How I built my mythtv box.
I had a few small issues building my box and had to follow serveral guides so I have put this together in the hope that someone will find it and it will be useful
Hardware
Asus P5KPL SE iG31 Socket 775 Motherboard
Intel QuadCore Q8300 2.5GHz Socket 775
4GB DDR2 Ram 800MHz / PC2-6400 CL6 Kingston RAM
2 x 500GB WestenDigital HardDisks
Adaptec 1220SA Raid card
Nvidia 8300 PCIe Graphic card
This is not the quitest machine ever, I am thinking of finding a quiter PSU at somepoint in the future.
TV Tuner Cards
Hauppauge HVR 1200 PCI-e
Hauppauge TD-500 PCI (Dual Tuner)
Peak DVB-T Dual Tuner PCI 221544AGPK also known as Kworld DVB-T PC160-2T
Installing
I choose Mythbuntu – no realy reason but i needed to choose one Distro!
I was unable to use mythbuntu 9.10 as it didn’t find any of my Drives. either using onboard sata or on the Raid card.
So I installed mythbuntu 9.04 then did a update to 9.10 before i did any other myth setups.
I also installed the restricted drivers for Nvidia cards
From most of my reading most things seem to need the lasted video4linux drivers installing. No idea if my system needs them or not so I installed them anyway!
http://linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/How_to_Obtain%2C_Build_and_Install_V4L-DVB_Device_Drivers
sudo apt-get install mercurial linux-headers-$(uname -r) build-essential
hg clone http://linuxtv.org/hg/v4l-dvb
cd v4l-dvb
make
sudo make install
Tuner Cards
Hauppauge HVR-1200 card doesn’t work out of the box.
A run of dmesg show the following error:-
tda10048 firmware_upload: upload failed.
This is an easy card to get to work:-
http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/Hauppauge_WinTV-HVR-1700
sudo apt-get install unzip
wget http://steventoth.net/linux/hvr1700/HVR-12×0-14×0-17×0_1_25_25271_WHQL.zip
wget http://steventoth.net/linux/hvr1700/extract.sh
wget http://steventoth.net/linux/hvr1700/readme.txt
less readme.txt
/bin/sh extract.sh
sudo cp v4l-cx23885-enc.fw /lib/firmware
sudo cp v4l-cx23885-avcore-01.fw /lib/firmware
sudo cp dvb-fe-tda10048-1.0.fw /lib/firmware
Reboot!
There are verious reports of the Hauppauge TD-500 (Hauppauge T-500) working depending on the version
I could never get this card to work on my previous box HP DX2200 running mythbuntu 9.04. This box has since died so this could have either been a problem with mythbuntu 9.04 or my motherboard!
Both other cards worked stright away.
Configuring MythTV.
By far the best guide on the Internet is from Garry Parker
Only a few things I did differentally:-
I have never been able to get mythtv setup to find any TV channels, so create a channel.conf file and use that
http://linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/Dvbscan
the guide refers to the wrong file locations for my system so this is the command i used:- (change uk-EmleyMoor to the transmitter you recive from)
scan -u /usr/share/dvb/dvb-t/uk-EmleyMoor > channels.conf
The only thing to make sure is the the card is not configured in myth or that mythbackend is not running otherwise the scan command will find no channels.
XMLTV Scheduling for the UK
2 Useful guides here:-
http://parker1.co.uk/mythtv_id.php
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Uk_xmltv
It also usful to note that the Radio Times XMLTV grabber doesn’t use channel numbers so there is a bit of work needed to match everything up!
I didn’t not use the mythtv-setup to run the grabber, mainly becuase I could only see half of the window it opened!
tv_grab_uk_rt –list-channels
~/.xmltv/tv_grab_uk_rt.conf
1. In mythtv-setup, add a Video Source Setup using the menu option 3 – choose UK Radio Times as the grabber script – do not run configure – name this any source you like, but remember the name exactly – you’ll need in later on
2. exit mythtv-setup but DO NOT run mythfilldatabase on exit
3. Run the grabber script by executing the following:
tv_grab_uk_rt –configure
Select output format – default recommended
Select cache directory – default recommended
Enable title processing? – default recommended
Postcode – enter the first part of your postcode to get localised listings
Choose platform – Sky/Virgin/Freeview/etc.
Choose channels – you can answer yes/no/none/all – answer yes to process one at a time, however, if you want to select the majority, choose “all” then manually edit the file after the script finishes to remove the ones you don’t want. NOTE: as at 06/11/09, the Community Channel causes errors in later processing if selected – i choose “all” then remove the Community Channel by manual edit after script has run.
You should see a list of channel titles scroll by, then a return to the prompt
cp ~/.xmltv/tv_grab_uk_rt.conf ~/.mythtv/Test.xmltv