MythTV todo list

I’d really like to have tool for Todo lists just like this one but couldn’t find any so far. Probably time to make my own (but let’s finish this list first :-)).

  • replace original processor fan with a less noisy one, like shown here
  • repair NTPD on blancheneige
  • make frontend boot Ubuntu over NFS from Debian machine
    • make PXE work for frontend 02/01/2006
    • create the nfsroot environment for the frontend box called teevee directly on hatchoum, using Debian’s debootstrap command as shown here 09/01/2006
    • compile a fitting kernel in the Ubuntu environment, for the frontend (in particular, include code for the Intel Gigabit card) - had to switch off module support because no modules can be found for the kernel on the target machine 09/01/2006 (still compiling)
    • scp the resulting bzImage file to hatchoum:/tftpboot/teevee.bzImage
    • finally ended up compiling the kernel in the debootstrap‘ped environment after sudo chroot‘ing into /projects/teevee. I used the Debian way of
      /usr/src/linux$ fakeroot make-kpkg --revision=teevee.1.0 kernel_image
/usr/src# dpkg -i kernel-image-2.6.10_teevee.1.0_i386.deb

      19/01/2006

  • install xorg server
  • install a complete Ubuntu system, with or without Gnome/KDE, that’s the question
  • recompile kernel for frontend to exclude USB ATI remote wonder module
  • use LIRC instead
  • make dvd::rip work (ie. install transcode)
  • integrate TV streams as provided by the Freebox (playlist of RTSP streams)
    • this probably means recompilation of VLC or mplayer (with LIVE.COM libraries …)
    • recompiled mplayer (using the source MPlayer-1.0pre7try2) which has LIVE.COM streaming media libraries included. Had to open the machine as a DMZ in order to get programmes. Thinking about recompiling VLC with “Crazyfred”’s patch included. 03/01/2006
    • recomiled mplayer with a patch to use fixed port 31337, didn’t change a thing 19/01/2006
  • use another OSD theme (isthmus?)
  • more documentation (ahem)
  • buy a widescreen flatscreen TV :-)
  • automate mythfilldatabase
  • recable the ethernet socket underneath Florence’s desk (01/01/2006)
  • fix current XMLTV problems (ie. the OSD EPG still doesn’t work, programmes are not displayed at all or not correctly, UK programme info is shown for German channels, but not vice versa). There are a number of tools to merge two xmltv files and remove duplicate programmes which may prove useful. More help can be found here: http://www.parker1. co. uk/ mythtv_id.php (in particular, the updateid script seems interesting)

05/02/2006:
- finally managed the X server to start (but wrong resolution), using the “radeon” driver instead of the “fglrx”
- also managed to run it from inittab with rungetty and xinit, but it’s not perfect yet, by a long shot
- need to tweak the xorg.conf to allow for a better resolution
- need to fix the problem with TV (doesn’t show)
- need to fix nfs “mount version older than kernel” problem

15/08/2006
in the last week, managed to:
- make MythTV to display on the widescreen tv, although only when using the VGA cable, the picture quality is ok though
- use mplayer as the player for video files

still to do:
- make MythTV log in automatically using rungetty/inittab on startup
- play DVDs
- tweak Modeline to move picture to the right
- avoid screensaver kicking in after some time (especially annoying when starting TV and all you get is a dark screen)
- resize music partition of backend to make more space for video partition using xfs tools

http://www.epanorama.net/documents/vga2rgb/timings.html helped me understand what I needed to tweak in my modeline in order to move the screen image horizontally.

http://www.deltadevelopment.de/users/christoph/mythtv/index.html has instructions how to have the frontend automagically start mythfrontend without any window managers, but using inittab and rungetty.