Rachel’s Blog

Read this page to see how to install the ivtv driver needed by the PVR 350 card .

Read this page to see how to get X working on a PAL TV using the PVR-350’s TV-out connection (not necessary to get MythTV working but useful…)

To install MythTV itself, add multiverse to your ubuntu sources and
$sudo apt-get install mythtv

If you don’t already have the card, you can buy it online from Amazon.

So, how to do it? I tackled it like this.

Very quick version

1. Install ivtv
2. Attach and test cables
3. Install and configure mythtv
4. Test MythTV
5. Get X running through TV-out (if you want it)

Longer Version

1. Attach monitor to computer. You can remove it later but using it now makes the setup a whole lot easier
2. Install ivtv
3. Check you’ve got the ivtv drivers installed
4. Attach the cable from the TV source (e.g. the aerial) to the input socket on the PVR-350 card
5. Test this, by doing the following:
   cat /dev/video0 > test.mpg
   Then try to play back this video using mplayer or equivalent on the monitor.
6. If that works, you know you’ve got TV input into the MythTV box working OK. If it doesn’t work, fix it before you go any further.
7. Attach the cable from the TV-out on the PVR-350 card to the TV.
8. Test this, by doing the following:
   # /usr/bin/ivtvfbctl /dev/fb0 -noglobalalpha -localalpha
# dd if=/dev/video0 of=/dev/video16 bs=64k
   (Control-C to cancel)
9. After a few seconds, you should see your TV displaying the input from the aerial.
10. If that works, you know you’ve got your cables connected correctly and the ivtv drivers are installed.
11. Now install mythtv.
12. You’ll need to configure it correctly using mythtv-setup. (Read the MythTV docs for instructions how to do this!)
13. Make sure that you configure it to use the PVR-350 for the TV output rather than your PC’s TV-out (if it has one)
14. Test it by running mythtv and select “Watch TV” option.
15. Only once you’ve got that working, should you try getting X running over TV-out, if you want it.

http://wilsonet.com/mythtv/fcmyth.php is extremely useful for reading more about it all.

Some final things to do before you’ve finished…

1. Automatically start gdm at reboot
2. Automatically start mythtv session on start of gdm
3. Automatically start mythtv at start of mythtv session
4. Turn the sound server off (System>Preferences>Sound)

For Telewest support:

1. Get a “Red-Eye Serial” cable from here
2. Download the Linux driver from their website
3. Write a two-line shell script which matches this interface (changechannel )
4. Set up the Telewest channels in the “freq id” column of the database (one easy way to do this quickly is using the setup options in mythweb)
5. Set up the backend to use this channel changer