Peter's Blog

I still want to set up a system what will automatically record tv programs for playback on my pocketpc. For various reasons this is becoming more important: in a nutshell, I can only take so much ITV.

Been trying to setup mythtv on a new pc I have acquired. I have tried various windows PVR packages in the past but none of them were attractive, being flaky and annoying (including meedio which of now available for free as yahoo go). Mythtv was attractive because of it's flexibility.

I installed a clean kubuntu install in the box which went quite smoothly and after some exploration I established that the kernel already supported my hauppauge nova-t usb. I found an application called kaffeine that was already installed which was able to display tv and this essentially Just Worked out-of-the-box, albeit with lip-sync issues (probably because it needs the proprietary nvidia drivers).

Still desiring mythtv, I found an ubuntu repository that has mythtv packages for version 0.18 and installed that. I looked in the ubuntu package readme which says something to the effect that whoever set it up had no experience with mythtv and didn't know what he was doing. Thanks for the warning. I set it up using the mythtv-setup application, started the mythtv backend and tried to start mythweb. I am mainly interested in this as a way of remotely scheduling recordings, I care not about using the myth frontend. Mythweb wouldn't work, it complained about being a different version to the back end. The php code appears to display this error if there are any problems communicating with the back end but I decided I wouldn't mess around getting an old version to work, I would build the latest 0.19. After a few hours of installing dependant packages it built but when I tried running it I got a segmentation error. At this point I gave up with mythtv, I just don't have the time to nurse it into life. mythtv seems bloated and fragile. there is the option of knoppmyth, a dedicated mythtv distribution, but I'm not sure how cutting edge this is, whether it is any good as a general purpose linux distribution or whether the kernel will support my tv card without having to fiddle with compiling it.

I had a brief look at freevo but sourceforge was down (what an advert for oss) but found that freevo used command line tools to do the recording so I am currently investigating that approach: knocking up simple python scripts to do just what I want. I would rather debug these than mythtv (hell is other peoples source code).

Incidentally, I was browsing through some ruby source yesterday and for a few files there I was wondering whether ruby had a comment character.

No blogging for a while, been busy fiddling with my new Hauppauge WinTV Nova-t USB2 Digital TV Tuner. This plugs into a USB 2.0 port (won't work with USB 1.1) and allows you to watch/record Digital TV (Freeview in the UK).

Very long story so here are the highlights:

• Needs terrestrial aerial so took notebook (d410) into loft and connected it to existing unused aerial directly. Strong signal with no proper alignment, watched TV in the loft.
• When it is working picture is very good, digital quality. Recordings are just as good.
• Hooked aerial feed to computer room, signal too weak, black screen.
• Put booster amplifier in loft, signal strong enough again.
• WinTV2000 viewer app is crude and occasionally crashes. 64 channels (including radio) are chosen from a standard windows menu, too many options for screen so you have to scroll up and down. Argh. Channels are shown in random order.
• Comes with remote control. Set it to pause live TV and it worked. Couldn't figure out how to change channel or get out of live TV without rebooting the app.
• No real program planner in WinTV2000, just now and next when you change channel. Video recordings handled by entering time/channel in a seperate scheduler app. Primitive!
• Nero Home doesn't recognise WinTV box.
• Tried box in desktop PC and doesn't work. Only finds a few channels and it refuses to display them, even side-by-side with working laptop. It is hooked to USB 2.0 add-in card. Very annoying as desktop would be better for recording/media centre duties.
• After much research, downloaded Meedio a media centre app. Had trouble getting it working, only worked if I ran it after running WinTV2000.
• Meedio insists on showing 16:9 images on full 4:3 screen, fiddled with settings, no difference.
• Meedio TV playback stuttered a bit.
• Meedio is supposed to scoop program planner from the freeview signals but failed to do so.
• Has to be the most annoying application I have ever used. Designed to be used on TV so uses huge fonts meaning menus can only show five items at a time: there are invariably six items total and I want the sixth so have to scroll. Every time you click on something it plays a silly sound which is sooo grating. You can only disable sounds by fiddling in obscure plugin settings.
• Whenever I plug WinTV box into a different USB port, even on same pc, plug and play asks to install drivers. D410 has four USB ports (including docking station), desktop PC has four, so this is pretty tedious, especially as out of the docking station the D410 has no CD (e.g. when I was in the loft).

State of play:

• Doesn't work in desktop
• WinTV2000 is weak and crashes
• Meedio is annoying and has numerous problems to resolve.

Plans:

• Need to align aerial properly.
• Try ShowShifter
• Try gbpvr if I can bring myself to install .NET. Most of these things seem to use .NET so it may be unavoidable
• Try MythTV if I can stand the hastle of getting it to run on linux

Conclusion: sky+ is so good. If my experiences are anything to go by, the pc world still has some catching up to do.

Is it possible to spell Hauppauge correctly without having to cut and paste? How to pronounce it? What were they thinking? Tip for the day: make it your password. Even if someone guesses it, they won't be able to spell it.

Update: attempt to install gbpvr and get

Not only is the error message completely useless to anyone without access to the source code, you cannot even copy it into google to search for it.

Update 2: it turns out that this error means "You haven't installed the .NET runtime you moron".

gbpvr running fine and looks much better than anything else.