MeejaBox2

This iteration of the meeja box is based around an Acer Aspire Revo 3600L.

Preparation

1. Downloaded mytbuntu-9.10-desktop-i386.iso to another computer,
2. Wrote to a 1GB USB stick using unetbootin.
3. Set up Revo, inckluding HDMI connection to the TV.
4. Disabled "RevoBoot?" in the BIOS.
5. Set boot order to USB stick, then HDD.

Installation

1. Booted from USB stick.
2. English language selected for installer.
3. Install mythbuntu selected from boot screen.
4. English language selected from the GUI installer.
5. Europe / United Kingdom Time Zone selected.
6. Suggested option of United Kingdom keyboard layout selected.
7. Advanced partition selection was chosen.
8. Existing partitions kept, but resized to create free space (~144GB from 160GB HDD)
9. Created /dev/sda4 (extended partition) containing /dev/sda5 (10GB) for root, /dev/sda6 (130GB) for /home and /dev/sda6 (2.5GB) for swap.
10. The two data partitions were kept as the default ext4.
11. Mythtv uses /var/lib/mythtv as the default location for its data storage these days, but it makes sense to have the data stored in a (fairly) dedicated partition to avoid filling up the root partition. Mythbuntu also installs mythdvd and mytharchive by default which also need quite a bit of data storage. The necessary symlinks will be set up later.
12. A user called meeja was created and the hostname set to meeja. The autologin option was selected.
13. A Primary Backend w/ Frontend installation was selected.
14. Additional services selected: VNC, SSH, MythTV?
15. FreeCom? DVB-T USB Stick was chosen as remote control.
16. Nvidia graphics driver was selected.
17. Installation proceeded, rebooted once complete.
18. Not run at the end of installation as firmware for DVB card not present, so setup would fail to detect capture card.
19. After reboot, exit front end.
20. Click "restricted drivers" notification, enable Firmware for DVB cards.
21. All available updates applied.

Mythtv Setup

1. General (Changes from defaults only):
   1. TV format: PAL
   2. VBI Format: PAL Teletext
   3. Channel frequency table: europe-west
   4. Storage Group Disk Scheduler: Balanced Free Space
   5. Cross Source EIT: yes
2. Capture Card:
   1. New capture card selected
   2. Card type DVB DTV capture card (v3.x)
3. Video Sources:
   1. New video source selected
   2. Called RadioTimes?
   3. Perform EIT scan selected
   4. Configured to use Freeview channels
4. Input Connections:
   1. RadioTimes? input selected
   2. Full scan run
   3. 45 new non-conflicting DVB channels found and inserted.
   4. 5 new non-conflicting MPEG channels found and inserted.
   5. 19 new conflicting DVB channels found and inserted.
   6. All conflicting channels used suggested channel numbers
   7. Should probably not have inserted conflicting channels as they had to be manually deactivated
5. Change storage directories

Mythbuntu Control Centre

1. Enabled Medibuntu codecs etc.
2. Disabled MythMovies?
3. Password protected MythWeb?

Set up NFS mounts for central content

# Custom NFS mounts for mythtv
azal:/home/meeja/Videos	/home/meeja/Videos	nfs	rw,hard,intr	0	0
azal:/home/meeja/Music	/home/meeja/Music	nfs	rw,hard,intr	0	0

Mythfrontend Settings

1. Chose ALSA:hdmi output
2. Chose VDPAU High Quality playback

MythMusic?

1. Set audio device to "ALSA:plughw:0,3" and ensure unmuted in alsamixer.

Radio Times Listings

1. Configure the source to use the Radio Times xmltv grabber.
2. The configuration script for the Radio Times grabber is no usable on the MythTV? backend setup screen.
3. Run it manually from the console, answering "All" not just "Freeview" channel listings (Freeview does not have all the relevant channels in it.)
4. Copy ~/.xmltv/tv_grab_uk_rt.conf to .mythtv/RadioTimes?.xmltv
5. Run mythfilldatabase.
6. Bitten by this bug, had to install packages from PPA: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xmltv/+bug/471372
7. Had to export all xmltvid from channel table and append to RadioTimes?.xmltv:

   mysql -u root -p mythconverg -e "select xmltvid from channel" > foo.txt
   for i in `cat foo.txt`; do echo "channel $i" >> output.xmltv; done

8. Added mythfilldatabase to crontab to be run as mythtv user. Tried enabling automatic run from within frontend, but this didn't seem to work. (N.B. Although this setting is in the frontend configuration, the process is run by the user running the backend process (e.g. mythtv rather than meeja.) This means that the mythtv user has to have the correct environment to run the mythfilldatabase process. This meant linking /home/mythtv/.mythtv/RadioTimes?.xmltv to the same file in /home/meeja/.mythtv/ and copying /home/meeja/.xmltv to /home/mythtv/.)
9. Useful link http://www.mythic-beasts.com/~mark/random/mythtv/
10. Useful link http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Uk_xmltv

Radio Data

1. Created /home/meeja/.mythtv/tv_grab_uk_bleb.conf containing

   bbc_radio1
   bbc_radio1_xtra
   bbc_radio2
   bbc_radio3
   bbc_radio4
   bbc_radio5_live
   bbc_radio5_live_sports_extra
   bbc_world_service
   bbc_6music
   bbc7 

2. Edited xmltvid entries for radio channels to:

   radio-1.bbc.co.uk
   radio-2.bbc.co.uk
   radio-3.bbc.co.uk
   radio-4.bbc.co.uk
   radio-5.bbc.co.uk
   bbc_world_service
   bbc_radio5_live_sports_extra
   bbc_radio1_xtra
   bbc_6music
   bbc7.bbc.co.uk

3. Add

   #!/bin/bash
   #put me in /etc/cron.daily/tv_grab_bleb
   #chmod +x
   #and change the path to tv_grab_uk_bleb.conf as appropriate
   tv_grab_uk_bleb --config-file /home/meeja/.mythtv/tv_grab_uk_bleb.conf --days 7 --quiet | mythfilldatabase --update --file 1 -
   

   to /etc/cron.daily/tv_grab_bleb

UPS

• gapcmon was installed, along with its dependencies, including apcupsd.
• /etc/apcupsd/apcupsd.conf was edited, the only change being to comment out UPSTYPE and DEVICE and add UPSTYPE usb
• /etc/default/apcupsd was edited and ISCONFIGURED=yes set.

Remote Control

• Used a generic MCE remote off of ebay.
• Added an entry in XFCE autostart box to run /home/meeja/mythtv_remote_maps on login.
• Created a script called /home/meeja/mythtv_remote_maps and made it executable.
• Populated the file with the following contents:

  #!/bin/bash
  # Map the play/pause button to the p character
  xmodmap -e "keycode 172 = p"
  
  # Map the small back button to the Escape key
  xmodmap -e "keycode 22 = Escape"
  
  # Map the "Channel Up" button to the up key
  xmodmap -e "keycode 112 = Up"
  
  # Map the "Channel Down" button to the down key
  xmodmap -e "keycode 117 = Down"
  

• Some buttons (the four grey ones beneath the colour buttons) can't easily be reprogrammed easily using xmodmap because one button press is actually two keys (e.g. Ctrl+o). In this case, it is easier to change the MythTV? keybindings. It's easiest to edit these in MythWeb?. Once updated, it's necessary to restart mythfrontend.
• The following changes were made:
  • Ctrl+o = Menu
  • Ctrl+g = EPG
  • Ctrl+t = Information

Red Button Interactive TV

• Utilities/Setup? -> Setup ->TV-Settings->Playback Onscreen Display. Check the Enable Interactive TV button.

TODO

1. Remote control - need to sort out the "colour" buttons
2. disable mythdvd / optical disks
3. information centre