Mythtv – Made by Mikal

Incorrect channel numbers in MythTV

Post author:mikal
Post published:September 28, 2009
Post category:Mythtv

We've had a HDHomeRun for a while now, and I'm very happy with it. One wart however was that Catherine was complaining that tuning for Go! didn't work (an extra Win TV channel we get in this area). It was odd -- it appeared in the channel guide, but recordings would end up recording ABC1 instead, and we couldn't tune to the channel in the live TV interface either. I fired up the channel editor in mythtv-setup, and the problem was actually pretty easy to solve... The channel scan had assigned channel number 2 to Go!, which is the same channel number as ABC1. It had also gotten the channel number for Win TV wrong, but we hadn't noticed that because that wasn't overlapping with another channel. The channel numbers seem arbitrary, given the database is also storing frequency and demultiplexing information, so the fix was as simple as just giving the various WIN channels the correct numbers (or I suspect any number that was unique) in mythtv-setup.

MythTV Chapter Ready: The Hard Way: Installing MythTV From Source

Post author:mikal
Post published:April 29, 2009
Post category:Mythtv

The Hard Way: Installing MythTV From Source is now ready. In fact, its been ready for quite a while, but I have been trying to blog about the finished chapters in the right order, so it has been trapped in the queue. This chapter discusses how to compile MythTV from source code, which is useful if you've either had problems with a packaged version of MythTV, or want more control than you'll get from packages. The awesome Michael Carden did the review for this chapter once again.

How I plan on handling Ubuntu and Mythbuntu 9.04

Post author:mikal
Post published:April 28, 2009
Post category:Mythtv

Ubuntu and Mythbuntu 9.04 have recently been released, and this makes some of the current content for the online MythTV book out of date. The way I plan on handling this is to keep going with the current version 8.10 content, and then update chapters to 9.04 later. This way I don't delay the overall book because of the new release, and people who haven't upgraded still have relevant content. For those using 9.04, the current content should be "close enough" to get you going. Please comment on this post if you see problems which are new to 9.04 so I can make a note of them.

MythTV Chapter Ready: The Hard Way: Installing Ubuntu

Post author:mikal
Post published:April 28, 2009
Post category:Mythtv

The next chapter, The Hard Way: Installing Ubuntu is now ready. This chapter took a lot longer than I wanted because I was distracted by some stuff in my personal life, but I am hoping that the authoring process is now back on track. This chapter covers how to install Ubuntu so that you can setup your own MythTV system exactly how you'd like it. That's also the way to go if you're using an existing Ubuntu system and just adding MythTV to it. Thanks to Michael Carden for yet another excellent chapter review.

Restricting anonymous edits

Post author:mikal
Post published:January 31, 2009
Post category:Mythtv

Because of two examples of wiki spam today, I am restricting anonymous edits. From now on you will be required to have a wiki account before you can make an edit. That doesn't seem all that onerous to me, and lets me avoid having to deal with spam.

MythTV Chapter Ready: The Easy Way: Installing MythBuntu

Post author:mikal
Post published:January 29, 2009
Post category:Mythtv

The The Easy Way: Installing MythBuntu chapter is now ready. This chapter provides an overview of a basic MythBuntu installation, which is something which wasn't covered at all in Practical MythTV, as MythBuntu wasn't ready at the time. MythBuntu provides a simple installation and configuration option for those people who want to build a new MythTV system from scratch, and want to hide the normal Ubuntu install. Thanks to Michael Carden and Jost Stewart for their reviews of this chapter, as well as Paul Wayper for his comments.

Looking for a logo

Post author:mikal
Post published:January 28, 2009
Post category:Mythtv

I'm not a very graphical person, so I'm looking for someone to help me with a logo for the online MythTV book project -- specifically I need something to replace this image: I hope you agree that the current logo lacks a certain... something. A simple logo which somehow says "book about MythTV" would be really cool. It would also be good to have a version which works as a favicon. Please email me if you think you can help.

MythTV Chapter Ready: Selecting Hardware

Post author:mikal
Post published:January 21, 2009
Post category:Mythtv

The Selecting Hardware chapter is now ready. This chapter details the benefits of starting small, how to select the right hardware for a MythTV system if you're building one from scratch, and what the authors use for their MythTV systems. This chapter was originally written by Stewart Smith, and this version was reviewed by Josh Stewart. Thanks as well to Julien Goodwin and Michael Carden for their helpful comments.

MythNetTV release 7

Post author:mikal
Post published:January 20, 2009
Post category:Mythtv

This release is smaller than the last one, but has some bug fixes which folk might find handy. New things in this release: Better testing: r232: Simple script to create the unit testing database New features: r210: Allow users to override the default bittorrent upload rate r212: Provide more sync information when running in verbose mode r216: Add the markunread command r218: Make only one download attempt for a given show per 24 hour period r220: Change download interval to one hour, update last attempt time more frequently r222: Add --oldestfirst and --newestfirst flags, which alter NextDownloads behavior r224: Add flag which forces downloads to run, even if they've failed recently r226: Don't mark a bittorrent download as complete just because the torrent file has been completely downloaded r234: Use reasonable defaults for mysql configuration if no config file can be found r236: Use reasonable defaults for mysql configuration if no config file can be found r238: Use reasonable defaults for mysql configuration if no config file can be found Bug fixes: r206: Make the output of "video.py length" more friendly r208: Release man pages as well r214: Fix a bug introduced in r210 which broke bittorrent downloads r228: Fix…

MythTV Chapter Ready: Introduction

Post author:mikal
Post published:January 20, 2009
Post category:Mythtv

The Introduction chapter of the online MythTV book is now ready. This chapter covers the definition of a personal video recorder (PVR), the components of such a system, the various alternatives that are available, why MythTV might be the right choice, and briefly explains the MythTV version number scheme. Thanks to Michael Carden for doing a review on this chapter.