Channel icons

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Revision as of 13:48, 3 October 2014 by Stevegoodey (talk | contribs) (Channel Icon Download System: Typo)

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Channel Icon Download System

As of 0.21, MythTV includes a channel icon download system in mythtv-setup which will attempt to automatically download icons for channels in your database from services.mythtv.org. If it cannot find an icon it will present you with a list of options, and the ability to define your own search parameters.

To configure icon downloading in mythtv-setup:

  • run "mythtv-setup"
  • select "Channel Editor"
  • click on "Icon Download"
  • select either "Download all icons.." or "Rescan for missing icons.."


Universal Location

Starting with version 0.27, a single location for channel icons is used. It may be in the .mythtv/channels directory of the user that runs mythbackend. Typically, mythtv. The location is defined in the built-in ChannelIcons Storage Group (it's not necessary to create a ChannelIcons Storage Group.)

Note that users that set MYTHCONFDIR before starting MythTV programs override the HOME directory of the user running the backend.

Run mythtv-setup as the same user that runs mythbackend and get a new set of channel icons. They'll be stored in the directory above.

A Services API endpoint (<backend>:6544/Guide/GetChannelIcon?ChanId=<chanid>) works with this feature.

Symlinks added for prior MythTV versions, duplicate channels directories and any ChannelIcons directories and their contents can be removed.

A Note of Caution: Some Myth distributions run mythtv-setup as the frontend user you created on install, where as the backend is frequently run as mythtv, even if the frontend and backend are on same machine. This requires you to symlink (ln -s /home/myuser/.mythtv/channels /home/mythtv/.mythtv/channels) or copy files. Once fixed the icons will auto appear on mythweb and other frontends as describe above.

Pre 0.27 Instructions

By default the icon will be downloaded to the /home/<user>/.mythtv/channels directory. This is not very friendly when you have multiple frontends and wish them all to share the icons. One method to get around this is to use a symlink for this directory that directs to a network located directory that all your frontends have access to, say /var/mythtv/channels for example.

Before downloading the icons, do the following, or similar as per your distribution:

rm ~/.mythtv/channels -rf
sudo mkdir /var/mythtv/channels
sudo chown <user>:<group> /var/mythtv/channels
ln -s /var/mythtv/channels ~/.mythtv/channels

You will want to run

rm ~/.mythtv/channels -rf
ln -s /var/mythtv/channels ~/.mythtv/channels

for all the users that can run MythTV as well.

Channel Icon Sources

One of the best sources of channel icons is http://www.lyngsat-logo.com/ . There, you can browse the available icons and choose those appropriate for your system. However, doing so can be a lot of work (requiring many page hits and a lot of time). Once downloaded you should put the resulting JPEG files into .mythtv/channels/ for the user running the front-end. To add them to a channel you will need to run mythtv-setup and go to the channel editor and specify the icon file name for each channel.

Another source of channel icons is http://www.iconharmony.com/ which is targeted for icons for the harmony remote. Some of the available icons are more stylized than the official icon (the person running the site is a graphic artist). As with the previous source, finding an appropriate icon can be a lot of work.

International Channel Logos