MythTV

staticattic

Has anyone had any dealings with a MythTV setup? I would like to build one for myself, but have never talked to anyone that actually had one or has used one. The website for it is www.mythtv.org. Looks like it would be a fun project to play with and see what kind of control I can get out of it.

amdpower

I've been using MythTV CVS for quite a few years. It has come a long way. I'm trying to figure out a better way for control right now actually. I love Myth. Schedule recording through the web interface or direct. Data services are through a non-profit (schedulesdirect.org) and only cost $20.00/year. I've also got (2) Hauppauge MediaMVP's running MVPMC (www.mvpmc.org). The MediaMVP's can stream from the server in my theatre. I can also rip DVD into ISO format like a Kaleidescape or MAX. I also use the same computer to run musicpd (www.musicpd.org). I get digital music playback and info plus album art. The problem with Myth right now is that there isn't a good way that I can see to control it. There's a Telnet interface in development but it's very simple right now. The protocol to speak direct is very complicated and changes frequently. Plus, the metadata is all stored in the db (www.mysql.org). I don't know of an easy way to connect to MySQL through Netlinx. Any help on this would be great. You're going to find that MythTV has more features than any PVR you've ever seen. I would definitely use the CVS versions as "Stable" releases are few and far between. My current setup is an AMD Athlon XP 3000+, 1GB RAM, 250GB Harddrive, nVidia Graphics card, Hauppauge PVR-150 (NTSC Tuner Card), DVICO Fusion 3 ATSC (HDTV Tuner Card), and Gentoo Linux (my favorite Linux Distro!). I plan on upgrading to 1.5TB in a RAID 5 (Linux Software RAID) and a completely new system to rip my DVD library. My only problem is finding the right control method. I've emailed Isaac, the main developer, for help but haven't heard anything back yet. Well, that's about it. Sorry for the random thought ramblings. Did I mention I love Myth!

staticattic

I have seen some of the tuner cards that sport IR controls, but from the light you just shed on this subject, I am guessing that is the only "easy" method of control that a Netlinx can do and that is really only with tuner controls and not the MythTV toys. I want to build one very badly. My only problem is convincing the wife why it would be cooler to build my own DVR as compared to the using the one that comes with our Fios...

amdpower

I wouldn't use IR, that ugly. I actually figured out a solution last night. As I said, MythTV has it's own telnet server that works quite well for controls but doesn't fetch enough data. The data is stored in MySQL. So, I wrote a small Perl script that will connect to MySQL and return results. We could simply open a second "true" telnet connection to the MythBox and use that to run the Perl script. That will give us info on movies, TV, pretty much EVERYTHING. We then use that info to issue the play commands on the MythTelnet connection. I just need to tweak the script and start writing the module. Here's the Perl script if you need it.

#!/usr/bin/perl
use Mysql;

#Example Usage: ./mysql_connect.pl "SELECT * FROM videometadata WHERE title LIKE 'p%'"
#Above will return all info for titles starting with P or p.  

$sql_query = $ARGV[0];

$db = Mysql->connect(localhost,mythconverg,mythtv,mythtv);
$db->selectdb(mythconverg);
$query = $db->query($sql_query);
$numrows = $query->numrows;
while ($numrows>0){
        @array = $query->fetchhash;
        foreach $query (@array){
                print $query."\n";
        }
        $numrows=$numrows-1
}

Jurgen Sachs

I use MythTV now for years.
currently I run the current trunk of SVN

I control it using the telnet protocol. Have a very basic modul for it for control, that takes advantage of some special things.

Also I think about improving the protocol to have more control functions.
Getting the list of all programs for example.
But I run out of time at the moment :-(

MythTV is a great peace of software !