MythTV

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1 Introduction
2 Hardware Setup
3 Installation
4 Mysql Setup
5 Schedules Direct Setup
6 Backend Setup
7 Frontend Setup
8 Links

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Introduction

MythTV is a powerful Digital Video Recorder to watch your television shows on your computer. Features:

Record television shows
Watch LiveTV
Transcode your recorded shows into various formats (default is mpeg 2)
Scheduled recordings
TvGuide through zap2it
Plugin functionality

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Hardware Setup

Users of Hauppauge 150/250/350/500 Cards should read the Ivtv Setup Guide. Many others use the bttv driver which is in the kernel 2.6.x.

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Installation

In MEPIS 7 and 8, the standard repos will work fine.

In MEPIS 6.5, verify you have the needed repo included:

deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ dapper universe

Then as root:

apt-get install mythtv mysql-server-5.0 mysql-client-5.0

You might want to install Tvtime as well to test your card:

apt-get install tvtime

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Mysql Setup

First start the server,
As root:

/etc/init.d/mysql start

Now verify it is up:

ps aux | grep mysql

There should be 2 lines similar to this:

root      2916  0.0  0.1   2564   380 ?        S    17:08   0:00 /bin/sh /usr/bin/mysqld_safe
mysql     2945  0.0  5.1 129396 13056 ?        Sl   17:08   0:14 /usr/sbin/mysqld --basedir=/usr --datadir=/var/lib/mysql --user=mysql --pid-file=/var/lib/mysql/Soldier.pid --skip-locking --port=3

And possibly a 3rd like this:

root      3524  0.0  0.3   3176   792 pts/0    S+   21:51   0:00 grep mysql

The third doesn't need to be there but the first two have to be there, attempt to restart the server with the same command used to start it above
Now add it to the startup system,
As root:

ln -s /etc/init.d/mysql /etc/rc3.d/S20mysql
ln -s /etc/init.d/mysql /etc/rc0.d/K20mysql
ln -s /etc/init.d/mysql /etc/rc6.d/K20mysql

Set up a password for the root account, use a secure password, replace 'newpassword' with the new password

mysqladmin -u root password 'newpassword'

Now import the default table:

mysql -u root -p < /usr/share/mythtv/mc.sql

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Schedules Direct Setup

Free channel listings are available from Schedules Direct. From their site, "Schedules Direct is a non-profit organization that provides raw U.S./Canadian TV listing data to Free and Open Source Applications." At the moment, there is a fee of $20 per year and they cover the US and Canada, you can sign up on the home page.

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Backend Setup

The MythTV Backend is the software that acts as the server. The TV Tuner(s) and storage are here, as well as the scheduling and recording related brains. In complicated setups, it's possible to have more than one mythtv frontend distributed in different physical locations all acting as a single system. (Source: http://www.mythpvr.com/mythtv/)

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Frontend Setup

The MythTV Frontend is the software similar to a set-top box your cable company might provide. It plays back media from other sources (even in that other source is on the same computer.)

Any program recorded on the server, or any other media for that matter, can be instantly watched at any MythTV frontend on the local network. Of course, it's also possible (and most common for new users) to install and run both the "frontend" and "backend" on a single machine that is only connected to one TV or monitor. (Source: http://www.mythpvr.com/mythtv/)

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