Here are some other things I’ve learnt you need to do to get MythTV working with a Sky box, Ubuntu Gutsy and a PVR-150:

General

1. Make a directory called /usr/src/mythtv

EPG setup

1. Create and run channelsetup.sh to import the channels into the MythTV database
   
#!/bin/bash
wget http://epg.pvr.geek.nz/epg/listings-sky.xml.gz
gunzip -f listings-sky.xml.gz
mythfilldatabase --file 1 listings-sky.xml --do-channel-updates
2. Create a file called getEPG in /usr/local/bin (and chmod +x to make it executable) to get the channel data. Copy the following code into it:
   
#!/bin/bash
cd /usr/src/mythtv
wget http://epg.pvr.geek.nz/epg/listings-sky.xml.gz /usr/src/mythtv/listings-sky.xml.gz
gunzip -f /usr/src/mythtv/listings-sky.xml.gz /usr/src/mythtv
mythfilldatabase --no-delete --file 1 -1 /usr/src/mythtv/listings-sky.xml --update


   If you have webmin installed, set up a cron job to run this script once a week.

IR Blaster

1. The guide for setting up the PVR-150’s built-in IR blaster working is Mark’s guide from BlushingPenguin. Follow them, and the tip I found for the Gutsy patch, to get it so that your IR blaster is working. Key things to remember:
   • Gutsy comes with it’s own copy of IVTV so you don’t need to download that.
   • Run with the pre-patched version of lirc as Mark directs
   • The firmware goes in /lib/firmware
   • Sky Zenith boxes are code 482 in his master lircd.conf. Specifically, your /etc/lirc/lircd.conf needs to have the following for the blaster to work:
     
begin remote
name blaster
bits 32
flags RAW_CODES
eps 0
aeps 0
plead 0
gap 333333
repeat_bit 0
begin raw_codes
name 0
2179072000
name 1
2179072001
name 2
2179072002
name 3
2179072003
name 4
2179072004
name 5
2179072005
name 6
2179072006
name 7
2179072007
name 8
2179072008
name 9
2179072009
name POWER
2179072010
name CH_UP
2179072015
name CH_DOWN
2179072016
name CH_PREVIOUS
2179072019
end raw_codes
end remote

2. Make sure you have MythWeb installed. Go to the Channel Editor in Mythweb and make sure you have a channel number beside each channel to make them appear in the guide and MythWeb
3. Add a channel number to the freqid field too – otherwise the IR blaster won’t work
4. Create the following change-channel-lirc.pl in the /usr/local/bin folder (chmod +x so it can run):
   
#!/usr/bin/perl# make sure to set this string to
   # the corresponding remote in /etc/lircd.conf
   $remote_name = “blaster”;

   sub change_channel {
   my($channel_digit) = @_;
   system (“irsend SEND_ONCE $remote_name $channel_digit”);
   sleep 1;
   }

   $channel=$ARGV[0];
   sleep 1;
   if (length($channel) > 2) {
   change_channel(substr($channel,0,1));
   change_channel(substr($channel,1,1));
   change_channel(substr($channel,2,1));
   } elsif (length($channel) > 1) {
   change_channel(substr($channel,0,1));
   change_channel(substr($channel,1,1));
   } else {
   change_channel(substr($channel,0,1));
   }

5. Run mythtv-setup and put change_channel_lirc.pl in the external change channel field on the input card.

After installing a fresh Gutsy (7.10) box, I found that I had no end of problems getting the IR blaster on my PVR-150 to work – despite the fantastic instructions and work by Mark from BlushingPenguin.com. A number of problems presented themselves – including “hardware does not support sending” errors and a hard lock when I changed /etc/lirc/hardware.conf to have MODULES=”lirc_pvr150″ only, which you should have.

Finally, I stumbled across these instructions from UbuntuForums.org:

Add this deb line into Applications->System->Software Sources->Third Party Sources (or to your /etc/apt/sources.list).

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/superm1/ubuntu gutsy main restricted universe multiverse

Update your package lists and a new linux-ubuntu-modules should be available.

Now it looks like I’m up and running! Maybe…

Just got the xbmcmythtv python script (sort of) working on my modded xboxes. However, I couldn’t get it to connect to my master MythTV server. After a lot of gnashing of teeth and internet searching, there are basically three steps to get this working:

1. Make sure your MythTV master backend is set up for having remote hosts connecting to it. This is primarily done by giving the backend its actual IP address, rather than localhost/127.0.0.1.
2. Make sure your MySQL server is set to receive remote connections as well. Doing this changes with different versions, but in my case, it was a matter of commenting out the bind_address line in my /etc/mysql/my.cnf.
3. Depending on the version, make sure that the username and passwords are using the OLD_PASSWORD command in MySQL:

   mysql -u root
login as: james
update user set password=old_password('mythtv') where host = '192.168.whatever.yours.is';

Now you should be able to connect.

For some reason MythWeb on a mobile device seems to be stuck in German. I can’t find a way of changing it, so in the meantime if this happens you can comment out the three lines in translate.php that try and find out the language:

// Need to detect the language?
// if (empty($_SESSION['language']))
// $_SESSION['language'] = get_browser_lang();
// if (empty($_SESSION['language']))
$_SESSION['language'] = 'English';

Therefore it will default to English.