Closer and closer…
I gave a shot at the Fedora Core 3 approach as written out at Fedora Myth(TV)ology after replacing my CDROM (the old one was making a lot of bad noises) and burned the four Fedora CDs to just install directly instead of my repeated failed attempts to install over the network. Now things are going much much better. Last night I did my first successful test of watching current TV on the screen, and there was The Matrix being shown perfectly, with sound! How ironic.
Over at NTL I found a list of the basic cable frequencies for the channels. I was able to use them to find the right frequency codes as listed in /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.5/Video/Frequencies.pm
and a channel.sql
file from someone else (it’s late, I’m not sure who) with the XMLTV IDs for each channel (which are now their domain names) and end up with this sort of list:
Discovery Chan = 48 MHz = A1= discoveryeurope.com
Channel 4 = 56 MHz = A3= channel4.com
E4 = 64 MHz = A5= e4.channel4.com
RTE2 = 176 MHz = A7= rte-2.rte.ie (This used to be n2.rte.ie)
TV3 = 184 MHz = A9= tv3.ie
RTE 1 = 192 MHz = A11= rte-1.rte.ie
UTV = 200 MHz = A13= utvlive.com
TG4 = 208 MHz = A15= tg4.ie
BBC 1 = 216 MHz = A17= northern-ireland.bbc1.bbc.co.uk
BBC 2 = 224 MHz = A18= ireland.bbc2.bbc.co.uk
Sky One = 232 MHz = A19= sky-one.sky.com
Nickelodeon/Link/Euronews = 248 MHz = A20= nickelodeon.co.uk
MTV = 256 MHz = A21= mtv.co.uk
Sky Sports 1 = 264 MHz = A22= 1.sports.sky.com
Sky Premier = 272 MHz = A23= premier.sky.com
Sky News = 280 MHz = A24= sky-news.sky.com
CNBC / Pay Per View = 408 MHz = A32= europe.cnbc.com
Sky Sports 2 = 304 MHz = A27= 2.sports.sky.com
Sky Sports 3 = 312 MHz = A28= 3.sports.sky.com
Sky Movie Max = 312 MHz = A28= moviemax.sky.com (Note this is the same frequency, bug at NTL site?)
Pay-Per-View = 352 MHz = A31= ??
(Update: If you’re getting “NO DATA” when you visit the listings for a channel in MythWeb, but you know you’ve got it correct in the Channel Editor, you’ve got channels missing for the Video Source you created earlier. Channels like “Channel 4” and “UTV” weren’t being accepted in the terminal window when I was setting up the video source at first. But I just put “channel channel4.com” and “channel utvlive.com” in ~/.mythtv/NTL Basic Cable.xmltv
and that fixed it—a rerun of mythfilldatabase
and now they’ve got their shows listed properly. I wonder why it wasn’t liking the channels?)
Oh, we don’t get any of the pay channels so I skipped adding those, but they’re here in the interest of completion. And I wonder why SO many broadcast frequencies are unused by NTL?
I ran mythtvsetup
and used its Channel Editor to add all of them, setting the values for each (using RTE1 as an example) like this:
- Channel number: 6
- Callsign: RTE1
- Name: RTE-1
- XMLTVID: rte-1.rte.ie
- Frequency ID: A11 (They only one on the 2nd screen that I changed.)
Anyway, MythTV is looking great and even easier to use. I can only guess the KnoppMyth stuff I was using before was just a bit old. No stresses about XMLTV getting the right info, no problems making MythWeather show Dublin including a Weather Channel satellite image, the works. Anyway, I’ll make an effort to share the bits I did that divirge from the instructions I was following (and send them to Jarod Wilson for consideration in his instructions at the same time).
After restarting mythfrondend
I’m able to move between channels (with right-arrow and left-arrow on the keyboard) and also jump back in shows (up-arrow and down-arrow). The text at the bottom is still too big even after following some steps to fix them.
And the biggest continuing problem: I’ve got X set up to do 720×576, and I ran “/usr/bin/ivtvctl -f width=720,height=576
“, and still things are missing around the edges. At first login the menu/task bar at the bottom is half-missing. With mythfrontend
running I change a channel I see the text at the bottom describing the show, but parts to the left, right, and bottom are off the screen.
What’s the fix? I’ve got a Sony RV-25X5L television which in theory should display things correctly, right?
The other catch: the remote isn’t working yet, though I can run irw
and it reports events when I press a button on the (Hauppauge new grey with black back) remote. Unsure why the mythfrontend isn’t getting them yet. The remote worked when I was doing the KnoppMyth approach. More later.