Once you have completed configuration of your backend systems, the next step is to configure the frontend client. You should run the MythTV setup program before using any other modules such as MythMusic, etc. to correctly initialize the database.
When you start mythfrontend, you should have a number of choices. Before doing anything, go to TV, then to Setup and configure the frontend client.
The General screen has configuration items that don't really fit anywhere else. The first few configuration items asks you to indicate the number of seconds to record before or after a program, which is useful if the broadcast network or your system clock are out of sync and will help prevent you missing the beginning or end of a program.
To change the value, use the left and right arrow keys to increment and decrement the number of seconds. When you're satisfied with the result, use the down arrow to put the input focus on the Next button or press RETURN to continue to the next page.
The next page has a number of options to do with how channels are displayed on your system. The help text will give you more information. Move the focus to Next and press the space bar to continue.
The final General page sets up some final configuration items. See the help text for more information.
This set of screens is mostly concerned with how MythTV will look on your system. From here, you can choose different themes and set the resolution of your system.
Fairly self explanatory. Note that the alternate program guide does not use the same font settings as defined in Appearance, so if the EPG is unreadable this is where you make the adjustments to fonts, number of elements displayed, etc.
The one configuration item which may cause problems on your system is the "Deinterlace playback" setting. MythTV uses a linear blend algorithm for deinterlacing, which will improve how the image looks on your screen. Deinterlacing requires that your processor support SSE. (Streaming SIMD Extensions, aka "MMX2"). Early Intel Celeron (those that don't use the Coppermine 0.18um core and are usually <600Mhz), Pentium Pro and Pentium II CPUs do not have SSE, so make sure that you haven't enabled deinterlacing if your processor doesn't support it. If you enable it, and your processor doesn't support SSE, you will get "Illegal Instruction" errors.
To determine if you've got SSE on an Intel processor, you can:
$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
[snip]
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca
cmov pat pse36 mmx fxsr sse
Notice the sse at the end of the line - this tells you that this processor will be able to deinterlace correctly.
On an AMD processor, look for "3dnow" in the cpuinfo line; "3dnow" is AMD's implementation of SSE instructions, so if your processor has 3dnow you shouldn't have any issues with deinterlacing.
Depending on your capture card, MythTV offers different video encoders. The following types of hardware encoding cards are supported:
For DVB and HDTV cards, no further configuration is required after setting up the card using the 'setup' program. For all other cards, configuration is done through MythFrontend. Selecting 'Recording Profiles' from the 'TV Settings' screen will list the profiles currently available for the cards in your system. Depending on what types of cards you have installed you may see:
(Create new profile group)
Software Encoders
Hardware MPEG Encoders
Hardware MJPEG Encoders
Trancoders
The '(Create new profile group)' option will allow you to create custom
profiles in case you have multiple backends. Note that custom profiles
are per backend and cardtype. If you have 2 MPEG-2 encoders in a given
backend system, creating a custom profile will affect both of them. This
option should not be needed otherwise.
The 'Transcoders' group is a little different from the others. Selecting this group will result in a menu with the following options: 'RTjpeg/MPEG4' and 'MPEG-2'. These types indicate what transcoder options will be used for a given input type (i.e. the 'MPEG-2' settings would be used to transcode MPEG-2 files into MPEG-4. The source of the MPEG-2 stream (DVB, HDTV, or PVR-x50) does not matter. Configuration of the options is the same as below (although any resolution settings will be ignored).
Selecting any of the other options will show a new screen with a list of four profiles:
The Default profile will be used for any recording which does not otherwise have a specific profile assigned. The 'Live TV' profile will be used when watching TV. The remaining two profiles are available for customizing to allow for more precise control over what quality is used for a given program.
Selecting a profile will allow you to adjust the relevant options for that card. The most significant setting is the recording resolution, but you can also choose encoding format, audio format, and tweak other encoder specific properties.
NOTE: although the width and height can be changed to almost any value, if you start MythTV and don't see video or you get "segmentation fault" errors, it is likely that the video4linux (v4l) subsystem did not like the height and width parameters specified. It's best to leave the default as-is until you're sure that MythTV is operational.
NOTE: although the width and height can be changed to almost anything, if you start MythTV and don't see video or you get "segmentation fault" errors, it is likely that the video4linux (v4l) subsystem did not like the height and width parameters specified. It's best to leave the default as-is until you're sure that MythTV is operational.
MythTV is able to control the LED on the Xbox to indicate backend recording status.
To control the LED, you will need the blink program from the
xbox-linux project, which is installed as /bin/led
on GentooX. On
Xebian (the new Ed's Debian) you must install it yourself. On other
distributions it may or may not be installed as a program called
blink and should be located in your path. (Type which
blink
to see if the program is available.) If you do not have
blink, you may obtain it from the Xbox-Linux project site at
http://xbox-linux.sf.net/. The
program you need is part of the eds_i2c_staff
module in CVS. Note
the spelling.
Once you have installed blink you will need to set permissions.
blink needs write permission to the i2c device to function
properly. There are three methods to accomplish this. First, you could run
mythfrontend
as root, which is the simplest method, but could
potentially be a security risk. Next, you may make the blink
binary setuid root, which allows non-privileged users to run a program with
root capability. This is done by typing the command:
$ su
# chmod u+s /path/to/blink
The final technique would be to set the /dev/i2c/0
device read/write
for all users, but this is the least preferred method.
Now it's time to setup MythTV for Xbox hardware. Enter Setup -> General. On the second page check the 'Enable Xbox Hardware' option. Upon reentering the settings, you should have a new option named 'Xbox'. Within this option you may select the distribution, LED colors for recording and the update interval. If you select GentooX as the distribution led will be used as the blink binary name, otherwise, blink is used. Colors should be self explanatory. The update interval determines how often the frontend should poll the backend to determine if the status has changed.