MythTV 0.22 Tuning?

I'm currently having some fun trying to tune my DVB-T cards in correctly with MythTV 0.22. The process seems slightly different to that of 0.21 and I'm struggling a little. Mainly posting this in the hope somebody on the MythTV mailing list is able to see what I am doing wrong! :)

Above is what I am left with after removing all channels and transports and doing a full scan. I have to then go through each channel and add it. Once I do this I end up with numerous duplicates and lots of channels which do not seem to work?

Above is a photo of the transports that I see after the full scan. I am beaming towards Winter Hill transmitter in the north of england.
If you have any ideas where I might be going wrong I'd be more than happy to hear from you!
Thanks.

MythTV status....

Well I've managed to backup my existing mythtv database from the 0.21 version of Myth and reinstall my main MythTV box with Mythbuntu 9.10. I've also managed to restore the database and recordings.

Here are some statistics:-

• Oldest recording is the film 'Cypher' recorded on Apr 22, 2007.
• I have a total of 610 programmes.
• Which are using 630 GB.
• There is a total of 1.3TB of storage space.

I've also managed to configure the new frontend which is an Acer Revo (see post below) this is setup using the VDPAU profile and I can report that video playback is very smooth and looks great so far.

I need to do some more setup to configure mythmusic, photos and video etc.

Sky+ Problems.

We had Sky+ fitted about 8 months ago, in that time we have had the following problems.

• Some programs as part of a series link did not record.
• Attempting to record a program which is in progress fails silently.
• Signal level drops over time.
• Using FFW to skip adverts. When pressing PLAY, the program then plays from the start?
• Probably the worst programme guide in history.

Most of these problems seem to fix themselves if we switch the unit off and on again. The box has been replaced and still bugs remain.

The whole interface is cumbersome and out of date. In many places you cannot go back to the program guide where you left off from, you are forced back to the top level.

Try choosing a program by its title to search and record. You are forced to wade through literally hundreds of programs before you reach yours, am I missing something here? Lets say I want to record Poirot, I go to 'P' then I am forced to scroll or page down, until I get to Poirot?

I'll update this list as I find more bugs.

Moving Backend in to the Garage....

In my previous post I mentioned a MythTV upgrade, well it's about to happen.
I've ordered a 1TB disk to add to the current 750GB of storage in the present combined backend/frontend. I have also ordered an additional USB dual tuner, digital tv adaptor. This will take the minimum possible concurrent recordings up to 4, with the option to record several more per tuner, as long as the channels are on the same multiplex. I may well limit it to 4 recordings anyway, as I am not sure how well the current AMD 3000 processor will cope.

My plan is to move this to the 19" rack in the garage and install a new, quiet and low power front end under the TV in the lounge.

With this in mind, I have ordered a Acer Revo 3610 (above), Atom 330 Dual Core, 1gb ram 160gb, hdd. This is a small 'nettop' box for about £150 running Linux. To control this I have ordered a MCE infra red remote control from Maplin.
I will be installing MythTV 0.22 on both of these. Not sure yet if I will attempt to upgrade the 0.21 install on the current box or just start again.

MythTV Upgrade time.

With the recent release of MythTV version 0.22 I am considering upgrading my home PVR/MythTV/DVR system. After our Sky box became faulty several months ago we upgraded to Sky+, this upgrade was also partly due to the demise of analogue TV and thus our beloved Tivo system becoming redundant.

Sky+ does not live up to the hype though. The day to day use of the system does not compare to the Tivo’s.

• The Sky+ TV guide is next to useless. Several obvious actions are missing and navigating your way round it is frustrating.
• Try to search for a program beginning with a specific letter and you can say goodbye to several minutes of your life.
• Pauses, lockups and missed recordings seem common place, this is after we had the box replaced recently.

Sadly many of the geeky TV channels like Discovery are missing from Freeview, we don’t subscribe to the movies or sport so it’s only those which tie us in to Sky really.

Anyway, I digress. MythTV 0.22 brings about many new features, a complete rewrite of the interface and the incorporation of VDPAU. Basically speaking this off loads much of the video decoding process to the graphics chip. This is only supported by Nvidia hardware and only then on 8400 series and above (with the exception of some 8800’s).

My current MythTV box, a combined frontend/backend has an older 5200 AGP card in it, sadly an upgrade of the card is not an option!

One possible way round this is to move the current MythTV box in to the rack in the garage, upgrade it to 0.22 version and run a small/silent frontend only in the lounge.

There is currently a lot of talk of the Acer Revo ‘nettop’ boxes in the Myth community. They are small, practically silent, low power consumption (Atom processor) and best of all have the Nvidia ION video chipset, which doessupport VDPAU.

So, watch this space, I’ll write more soon, maybe!