[mythtv-users] Myth w/Directv

Chris Thompson ct-myth at cthompson.com
Mon Apr 12 18:24:33 EDT 2004


Tom Elsesser (telsesser at mindspring.com) wrote:
> Is there a howto or FAQ on getting setup with Directv, and mythtv with
> seperate backend/frontend? This doesn't appear to be anything to
> special, but I can't any documents with starting points and/or tips.


The key here is to "unthink" how you would normally think about TV.

My backend box houses mythbackend, mysql, apache and mythweb, and the
160gig drive. It's got a PVR250 and two Aver M179s to capture three
simultaneous streams.

Next to that box is a stack of three RCA DRD435RH DirecTV boxes.

>From Each RCA box there are three cables. An Svideo and an audio cable go
to each of the cards respectively.

The RCA boxes have no 9 pin serial, but a "LOW SPEED DATA PORT", which is a
serial with a funky port. This port is the same as a telephone handset
cord. (Remember when phone handsets had cords?)

I took three cheap coiled telephone handset replacement cords, lopped one
end off, and attached a Radio Shack DB9 hood kid, crimping female "pins" to
the relevant wires in the cable.

I had to install a dual serial card in my backend to provide all three, as
the motherboard only had one. One of these curly hacked serial cables runs
between each box and one of the three serial ports.

I got RCA.pl as the others have said. I made three copies of it as
"/usr/local/bin/tuner_a.pl" tuner_b.pl and tuner_c.pl with each one having
a different serial port, and set those scripts as how to change channels on
my three tuners.

My frontend has no capture card, it has no DirecTV box. This is what I mean
about unthinking. There's really no reason to have the tuner or the DTV box
out under the TV, leave it with the backend.

The frontend box mounts the backend box over NFS, placing the file store in
the same directory as on the backend (in my case /u/mythtv).

You fire up mythfrontend, tell it you want to watch live TV, and it tells
the backend to start grabbing from a card and writing it to the disc, then
begins playing that video file over NFS, which has way more than enough
bandwidth. (Some people do this over wireless)

Actually, my next step is to make the frontend diskless, netbooting.



_______________
Chris Thompson


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