV user, although advanced users may pick a few good pieces of information out of it as well. It was well written and covered most items at just about the right introductory (yes -- practical) level. Once it has taught you the basics, you can then go and look up more details online for features you want to get more information about. http://www.mythpvr.com/mythtv/books/Practical_MythTV.html Linked at: http://smart-home-blog.com/archives/670 Linked at: http://mythtvnews.com/2007/06/29/more-practical-mythtv-book-reviews/ I think the comments about installation technique are fair, although the method described in the book is…

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Zap2IT shutdown update

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I've been silent on the Zap2IT shutdown issue for a week or so now, mainly because of travel, and also because I was waiting for something useful to happen. I've ready literally hundreds of emails of the users mailing list -- many proposing architectures for distribution of data, or placing various demands about how much someone would be willing to pay for the data. I am yet to see someone actually sit down and write some code though. So hence this update. There isn't any useful news yet, except for a general reassurance that the developers promise that they are still working on a solution. So, keep on waiting is the plan for now...

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MythNetTV release 1

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I figured it was time for another release of MythNetTV, especially since I've fixed some bugs recently and rolled in code generously provided by George Nassas. New things in this release: Initial work on transcoding smaller files to something else Better error checking for MySQL configuration and accessibility Fixed bug where MythNetTV was unhappy if there were no channels configured in the MySQL database Found, and hopefully fixed, a bug where program dates were not always being tracked correctly. Also added a check to make sure this doesn't happen again Added --markread, which lets you mark old shows as already downloaded The code has seen a fair bit of use now, so it should be fairly stable. Let me know if you find any problems... $ ./mythnettv --statistics Programs tracked: 735 Google EngEdu: 350 Scoble Show: 85 linux.conf.au 2007: 74 Mobuzz TV: 82 dl.tv: 32 Net Cafe: 2 Foo: 1 ABC News: 2 Australia: 1 Play School: 1 Diggnation: 72 Programs still to download: 50 Google EngEdu: 49 Diggnation: 1 Data transferred: 103 gb (111017264341 bytes) Get it here if you care: http://www.stillhq.com/mythtv/mythnettv/

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…and then there was a pause…

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I guess we're at a different phase of the Zap2IT guide data thing now. The story has broken, there's been tons of email on the mythtv-users mailing list (remember, don't panic!), and now things have quietened down. I think that's probably a good thing, because it almost certainly means people are now no longer distracted from actually sitting down and working on the problem. I imagine that journalists would make up some sensational thing to say to keep the story rolling during this quiet news cycle. I can't think of any such thing to say, and it wouldn't be ethical anyway. I must say that I think coverage like this isn't always helpful.

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Some quick further thoughts on the Zap2IT shutdown

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The Zap2IT forums has a thread about the shutdown (you need to have a Zap2IT login to get to the forum). One of the posts on the thread about the shutdown expands on the reasons for the free guide data shutting down: - Continued use of the service to support commercial products, in violation of the agreement. - Commercial products continued to grow despite previous appeals that this activity stop. - There are significant changes to the supporting data structure forthcoming and we could not devote resources to the continued upkeep and enhancements of the service. - Maintenance of the service is impacting our resource pool for other projects. - We sought alternative options but were unable to find a solution. - We recognize the hardship this creates for the user community. We are open to alternative solutions and would consider proposals that met the needs of the user community and our company. - We looked into options to turn this into a paid service however we do not have the infrastructure at this time. So it seems that the folks selling MythTV based solutions which used the guide data, as well as possible other commercial uses (the was no…

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An initial analysis of the removal of Zap2IT guide data in the US

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(I had some spare time while waiting for the kids to finish their breakfast, so this is posted earlier than I planned). As mentioned briefly earlier today MythTVnews.com is reporting that Tribune Media Services (TMS) is turning off their free guide data service for MythTV on 1 September 2007. This is mainly because of claims of abuse -- the theory on the MythTV users mailing list is that this abuse is vendors selling pre-configured MythTV systems for profit, which use the not-for-commercial-use guide data service from Zap2IT. The announcement from TMS reads: IMPORTANT MESSAGE: For several years we have offered a free TV listings service to hobbyists for their own personal, noncommercial use. In October of 2004 we posted here an open letter saying the future of Zap2it Labs was at risk because of certain growing misuses of the Zap2it Labs data. Unfortunately this misuse has continued and grown. These misuses, combined with other business factors have led to the decision to discontinue Zap2it Labs effective September 1, 2007. We thank those users who have honoured the terms of the agreement, and we suggest you consider the many TV listings options offered by the commercial licensees of TMS TV listings…

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Breaking: Zap2IT turning off guide data for the US?

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MythTVnews.com is reporting that Tribune Media Services (TMS), the providers of the Zap2IT guide data used by MythTV in the US, will turn that guide data off on 1 September 2007. I haven't had a lot of time to look into this further, mainly because I am giving a talk this morning. I'll have a better look at lunch time (PDT) and write some more about this. I think there's no need for panic, as a new guide data source will be found, but this is unexpected.

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Implementing parental filters with MythTV

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The other morning I walked out to my five year old watching Robot Chicken. This isn't what I would call the highlight of my parenting career, but it did leave me with an immediate need to come up with a solution to stopping the kids from watching inappropriate things now that they're big enough to work their way through the MythTV user interface without our assistance. Its now quite common for me to wake up in the morning and discover that the kids have turned the monitor on in the living room, have found one of their shows, and are happily watching. (I guess it says something about the ease of use of the MythTV user interface that my four and five year olds have no trouble navigating it without assistance. Specifically, the video thumbnail of the various recordings is a killer feature because it helps kids who can't read yet find the shows they want.) The animated thumbnail of the recording appears in the bottom right of this example image. Back to my need to filter recordings. Unfortunately this isn't covered in the MythTV book (Amazon), mainly because it didn't seem to me to be a killer feature at…

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How to transcode video for the Nokia N800

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I have a Nokia N800 that I haven't had much time to play with, but I am about to go away on a trip which will involve a lot of time commuting on buses, so I figure I should start thinking about it again. Luckily for me, this page has pretty good instructions of what settings to use with mencoder to make it all look good on the N800. I haven't tried them yet, but I will report back when I do.

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Building a symlink tree for MythTV recordings

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I wanted to build a directory of symlinks that pointed to my MythTV recordings, so I wrote a little python script to do it for me. I figure someone else might find this useful too... #!/usr/bin/python # Copyright (C) Michael Still (mikal@stillhq.com) 2007 # Released under the terms of the GNU GPL import MySQLdb import os import re from socket import gethostname # Connect to the MythTV database based on the MythTV config config_values = {} home = os.environ.get('HOME') config = open(home + '/.mythtv/mysql.txt') for line in config.readlines(): if not line.startswith('#') and len(line) > 5: (key, value) = line.rstrip('\n').split('=') config_values[key] = value db_connection = MySQLdb.connect(host = config_values['DBHostName'], user = config_values['DBUserName'], passwd = config_values['DBPassword'], db = config_values['DBName']) cursor = db_connection.cursor(MySQLdb.cursors.DictCursor) # Regexp for what is allowed in the symlink name unsafe = re.compile('[^a-zA-Z0-9\-\:_]+') # Find the recordings directory -- this assumes you haven't used an # identifier string for this machine... cursor.execute('select * from settings where value="RecordFilePrefix" and ' 'hostname="%s";' % gethostname()) row = cursor.fetchone() basedir = row['data'] # Now find all the recordings we have at the moment cursor.execute('select title, subtitle, starttime, basename from recorded;') for i in range(cursor.rowcount): row = cursor.fetchone() title = row['title'] subtitle = row['subtitle'] if subtitle…

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