South Africa MUG
Contents
ZAMUG
Created this page to gauge interest, as well as to have some info specifc to running MythTV in South Africa
Members
- Chris Picton - WinFast2000
- Frank - Fedora Core 5 + Hauppauge PVR 150
- Dave Jones - Ubuntu Feisty + WinTV-PVR350
- Luke Sibisi - Fedora Core 6 + Hauppauge PVR-150 + PixelView GeForce FX 5200 with TV-Out
- Roelof Burger - Gentoo + Hauppauge PVR-150
- Mitton Pienaar - Debian Etch + Gigabyte GT-PTV-AF-RH
- Hans vd Merwe - OpenSUSE 10.3 + Hauppauge PVR-150
- Louis Pieterse - Ubuntu 9.04 + Hauppauge PVR-150
- Velouria - Ubuntu 10.04 + Hauppauge PVR-350 (no longer used) + Technotrend S2-3200 DVB-S2 + Mystique SaTiX-SE (KNC ONE TV-Station DVB-S)
TV Tuner/ Capture Cards
The follwoing cards are reported to be working well in SA:
Leadtek Winfast2000XP RM
See the following page for details on how to configure and use this card
HAUPPAUGE PVR Cards
The Hauppauge PVR range of cards have reached their end of life. If you have one of these cards, here are some useful commands to see if your card is working:
Scan available TV stations:
scantv -n PAL-I -f southafrica -o stations.txt
Tune in to a channel:
ivtv-tune -t southafrica -c 48 # Tune to eTV (CTN) ivtv-tune -t southafrica -c 29 # Tune to eTV (JNB)
Start playback:
mplayer -vo xvidix /dev/video0
Gigabyte GT-PTV-AF-RH
The Gigabyte GT-PTV-AF-RH is very common.
It uses the saa7134.ko with card=81 and saa7134-alsa.ko kernel modules.
saa7134-alsa.ko creates the device /dev/dsp1, which is the sound device to be used in MythTV.
Satellite Cards
CAMs and the DVB-S/2 cards are available online at DVBShop.
DVB-S2
Technotrend S2-3200 with CI
The standard kernel (2.6.32-22 Ubuntu 10.04) comes with out the box support for this DVB-S2 card. However, there are some tricks required to get the CAM working. DSTV encrypts the broadcast streams with the Irdeto encryption technique. The Euro-Irdeto CAM from DVBShop works with the older (non-married) DSTV smart cards.
DVB-S
Mystique SaTiX-SE (KNC ONE TV-Station DVB-S) with CI
The standard kernel (2.6.32-22 Ubuntu 10.04) comes with out the box support for this DVB-S card. However, there are some tricks required to get the CAM working. DSTV encrypts the broadcast streams with the Irdeto encryption technique. The Euro-Irdeto CAM from DVBShop works with the older (non-married) DSTV smart cards.
TV Out
You need a video card that supports TV-out. South Africa uses the PAL-I TV output format. This section decribes configuration settings for South Africa:
ATI Video Card
Download and install the ATI proprietary X.org driver and libraries (non-free). Typical commands:
aticonfig --query-monitor
aticonfig --initial=dual-head --tvs VIDEO --tvf PAL-I --dtop clone
aticonfig --force-monitor=crt1,tv
IR Transmitters
An Infrared Transmitter/ Blaster would be needed if you want MythTV to change your M-NET/ DSTV channels.
South African Supplier of Infrared Transmitter/Receiver
I am manufacturing and producing a custom Transmitter/Receiver that can be plugged into the serial port on a Mythtv Platform. I am making these devices available to the wider South African Mythtv users so that we no longer have to import the devices if we want to control Mythtv via remotes or use Mythtv to change the DSTV channels. The tranceiver can be viewed at http://www.bsinnovations.co.za. --Tiplady 08:03, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
Here is the lirc codes needed to simulate the black Multichoice remote: http://lirc.sourceforge.net/remotes/multichoice/DSD910
Note to users with a dualview or PVR: there is currently no config file to simulate the blue remote. If someone can help recording it, please update this page!
Typical configuration:
# cp /usr/share/lirc-remotes/multichoice/DSD910 /etc/lircd.conf
# grep '^[^ #]' /etc/sysconfig/lircd DRIVER=default HWMOD=lirc_serial DEVICE=/dev/lirc/0 COM_PORT=/dev/ttyS0 DRIVER_OPTS="irq=4 io=0x3f8 type=0"
# /etc/init.d/lircd start
# irsend SEND_ONCE Multichoice_DSD910 3 # irsend SEND_ONCE Multichoice_DSD910 progup # irsend SEND_ONCE Multichoice_DSD910 voldn
Electronic Program Guides
There are two ways to get XMLtv data (program schedules) for MythTV. You can either download it from flash.za.org, or use the XMLTV grabber plugin:
Download
Regularly download the XML schedule file from flash.za.org. Example commands:
wget http://zaxmltv.flash.za.org/schedule/ZA-XMLTV.xml.gz gunzip ZA-XMLTV.xml.gz mythfilldatabase --file 1 -1 ZA-XMLTV.xml
XMLtv grabber
There is also a tv_grab_za in the latest distribution of XMLTV. This can be obtained from SourceForge.
This grabber attempts to categorise movies and other types of shows.
DSTV often change their website which results in the grabber breaking. Check the current status of the tv_grab_za grabber here.
canned Searches
The canned searches can be adjusted by editing the file /etc/mythtv/mythweb-canned_searches.conf.php
e.g.
t('Movies') => 'category like "Movies/%"',
Note the function t() in this file: it refers to translations of the argument, which must be defined in your choice of a file in /usr/share/mythtv/mythweb/modules/_shared/lang.
canned Search Categories
Documentaries/Biography Documentaries/History Documentaries/Nature & Wildlife Documentaries/Other Documentaries/Science & Technology General Entertainment/Celebrity General Entertainment/Comedy General Entertainment/Drama General Entertainment/Game Shows General Entertainment/Kids/teens General Entertainment/Other General Entertainment/Reality General Entertainment/Sci-Fi Lifestyle/Fashion Lifestyle/Food Lifestyle/Magazine Lifestyle/Religion Lifestyle/Talkshow Lifestyle/Travel Movies/Adult Movies/Animation Movies/Comedy Movies/Drama Movies/Fantasy Movies/Horror Movies/Kids/Teens Movies/Musical Movies/Other Movies/Romance Movies/Sci-Fi Movies/Thriller Movies/True-Life Movies/Western Music News/Commerce series Sport/Adventure Sport Sport/American Sport/Athletics Sport/Basketball Sport/Boxing Sport/Card Games Sport/Cricket Sport/Cycling Sport/Cycling show Sport/Darts Sport/Equestrian Sport/Extreme Sports Sport/Fishing Sport/Football Sport/Golf Sport/Gymnastics Sport/Horseracing show Sport/Motorsport Sport/Motorsport show Sport/News Sport/Other Sport/Paddling Sport/Road Running Sport/Rugby Sport/Rugby show Sport/Sailing Sport/Soccer Sport/Soccer show Sport/SuperSport Sport/Surfing Sport/Swimming Sport/Talk show Sport/Tennis Sport/Triathlon Sport/Variety Sport Sport/Watersport Sport/Watersports Sport/Wheels Sport/Wrestling Sport/Yachting