MythTV configuration for New Zealand users

NZ Mailing List

There is a MythTV NZ mailing list available for subscription here:

MythTVNZ Mailing List

With archives here: MythTVNZ Archive

EPG Sources

These are sources of Programme Information which export their data in the XMLTV format. This is the supported format for importing data into MythTV.

• Orcon OnTV has an XML feed that used to be a fairly reliable source of free to air EPG data. This has been up and down, but data appears to be current as of Dec 2006.
• Hairy Geek have a dump from DVB off a satellite. The file is gzipped. No category info.
• Mr Geek also has a dump that appears to be working again as of Mid July. I suspect that the content is also extracted from a DVB feed. See below for download instructions. This site is no longer providing listings as following a Cease and Desist letter from TVNZ. A replacement listing is promised soon. (23 Nov 05)
• MyTvListings is an apparent anonymous site providing free-to-air, Sky and Cable listings. The data comes from a server hosted on a morenet.net.nz domain. This source no longer seems to be working
• PyTVGrab has some grabbers for decoding the TVNZ and Xtra websites. No updates have been posted for over a year. I haven't tested.
• xmlTVNZ is a website scraper (for all channels not just TVNZ) which produces an xml file, including category info. Runs on Windows (tested) and Linux (with mono)
• Sydog has set up a scraper on a server somewhere which now provides a small xml file via mono. (22 June 06)

This mailing list thread is worth a look for getting free to air listings for myth in NZ - if you look at some of the follow ups you will be eventually lead to http://weaver.merold.net/mythscripts.tar.gz where you can download a persons scripts that trys a number of different sources including a fairly reliable one not mentioned above that scrapes data from http://home.nzcity.co.nz/tvnow/tvguide.asp. This only gets you two days worth of data though unfortunately. A README file is included in the .tar.gz - good luck.

Setting up your EPG and Channels - a simple method which worked for me.

• wget http://ontv.orcon.net.nz/listings.xml (or whatever listings.xml you choose)
• run "mythsetup" and delete all channels (previously manually setup)
• run "mythfilldatabase --file 1 7 listings.xml --do_channel_updates" (This puts in most of the channel info needed.)
• run "mythsetup" again adding to the new channels Channel No., TV Format and Frequency ID
• Also we manually added channels for Sky and C4 which ar not in the ONTV epg.

Channel Numbers

These are the channel freqid numbers that are required to tune your TV card for free-to-air broadcasts.

Local Channels

There are a number of low power or regional free to air stations you can also get.

New Zealand TV Channel Frequency Chart

VHF Band PAL B

UHF Band PAL G

DVB-T in New Zealand

At present there is a single active DVB-T test multiplex in Auckland if you use the Waiatarua transmitter. In addition to TVOne and TV2 there are three test channels. This test ended on December 18th 2006, it will start again sometime in 2007.

With Knoppmyth R5A30 which has the DVB patches you can scan for the DVB channels. If you take a look at item 4B on http://www.digitalregime.com/mythdvb/setup/ you need to supply the following information

New Zealand Users

Is there anyone in NZ using Knoppmyth, or just MythTV? If so, we could set up a small support group. Fill in your details below please or join the new mailing list:

Other useful NZ based info

• Keeping your KnoppMyth box at the right time

NZ available hardware that works with Knoppmyth R5A12 and SKY Digital

A few people have been asking cv writers for a shopping list for components to build a knoppmyth based box in NZ. Here is what I can confirm works with no hardware issues. All hardware was purchase from Ascent www.ascent.co.nz

• Gigabyte GeForce 4 MX4000, TV Out
• Shuttle SS56G Mini Barebones Kit
• Intel Celeron 2.6 GHz CPU
• A-Data 256MB, DDR-SDRAM, DDR400
• Seagate ST3250823A, 250 GB
• Asus DVD-E616P1 DVD Drive

• Shuttle PN31 Remote Control ShuttlePN31Remote

you'll notice there is not video capture card here, i am using an old BT based one one that isn't available any more but there is plenty of documentation around the net to say which cards work the best.

Note: the Leadtek WinFast TV2000 Deluxe (about NZ$110) is a compatible tv tuner. Check out the PriceSpy website for dealers. The "Expert" edition has a different chip that is not as compatible. However, instructions for using the Expert board with KnoppMyth can be found in the NZWinfastExpert wiki.

all up the hardware cost NZ$1095 which is less than most of the hard disk based commercial recorders on the market.

the only extra thing you have to buy is 3 components from dick smith, basically an Infra-Red LED, a resistor and a serial port plug, can be soldered in a few minutes and after a bit of fiddling around works fine with a NZ sky decoder.
An alternative is to go with a more advanced circuit found at: http://www.lirc.org/improved_transmitter.html. I'm using the Shuttle USB remote for controlling the User Interface and Lirc to change the channels on my sky decoder.

Or buy from Mythblasterz (based in Wellington)

I re-installed Lirc from Source then finally got it working by using..

setserial /dev/ttyS0 uart none
modprobe lirc_serial
this is the correct remote control profile for the Pace Sky Decoders used in NZ
as /etc/lircd.conf

This is the correct remote control profile for the analogue Telstra Clear cable boxes used in NZ
http://lirc.sourceforge.net/remotes/motorola/DCT2000 This is for the Telstra Clear Digital Cable
http://lirc.sourceforge.net/remotes/adb/I-CAN_3000

all the details of this are at http://www.lirc.org/transmitters.html but detail is pretty sketchy, if your going to have problems they are probably going to be centered around remote control.

Remember to also set up your channel Ids and enter the same information into the frequency id lor mythtv will not change channels. Knoppmyth now comes with irblaster out of the box.

Programme Guide

to get the NZ epg data working I gave up trying to get mythfilldatabase working the way its meant to. instead I wrote this shell script and added it to the crontab once a day..

cd /home/mythtv
rm -f /home/mythtv/latest.xml
wget http://hairy.geek.nz/epg/latest.xml.gz
gzip -d latest.xml.gz
mythfilldatabase --file 1 -1 latest.xml --update

before you run this you need to import the nz channels,

wget http://hairy.geek.nz/epg/latest.xml.gz
gzip -d latest.xml.gz
mythfilldatabase --file 1 -1 latest.xml --manual
and answer all the questions (hint: use http://hairy.geek.nz/epg/service-ids.txt to figure out which channel is which)

if you want to play DVD's you'll probably want to run..
/usr/share/doc/libdvdread3/examples/install-css.sh

In more recent knoppmyth versions, the above file has been removed. Go to: http://www.dtek.chalmers.se/groups/dvd/deb/ and download the appropriate file for your system. Install it with: dpkg -i libdvdcss.deb

Alternatively, you can google for the automated install script, install-css.sh, which can, for example, be found here: http://bash.cyberciti.biz/desktop/install-css.sh.php

Also check that myth has read access to /dev/dvd and that /dev/dvd is actually pointing at your drive (in my box its the master on the secondary controller so /dev/dvd should be a symbolic link to /dev/hdc

if anyone needs more help with this configuration in NZ email me on toby (at) np dot co dot nz and i'll post the answers here.

Update: mr.geek.nz ain't working (see above). But when it was/is, here's the update script.

cd /home/mythtv
rm -f /home/mythtv/latest.xml
wget http://mr.geek.nz/epg/getlist.html?channels=sky
mv getlist.html\?channels\=sky latest.xml
mythfilldatabase --file 1 -1 latest.xml --update

This is about 1.8Mb to download each time. If you only need the terrestrial channels then change it to:

cd /home/mythtv
rm -f /home/mythtv/latest.xml
wget http://mr.geek.nz/epg/getlist.html?channels=ter
mv getlist.html\?channels\=ter latest.xml
mythfilldatabase --file 1 -1 latest.xml --update

MrGeeK?: You can also replace channels=ter with channels=Dunedin|pas2|pas8|optusb1 (if you don't understand the last 3 then ignore them, they arent for you. (p.s. Site is no longer on my dsl, should be stable now)

Channel Icons

This guide will help you grab all the channel icons from the TelstraClear tvguide and crop off their blue borders.

first get the latest file with the list of links to downloaded (the wiki's spam protection won't let me post a long list of links here)

cd /home/mythtv
wget http://ogle.co.nz/mythstuff/TCicons

Use wget to grab them all.
wget -P /home/mythtv/.mythtv/channels/ -i /home/mythtv/TCicons

Then use the imagemagick (install it first with apt-get install imagemagick) program mogrify to crop off the borders
cd /home/mythtv/.mythtv/channels/
mogrify -crop 116x55+8+4 TVGuide_*.gif

Then you need to go into the channel editor and paste in the paths to each one