MythTV - ease of setup

[blu at vl.com (Tom Metro)]

Kristian Hermansen wrote:
> James Kramer wrote:
>> How difficult is it to get MythTV up and running for basic operation?
> 
> Easy if you have the right hardware.  30-60 minutes.

Assuming a system that already has a suitable operating system 
installed, I'd say the initial setup could be done within a few hours. 
If you're installing from packages, much of the time will be spent going 
through all the configuration screens in mythtv-setup, a GUI 
configuration utility.

The various options in mythtv-setup are sparsely documented within the 
program itself, and covered in a bit more detail on the wiki, but there 
are still many options that are under documented. Fortunately for the 
vast majority of the settings, the defaults will work.

There is some additional setup to be done within mythfrontend. Although 
mythfrontend may not be the front-end you use to watch videos or set 
schedules, you'll probably still end up using it. If you plan to use 
something else for a front-end, like a Hauppauge MediaMVP, I'd recommend 
installing mythfrontend on your back-end machine, as it provides access 
to features either absent or not easily accessed from other interfaces. 
And if you do end up using it this way, dig around in the settings and 
find the options to switch it to run in a window (instead of full 
screen) and enable the mouse pointer (which it hides by default).

I also recommend installing MythWeb, which provides a web front-end for 
accessing program listings and setting schedules. I find the UI far more 
intuitive than mythfrontend. (The latter tries to wedge a lot of 
functionality into a UI navigated by a TV remote, so it tends to be 
rather awkward to use directly on a computer.)

Speaking of the front-end, unless you plan to only watch videos on 
computer screens, you'll need to budget some time for building or 
setting up a front-end computer or appliance to attach to a TV. The 
Hauppauge MediaMVP is a decent, low-power, inexpensive choice, but it 
runs its own front-end software that has fewer features than the regular 
mythfrontend client, and only natively supports MPEG2 video. If you plan 
to store only a modest amount of video, that may be fine. Otherwise 
you'll want to use MPEG4, and that'll require additional software (VLC, 
which I haven't tried yet) on your server to stream the video to the 
MediaMVP.


>> What video capture card is the most versatile and easy to
>> configure.
> 
> Get a Hauppauge.  At my place, we have three tuners (2 Hauppauge
> cards) 

I'd second that. I wanted a two-tuner solution, and the Hauppauge 
PVR-500 was among the few choices, and seemed to be a popular choice 
mentioned on the MythTV users mailing list. Some complained of poor 
video quality. It does look a bit grainy in mythfrontend displayed on a 
computer monitor, but it looks as good or better than broadcast TV when 
displayed on a TV via the MediaMVP.


> ...running on Ubuntu Edgy. 

I setup a dedicated machine for MythTV starting with Ubuntu Dapper and 
quickly upgraded that to Edgy so I could easily pull in more current 
MythTV packages.

I then ran into a problem with the PVR-500 not tuning in stations 
properly. (Part of the problem was that the tuner mode was set to 
antenna instead of cable. A setting that wasn't very apparent in 
mythtv-setup.) Some research showed the cause to be a problem with the 
IVTV video capture card drivers. A patch was needed to work with the 
newer Samsung tuners on recent PVR-500 cards. That patched version was 
only available as a built package for Ubuntu Fiesty, so I upgraded to 
the bleeding edge. (Not something I'd recommend, if you can avoid it, as 
there is a continuous stream of updates, which take time to install. I 
didn't check the dependencies. It's possible the newer IVTV package 
could have worked on Edgy, or that grabbing the source package, and 
applying the patch, might have been less work in the long run.)

But once the latest IVTV driver was installed, everything worked.


> The Ubuntu wiki has a great guide for
> however you want to set it up.  Check it out:
> https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MythTV_Edgy

I'd also second that. I read through the Ubuntu guides on MythTV's own 
wiki, and decided the ones on the Ubuntu site were better.


The biggest problem with MythTV, once you have it running, is that it is 
under documented. For example, it may take a while before you understand 
the meaning of all the scheduling options. There are some wiki pages 
covering these, and other matters, but they fall short. (And once you 
experimentally figure out what they do, you tend not to go back to the 
wiki, and thus the wiki doesn't get updated.)

Another issue I find is that a lot of info is "locked up" in the wiki 
and not easily found due to the poor search engine provided by the 
MediaWiki software they use. You generally need to know precisely what 
something is called before you can find it.

Take for example the issue that started this thread, "Storage Groups." 
In this case even if you happened to know the proper name for it, there 
are no matches for it in the wiki, as apparently it is only documented 
in a HOWTO that isn't in the wiki. (Which I've now remedied by adding a 
page to the wiki.)

The MythTV users mailing list can be another useful resource, but I've 
found the volume to be too high to keep up with, so it is more useful 
for data mining. Not ideal if your question or problem hasn't been 
previously addressed.

  -Tom

-- 
Tom Metro
Venture Logic, Newton, MA, USA
"Enterprise solutions through open source."
Professional Profile: http://tmetro.venturelogic.com/

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