Installing MythTV on Ubuntu

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Well, after about three or four hours of homebuilding, I've finally achieved what had long sought: to have MythTV running on Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) with satellite channels tuned, and best of all: even watching scrambled channels.


Install required packages

The initial steps are really simple to install MythTV, and in fact own 'basic' is not as complex as the paint once you get used to the way of working MythTV: it will include many step by step through the windows through which one goes by, so that everything will be clear. The simplest way to start is to run the Synaptic package manager and search for the string 'mythtv'. That brings up a series of results, and by selecting the package 'mythtv' found in this list will open a warning window that will inform the various agencies that must be resolved to install the package. We need not do anything but accept the message and click Apply changes to all packages are downloaded (50 MB or so) and installed without problems. Just before finishing inform us of two things: one, that later will have to run mythtv-setup, and two, that might be necessary to reconfigure a package if we were starting from a previous installation. Yes we will ignore the first but not the second.

After accepting the pop-up messages it completes the installation, after which several messages will warn us that with the current user can not run mythtv: we have to add it to a specific user group, but Ubuntu can handle them, so accept the message and the privileged user password will complete the process. A final message that will inform the server platform (mythbackend) has to stop his execution, OK and restart the session with our regular user (for example, returning to access GDM with Ctrl-Alt-Backspace), which now be within the group 'mythtv' needed to start using MythTV.


General Settings

After logging in again we'll have to run the MythTV setup command, therefore we write in a terminal window:

mythtv-setup

What will make the setup wizard, which first prompts you to choose the interface language. After which the settings will appear, divided into five groups. To move use the arrow keys: up and down to move between options, left and right to change the selected parameter, and the spacebar or the Enter key to check a box or clicking a button. So in this first screen we go to the first option, 'General', and press the spacebar.

In principle not necessary to change any option in the first two screens of the wizard, but in the second we specify the directory where you want to save the recordings stored on disk.

On the next screen really is convenient to change the TV format to NTSC and the channel frequency table to 'us-bcast', as shown in the image:

The following screens have nothing remarkable to be changed, except perhaps the 'Options Off / Awakened', where we can change the date and time format. Except for that, little more unless you please delve into advanced. Therefore, the string of six sacks do not deserve further comment.

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Capture

After the general section set the card touches the satellite, which will under the heading '2. Capture'. In the first window you should select the option '(New Capture)':

After which you should select the options shown in the picture: in 'Card Type' choose 'DVB DTV Capture (v3.x)'. Attention on this point: if MythTV does not indicate that the capture has been found with the message 'ID Frontend: DST DVB-S | Subtype: DVB-S', is because the server 'mythbackend' is still running somewhere, and this prevents that during the wizard can find it. If this happens we will get a screen mentioning it. So what we do is, leave the settings (press Esc to give us the option of leaving) and then kill a console mythbackend process. For this we

sudo ps xa | grep mythbackend

That will cause the PID or process id of 'mythbackend' and with that number, then

sudo kill -9 PID (PID replacing the number in question)

With that we can re-run the wizard 'mythtv-setup' from the user account, and return to this paragraph, which should already be able to seamlessly access the video capture as mentioned above. After that we will have to click on 'DISEqC', from whose windows you can choose as Description 'LNB', after which we click Finish. That will bring up a window with just the line 'LNB', which we will press the Esc key With that and we can click again on 'Finish' from the window of "Capture Settings".


Video Sources

In the next part of the configuration will not be much to do fortunately: there will simply be to create a virtual capture. To do this go to point 3 in the setup menu. That brings us to the menu "Video sources", where we will choose the option '(New video source)".

Once done this will only put a name to our video source and select the XMLTV listings collector, which is where we provide the electronic program guide or EPG. With the arrow keys you must place you in that box and then choose 'North-America'. In addition to that necessary to select the channel frequency table which would be Default.

With this you can click 'Finish', after which a message that tells us that after setting all options must execute the command 'mythfilldatabase-manual' to download the EPG guide.


Connections

We reached to an important point, which will be installed to link the capture video sources created. We selected paragraph 4 of the setup menu. When you do get to a screen where the top can change the 'Display Name', an option that appears just below the field 'capture device' should be [DVB: 0].

Lastly you can click on Finish.

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Channel Editor

This is a delicate part and which define the channel list of the application. Without switching the MythTV setup wizard can move to another desktop (with the Ctrl + Alt + Right Arrow, and the same but with the cursor left to return to the MythTV). From that desk will have to make a pre-tuning of channels that facilitate the search in MythTV, which I did not went very well.

So open a terminal window and install the utilities by typing DVB,

sudo apt-get install dvb-utils

After which we can scan and satellite transponders easily. To do this do the following:

cd / usr / share / doc / dvb-utils / examples / scan / dvb-s /
Astra-19.2E scan> / home / channel_name / channels.conf

With these two commands (the scan takes a few minutes, patience) will get a complete list of channels that will result in your $ HOME folder and specifically in channels.conf file - you can actually call as you want - and will contain both national channels (D +) channels in other countries. Then I would recommend editing the file:

gedit / home / channel_name / channels.conf

And remove all the lines belonging to channels that are not of our country, although you can leave open news channels like Fox News, Sky News and the like. Editing this file you are going would be advisable to save with another name, so that you may have provided the original safe. Suppose that the new file with the national channels we have saved with the name 'channels-north america.conf', which will have to remember for the next steps of the configuration. In the new window 'Scan Type' will be selected as "video source" and as 'Capture' '[DVB: 0]', which should already be predetermined by the wizard. What is certain we will have to modify is the 'type of analysis, we switch to the' Import channels.conf. With this option enables us to move the field 'file location' and type the path.


That will make after a while you see the list automatically imported, and that will be enough to MythTV, so we will not have to do anything else in the Channel and can click on 'Finish'.