Getting Started with MythTV

I've not published anything on Zap2It ending their DataDirect service since there wasn't really anything of value to report. Well, there's now something of value to report. What follows was posted on the MythTV Users mailing list earlier today.

Greetings from the newly-formed team at Easy TV Data,

While looking for a good remote control for my Silent MythTV Frontend I stumbled upon the StreamZap IR Remote Control, and decided to give it a try.

The StreamZap PC Remote Control sells for around $30, which includes a USB receiver. That puts the StreamZap is near the bottom of the price spectrum once you factor in the IR Receiver.

I've been using it for a couple months now, have mentioned it a few times on the MythTV mailing list, and figured it's about time I wrote a review.

On of the problems with Linux is lack of good support for 802.11g cards due to lack of native driver support.

I wanted to run my MiniMyth based MythTV Frontend wirelessly, but MiniMyth didn't include any wireless driver support.

I decided to try a wireless gaming adapter instead of trying to build a custom MiniMyth build with support for a wireless card on Linux.

MythWeb is the web browser interface to MythTV. MythWeb is one of the features that makes MythTV such a nice digital video recorder.

KnoppMyth is a linux distribution that tries to make the installation of MythTV and Linux as easy as possible. KnoppMyth R5E50 is the first KnoppMyth release to be based on MythTV 0.20.

Themes are what make MythTV look and feel the way it does. The look and feel of MythTV's interface can be changed by using different themes.

MythWeb is one of the most popular add-ons to the MythTV core system. MythWeb is a web based application that lets you browse listings, schedule recording, manage recordings, and more from the convenience of a web browser. It is much easier to perform many MythTV functions through MythWeb as opposed to using the on-screen functions on a TV.

MythWeb has one critical problem. It's not secure. I've seen it argued that it's not really a problem, but let's not split hairs here...it's something that you need to deal with.

Here is a screencast of the "mythtv-setup" process. Steps 1 through 4 are required for any MythTV system, be it MythDora or anything else.

There are three basic was to connect your HDTV MythTV box to your HDTV. HDTV is a high resolution digital signal. S-Video is not able to handle the high resolution signal for example. The suggested connections types are:

• VGA
• DVI
• HDMI

TV listings are a schedule of which shows are on which channel at what time.

Much of the (TV related) value of a MythTV system is directly tied to it having information about what's on TV. Without TV listings, a MythTV system wouldn't be much more than a clunky digital VCR.