PAL Settings

First remember that we are in the world of PAL. There is a guide to setting up a PAL mythbox here.

http://www.knoppmythwiki.org/index.php?page=PalHowTo

Digital Tv Cards

Digital TV cards are known as DVB cards (digital video broadcasting).

DVB-C are for cable

DVB-T are for terrestial

DVB-S are for satellite

DVB-T cards are essentially 'Freeview digi-boxes' in PCI card form. Digital signals are already in MPEG format which has obvious hardware and practical advantages since you do not need to convert the analogue signal to digital. Furthermore you can receive many more channels such as Sky Sports News, ITV3/4, BBC3/2, E4 etc. For information on setting up a DVB card see this instead DVBHowTo.

One disadvantage is you will need a strong signal to pick up digital and so a rooftop aerial mast is highly recommended. Another disadvantage is that DVB cards rarely come with inputs. This means you would need a 2nd Tv Card if you ever wanted to connect a SKY box or camcorder to your mythbox.

Analogue Tv Cards

This user is testing with a PVR-250 MPEG-2 tv tuner and a "normal" terrestrial roof-top aerial. The procedure is mostly similar for any compatible tv capture card. This guide also applies to UK users with Sky Digital or Cable set top boxes (i.e. NTL/Telewest). See SkyDigiBox for more sky and ntl information.

These instructions are taken from a clean Knoppmyth R4V5 installation and hopefully are as basic as possible.

Step 1 - (Terrestrial TV Users) Transmitter information

Before you begin, visit the BBC web site and find your transmitter frequency information.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/reception/transmitters/tv_trans/index.shtml

Channel five information is at

http://www.bbc.co.uk/reception/transmitters/tv_trans/tv_c5.shtml

You can also use the channel five postcode search

http://www.five.tv/aboutfive/gettingfive/postcodesearch/

to determine your nearest analogue channel five transmitter.

My frequencies are for the Sutton Coldfield transmitter...

1 = Sutton Coldfield = 46
2 = Sutton Coldfield = 40
3 = Sutton Coldfield = 43
4 = Sutton Coldfield = 50
5 = Lichfield = 37

Step1(b) - (Satellite / Cable users) Digibox Broadcast Frequency

Sky and Ntl boxes have their own tuners that cannot be directly controlled by the computer. This leaves the mythtv configuration for channels down to setting the source and then using an extra peice of hardware such as a remote control emulator and a script to carry out the channel changes. The numbers given to the channel change scripts are placed in the database as though they were for the internal tuner and so it is not easy to use the coax/ normal tv cable input. S-Video or composite also provided better quality results.

If you really must use the coax then the frequency for all channels must be that of your settop box:

For Sky users, the default channel is 68, it can be found by issuing

Services 401 Select select the 'rf outlets' command

Step 2 - Install

Install Knoppmyth following the help instructions at KnoppMythInstall Auto Install is straight forward for most users.

Install until you get the MythTV setup screen displayed (the one with General/Capture Cards/Video Sources etc. on it)

Step 2(b) - Configure for a PVR-250 card

Use a terminal session (either Windows PUTTY over the network or CTRL+ALT+F1 on console) logon as "root" to setup your card.

pico /etc/mythtv/modules/ivtv

For most people all that needs changing is the line options tuner type=1
to options tuner type=5
to leave pico ^X ^Q

This file was provided by a UK user, I am unsure as to why so many settings required change and the tuner type is set to 45...

alias char-major-81 videodev
alias char-major-61 lirc_i2c
options ivtv debug=1 tuner=45 tda9887=1
options tuner type=45 tuner=45
options tda9887
options msp3400 once=1 simple=1 standard=0x09
add below ivtv msp3400 saa7115 tuner tda9887
add above ivtv lirc_dev lirc_i2c
post-install ivtv /usr/local/bin/test_ioctl -d /dev/video0 -u 0xFF

Next we find what tunner your pvr250 has, as these seem to change often. rmmod tveeprom
modprobe tveeprom
dmesg

You are looking for a message near the bottom saying something like: tvee: tuner=Philips FI1246 MK2 (idx=11, type=1)
to leave dmesg press q

Next we set settings for each individual card: pico /etc/sysconfig/ivtv/cfg-0

This should contain IVTV_TUNER='X' IVTV_TYPE='PAL'

Where X is the tuner number found earlier.

Step 3 - Fix tv_grab_uk_rt

Warning: This patch is not necessary with later versions such as R5A16. In fact, applying this patch will probably mean that you have to say NO to about 100 unavailable channels individually.

Use a terminal session (either PUTTY over the network or CTRL+ALT+F1 on console) logon as "root"

These instructions were copied and updated from TvGrabUkRtFix

cd ~

wget http://belnet.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/xmltv/xmltv-0.5.37.tar.bz2
tar -jxvf xmltv-0.5.37.tar.bz2
cd xmltv-0.5.37
perl -MCPAN -eshell

Answer "4" for Europe when asked
Answer "32" for United Kingdom when asked
Answer "3 4 8" to select
(3) ftp://ftp.demon.co.uk/pub/CPAN/
(4) ftp://ftp.mirror.ac.uk/sites/ftp.funet.fi/
(8) ftp://usit.shef.ac.uk/pub/packages/CPAN/

At CPAN prompt enter...
install XML::Writer
install Lingua::EN::Numbers
install Lingua::Preferred
install Term::ProgressBar?
(Answer YES to get the dependant modules)
install Unicode::String
install Lingua::EN::Numbers::Ordinate
quit

At Linux prompt enter....
perl Makefile.PL
Answer YES
make
make test
su
make install

Step 4 - Configure MythTV

Switch back to the MythSetup? screen (CTRL+ALT+F7)

Option 1. General

Select Next until "TV Format" using Up/Down and Left/Right cursor keys

TV format = PAL
VBI Format = PAL Teletext
Cannel Frequency table = europe-west
Time offset = none

Option 2. Capture Card

Select "(New capture card)"
Select your card type.... for a PVR-250 use..

Card type = MPEG-2 Encoder card (PVR-250/350)
Default input=which ever you are using I belive 5 is the svideo?

Option 3. Video sources

Select "(New video source)"
Video source name = RadioTimesUK
XMLTV listings grabber = "United Kingdom (alternative)"

Then ALT+TAB then press zero to show console window that appears.

To add the basic UK channels...

This applies to all. It is best to setup only a few channels at this point as you cannot use mythtv until all the schedule for each channel has been loaded.

Enter "BBC1", select your nearest match from the list eg. "BBC1 Midlands"
Enter "BBC2", select your nearest match.

Enter "ITV1", select your nearest match.
Enter "Channel 4".
Enter "five".
Enter "."

Use mouse to "lower" the console window.

Press "ESCAPE"

Switch to console window CTRL+ALT+F1

Type cat /home/mythtv/.mythtv/RadioTimesUK.xmltv

You should get a listing like...

channel midlands.bbc1.bbc.co.uk
channel midlands.bbc2.bbc.co.uk
channel central.carlton.com
channel channel4.com
channel channel5.co.uk

Make a note of all these values that look like internet addresses.

Switch back to setup (CTRL+ALT+F7)

Option 4. Input connections

Select "The input to be used?" (for the PVR cards)
Video source=RadioTimesUK

Select "Finish"
Press ESCAPE

Step 5 - setting channel frequencies

analog

in mythtvsetup use

Option 5. Channel Editor

Select "(New Channel)"

Channel Name= BBC One
Channel number = 1
Callsign = BBC1
Commercial Free = Ticked
Video Source = RadioTimesUK
XMLTVID = midlands.bbc1.bbc.co.uk (or what ever is listing in your RadioTimesUK.xmltv file above for BBC1)
Select "Next"
Frequency ID = 46 (use the value from the bbc website for your area!)
Select "Next"
Select "Next" at "Channel Options - DVB"

Select "Finish" at "Channel Options - DVB Pids & ID"

Select "(New Channel)"

Channel Name= BBC Two
Channel number = 2
Callsign = BBC2
Commercial Free = Ticked
Video Source = RadioTimesUK
XMLTVID = midlands.bbc2.bbc.co.uk (or what ever is listing in your RadioTimesUK.xmltv file above for BBC2)
Select "Next"
Frequency ID = 40 (use the value from the bbc website for your area!)
Select "Next"
Select "Next" at "Channel Options - DVB"
Select "Finish" at "Channel Options - DVB Pids & ID"

Select "(New Channel)"

Channel Name= ITV One
Channel number = 3
Callsign = ITV1
Commercial Free = Unticked
Video Source = RadioTimesUK
XMLTVID = central.carlton.com (or what ever is listing in your RadioTimesUK.xmltv file above for ITV1)
Select "Next"
Frequency ID = 43 (use the value from the bbc website for your area!)
Select "Next"
Select "Next" at "Channel Options - DVB"
Select "Finish" at "Channel Options - DVB Pids & ID"

Select "(New Channel)"

Channel Name= Channel 4
Channel number = 4
Callsign = CH4
Commercial Free = Unticked
Video Source = RadioTimesUK
XMLTVID = channel 4.com
Select "Next"
Frequency ID = 50 (use the value from the bbc website for your area!)
Select "Next"
Select "Next" at "Channel Options - DVB"
Select "Finish" at "Channel Options - DVB Pids & ID"

Select "(New Channel)"

Channel Name= five
Channel number = 5
Callsign = five
Commercial Free = Unticked
Video Source = RadioTimesUK
XMLTVID = channel5.co.uk
Select "Next"
Frequency ID = 37 (use the value from the bbc website for your area!)
Select "Next"
Select "Next" at "Channel Options - DVB"
Select "Finish" at "Channel Options - DVB Pids & ID"

At the channel list, tab down to "Sort Mode" and make sure that "Channel Number" is selected. You should have channels 1,2,3,4 and 5 listed.

Digital

SkyDigiBox has two methods for setting up all the channels. I recommend that you just edit the basic 5 channels to start with. Follow the analog instructions but set the frequency to 101, 102 etc. This is because running mythfill on all channels takes a long time and you will want to get to see something in less than 2-3hrs ;-}

6. Finish

Press "ESCAPE"

Press "ESCAPE" once more to exit setup.

mythfilldatabase should begin running, if not type "mythfilldatabase" at the Linux command prompt.

You should see "----- Start of XMLTV output -----" and loads of rubbish messages on the screen, ignore them!

XMLTV will probably take quite a while to run through, many minutes.

You can now either reboot or carry on to Step 7. Rebooting can be done by typeing reboot in a command console or holding down ctl-alt-del.

Step 7 - Extra setup

It is probably worth following these instructions too for MythTV version 0.16 running on Knoppmyth R4V5 at UpdateNewInstallHowTo

Sky/Ntl users should use the instructions on SkyDigiBox at some point after the install is working to get all the channels added. A command console can always be reached with Ctl-Alt-F1. Even when mythtv is running.

PVR-250 Picture "Bounce"

On PAL recordings and while watching Live TV I notice that the picture seems to bounce up and down a few pixels. If you change the PVR-250 recording resolution using the "Utilities/Setup" menu option and "Recording Profiles" - change them from 480x480 to 720x576 and it all seems to work nicely.

Time Sync

Its important to ensure that your MythTV box has the correct time. Follow this guide TimeSynchronizeHowTo

Reboot

<various amendments made by Nick Parkinson - Oct 13th 2005>

<URLs related to channel five updated by Simon Flood - 01-Mar-2007>