Sunday, October 09, 2005

MythTV

Well, I finally got MythTV up and running on my Linux box. That would be this box:



This is the box I set up back in 2002 to be my main gaming and Linux desktop system. Since I spend more time on the iMac now than any other system in the house, I figured I'd put this one to good use.

It was a painful stretch of several days, trying to steal away a few minutes here and there to work on it, and overcoming one obstacle over another. I had purchased a WinTV PVR-150 model 1045 to set this up with, and had a lot of problems recognizing the tuner, and getting versions of MythTV and the Linux kernel, PVR-150 drivers (from both the ivtv website and my install CD) that all worked well together. I ended up with the following:

KnoppMyth R5A16
Linux Kernel 2.6.11
manual compile of ivtv 0.3.8
edit /etc/mythtv/modules/ivtv to add line "options bttv card=80 tuner=6", and add "/sbin/modprobe bttv;" as first paramater after "install ivtv"

Seems pretty simple, but I was starting from scratch with how the modules interacted, where config files were, and how video4linux indexed my tuner. It was a bear, and I was about 1 or 2 reboots away from taking my tuner card back. Now things are up and running pretty smoothly and I'm able to record, download schedules, read the news, etc. This is only day 1, though, and I expect more problems to tackle as time goes on.

In other news, tomorrow morning starts the new schedule with me and Stacey. I'm up before dawn to get ready for work and cook breakfast, then dropping her off at a neighbor's house to be taken to school, and I'm getting home in time to pick her (and occasionally her friends) up from school. Cheaper than day care, I beat rush hour traffic to and from work, and I get to spend the critical first hour after school with my kid every day for the rest of the school year.

Last in the news of the week is this Thursday Stacey and probably an assortment of her friends will be heading out to a pumpkin patch to pick some pumpkins, buy farmer's market goodies, run through corn mazes, etc. It should be a hoot.

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