Roundup: MythTV

Posted by stephen on Monday, 19th June, 2006 @ 01:21

Next up, MythTV. This is working pretty well. The TiVo has been unplugged for a couple of weeks now and hasn't really been missed. I cancelled the NTL TV account only to have them call back and offer 5 months free TV with no tie in, so I accepted and will consider attaching the NTL box to the Myth server and seeing if I can get it under control there, utilising a Hauppauge PVR card to do MPEG2 encoding in hardware.

There are some niggles with Myth. The frontend program on the Mac is very sensitive to dodgy MPEG streams and has a habit of crashing out now and then. This could be cured by opening the MPEG file over a Samba share and playing in QuickTime directly. Though they are a little too raw in their native state and need cleaning up into nicer MPEGs using MPEG Streamclip (which is oddly based on QuickTime APIs, so not sure why it copes and regular Player doesn't).

For channels using QAM64 modulation (which is most bar the BBC), I occasionally get a problematic signal. A new portable aerial from Argos helped but hasn't entirely solved this problem. QAM64 modulation allows more channels to be squeezed onto a multiplex, however QAM16 (as used by the BBC) is more robust when it comes to buildings, interference, etc.

It seems like a relatively straightforward task to build some scripts that use the MySQL Myth database and automatically process the files as needed once the recording is complete, name them sensibly and then place them somewhere linked into the Front Row Movies option, so I can use the Apple Remote to fully control my TV viewing experience. Maybe I'll get a chance/motivation to play with that in the next week or so.