My Mythbuntu (MythTV) Story

ONE MANS QUEST TO BOLDLY TRASH HIS WORTHLESS DVR FOR A BETTER ONE

So, Eric and I purchased similar systems for this project. Two similar systems for two different goals. I wanted a better DVR, Eric wanted a place to store his massive DVD collection in one place. I wanted to spend very little ($260 ish total) and Eric was more open to getting the fancy case and all ($318 ish total); and Eric can write about those in particular if he wants...

In both cases we already had some hardware we could re-use, thus cutting costs, for example I had extra RAM, Hard Drive, DVD-ROM, case, etc.

Building the beasts.
Eric's system was seamless setting up the hardware with the exception of some case wires that were misplaced. I managed to short my motherboard out by having it resting on the aluminum case itself ... fortunately there was no permanent damage and we properly aligned it in the case.

Putting the hardware in was the easy part.

Installing the software.
In both instances we had to start with side-monitors before, later on, we moved to hooking the systems up to TV displays.

On Board Video Support
PROBLEM! We knew we had a problem before it occurred because we knew the on-board video cards were not supported, so we had to run the installer in a 'low graphics mode' using VESA drivers. From there: (1) download the linux kernel headers (2) download the build essential package (3) compile the NVIDIA kernel module (4) uninstall an OLDER conflicting NVIDIA module (4) setup the correct NIVIDA output resolutions.

Easy right? (Ha ha...)

Wireless Network Access
Next up was the wireless network access. This should have been easy but MythBuntu (Ubuntu in general) thinks it is funny to keep asking for your "keyring password" every time you want to connect to your network on boot. It does this in part, as I came to understand, because it was in some "roaming" mode, so we had to hard-code the SSID and the WPA key in

... phew ...

It doesn't end there, then we had to edit the local boot script so it would restart every time with the new settings.

Everyone Uses Linux!
FUN! Now you understand why EVERYONE uses Linux right?!

TV Tuner Card
I bought a cheap $20 tuner, I knew it had to be supported because I suspected TONS of people would certainly be buying it.

It wasn't supported outright -- no, that would be too easy -- initially MythTV was semi-detecting the chipset and only working up to channel 13 when it did work. So we had to unload the kernel module and reload it until we found one that worked. A **fun** process of issuing a certain modprobe command over and over again.

Eventually it was appropriately detected -- we added the channels and were watching cable TV!

But what channels?
*Somewhere between the last point and this point we ditched the monitor and had MythTV hooked directly up to my 1080i TV; only a keyboard remained attached*

The TV guide is another issue. I had to sign up for a schedulesdirect.org account. Thankfully, they do have a free 7 day trial, and yes, you DO have to pay for your program guide.

But with a 7 day free trial. A $5 2 month plan, and a $20 yearly plan, I'm not going to argue ... until they raise prices ... then we'll see ...

So, the channels were now listing what was on and so forth ...

... But you didn't think that was all did you? No no no. This is linux, everything is hell!

The channel IDs weren't showing! So, if I went to CNN, for example, it showed up as "Unknown Channel 25" -- then I had to issue some OTHER unique command for it to update the channel names!

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

But it worked and at that point I had a fully functional MythTV setup. Mind you, I setup other nifty features like MythWeb later. MythWeb is a program that allows me to connect to my MythTV from within my local network (or over the Internet if you wanted) and control things to be recorded and whatnot.

...

I won't even get into my stupid mistake of changing the MySQL password for the mythtv account...never ever mess with MySQL passwords, OK? You don't want the hell of editing about four different sources to reflect the changes. Anyways, Needless to say, I sorted out the MySQL blunder.

Hard drive gobble
MythTV likes to gobble space I realized, it keeps recordings of everything you watch. Initially this was annoying -- and it still is -- but the recordings it keeps are only kept for one day and MythTV seems to be smart enough to delete these recordings when space is needed for recordings you actually asked it to do.

Did I mention that is annoying?

MythTV makes recording fun, easy, and HELL?
Recording shows is easy, fun, exciting, smart and HELLISH...

...Why is it hellish? Because it has no readily viable method of ONLY recording NEW episodes of shows! I don't know what that is, MythTV certainly knows re-runs from new episodes; and apparently there IS a flag to force it to record new episodes only, but hell if I know how to use it right now.

What a bummer, after all that my only last issue is having MythTV record only new episodes of shows I want to watch...

Still, it is better than my crummy DVR.

Themes
I love the fact that you can use a multitude of themes and OSDs (On Screen Displays); OSDs are the boxes that overly video with information about what is playing, the channel number and name, etc. briefly.

Very cool indeed!

Final Thoughts
Unless you are a serious enthusiast or a major geek like myself or Eric THIS PROJECT IS NOT FOR YOU.

Is it awesome? Yes.
Handy? Yes.
Pretty? Yes.
Works? Eventually, Yes.
Advanced? Yes.
Easy? NO.

If you aren't willing to dish out a serious 24 hour marathon installing a DVR/PVR, just get a simple DVR box or a TiVO. I cannot say that enough. This simply is NOT ready for general use...

If you are a geek or enthusiast, you'll love this though, and once it is fully operational everyone who is used to using typical DVR-like systems will feel right at home.

I look forward to a day that this becomes a trivial thing to install and is adopted by general users with ease.

Considerations
This was a team effort. I kid you not. Eric did MASSIVE research on this and performed fantastic wizardry to get things working. But it took the both of us (serious geeks) grinding our teeth for 24 hours to setup ONE MythTV DVR!

It was kinda fun...for geeks anyways.

Final Final Note -- For Other Geeks That Read This
I know this COULD have been a simpler process in many-many regards, but still, it isn't a strait forward enough process for typical use right now, and that is my ultimate point.