South Africa MUG

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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