My initial MythTV experience
Earlier this year, (2009), I decided to build a PC to run MythTV as I'd seen the advantages of it when I lived with my brother for a few months in 2007. My brother is a long term MythTV user & is a Unix Systems administrator with over 20 years experience.
So I put together a PC running a Socket 754 Athlon 2800, 2 gig of RAM, a 500 gig SATA hard drive, a SATA DVD burner & a couple of TV tuners that I already owned.I installed Ubuntu 8.10 & installed MythTV & plug ins from the Ubuntu repositories. It turned out that neither of my TV tuners were supported by Linux, so my brother lent me an USB TV tuner that is supported by Linux & set it up for me. I then installed the Shepherd EPG & configured it.
I set the Myth TV PC up out in my garage with the intention of using XBMC on a Windows PC that was already plugged into my TV as the front end. This all worked quite happily for a few months but with a couple of problems , I could only record 1 TV show at a time & it suffered interference from the freezer & the hot water system., so I decided to see what I could do & discovered the HD Homerun network TV tuner made by Silicon Dust which I could see was apparently already supported by MythTV, (it was one of the tuners you could choose when setting up the MythTV backed). So I bought one. This is where the problems begun. But before we go on further with this story, a little bit about me to throw some perspective on the story. Click here to find out about me.
The rest of the story
I installed the HD Homerun tuner on my network & updated the firmware & tested it using a Windows PC on my network. It appeared to work just fine. So I then fired up the MythTV backed, added it & went to tune the tuners. It didn't work, I got an error message;
I tried a number of times, googled the error message & didn't have any success in resolving it. So I emailed the Australian distributor of the HD Homerun who couldn't help me as they didn't have any Linux literate staff, so they referred me to the US tech support.
I sent them an email, quoting the error message & asking for support. I received an email back advising me to update to the latest version of MythTV. That answer didn't really satisfy because;
So I pursued them at some length about it to resolve it. Finally one of them responded to me saying that the error message indicated that the tuner was trying to record American TV channels & that to get MythTV to tune Australian TV channels, I had to upgrade it to the fixes version, which as I was running Ubuntu, I could do it most easily by going to the Mythbuntu web site & downloading their fixes packages.
So I did that & successfully got the tuner working. But I found while I could watch live TV & successfully record shows that I started recording while watching live TV, any shows that I scheduled to record ended up as empty files. So I spent some time on the mythtv-user mailing list, posted the logs & no-one could work out why, though the general consensus was that there was an issue in the Input Connection of the MythTV backed setup. It was suggested that I use IRC & communicate with some of the users on the #mythtv-users channel, which I did & as a result, I changed the use quick tuning setting to Always which fixed the problem.
As a result of all this I've put together a How To setup Myth TV based on my experiences. Click here.
Earlier this year, (2009), I decided to build a PC to run MythTV as I'd seen the advantages of it when I lived with my brother for a few months in 2007. My brother is a long term MythTV user & is a Unix Systems administrator with over 20 years experience.
So I put together a PC running a Socket 754 Athlon 2800, 2 gig of RAM, a 500 gig SATA hard drive, a SATA DVD burner & a couple of TV tuners that I already owned.I installed Ubuntu 8.10 & installed MythTV & plug ins from the Ubuntu repositories. It turned out that neither of my TV tuners were supported by Linux, so my brother lent me an USB TV tuner that is supported by Linux & set it up for me. I then installed the Shepherd EPG & configured it.
I set the Myth TV PC up out in my garage with the intention of using XBMC on a Windows PC that was already plugged into my TV as the front end. This all worked quite happily for a few months but with a couple of problems , I could only record 1 TV show at a time & it suffered interference from the freezer & the hot water system., so I decided to see what I could do & discovered the HD Homerun network TV tuner made by Silicon Dust which I could see was apparently already supported by MythTV, (it was one of the tuners you could choose when setting up the MythTV backed). So I bought one. This is where the problems begun. But before we go on further with this story, a little bit about me to throw some perspective on the story. Click here to find out about me.
The rest of the story
I installed the HD Homerun tuner on my network & updated the firmware & tested it using a Windows PC on my network. It appeared to work just fine. So I then fired up the MythTV backed, added it & went to tune the tuners. It didn't work, I got an error message;
I tried a number of times, googled the error message & didn't have any success in resolving it. So I emailed the Australian distributor of the HD Homerun who couldn't help me as they didn't have any Linux literate staff, so they referred me to the US tech support.
I sent them an email, quoting the error message & asking for support. I received an email back advising me to update to the latest version of MythTV. That answer didn't really satisfy because;
1. As far as I knew, I already had the
latest version, having downloaded it from the Ubuntu repositories, (I
was wrong on that one)
2. MythTV already said it supported the tuner
3. I've been told to update software by tech support personnel who haven't really read the details of the issue & as a consequence fail to address the issue.
2. MythTV already said it supported the tuner
3. I've been told to update software by tech support personnel who haven't really read the details of the issue & as a consequence fail to address the issue.
So I pursued them at some length about it to resolve it. Finally one of them responded to me saying that the error message indicated that the tuner was trying to record American TV channels & that to get MythTV to tune Australian TV channels, I had to upgrade it to the fixes version, which as I was running Ubuntu, I could do it most easily by going to the Mythbuntu web site & downloading their fixes packages.
So I did that & successfully got the tuner working. But I found while I could watch live TV & successfully record shows that I started recording while watching live TV, any shows that I scheduled to record ended up as empty files. So I spent some time on the mythtv-user mailing list, posted the logs & no-one could work out why, though the general consensus was that there was an issue in the Input Connection of the MythTV backed setup. It was suggested that I use IRC & communicate with some of the users on the #mythtv-users channel, which I did & as a result, I changed the use quick tuning setting to Always which fixed the problem.
As a result of all this I've put together a How To setup Myth TV based on my experiences. Click here.
with any questions or comments.