There are many programs to watch television on Linux, but the defacto standard application is XawTV. It even comes as a RPM on Mandrake 9.0. In addition to an X client, it also comes with a console version called fbtv and a console application called radio to use FM Radio cards. Eventually MythTV is better to watch TV with, but XawTV is nice to test with since it is simpler.
When you start up XawTV for the first time, don't panic if you just get static or a big pastel colored square. You need to set some options first by right clicking to bring up the options menu. For example, you need to specify that you want to watch television, and what channel to watch. :-) If you live in the United States you also need to specify that television format is NTSC and that you are using US Cable. These options are saved in a file called .xawtv in your home directory. You can create one from scratch, but I suggest you set the options in XawTV, including a few channels, and then use the channel editor save feature to write the file.
The next thing to do is get the hardware MJPEG recording and playback working. The easiest way to do this is to use the MJPEGTools package from http://mjpeg.sourceforge.net. Again, eventually we will be using MythTV, but MJPEGTools is simpler to test with.
Many of the RPM's you need come with Mandrake 9.0. The ones you need to google for are:
There is a very nice HOWTO on the MJPEG website for how to use the tools once you get them installed, but the short, short version is as follows:
Xine is probably the best Linux DVD and MPEG movie player out there right now, and as a bonus supports Dxr3 hardware if you have it. Once again, Mandrake 9.0 comes with most of the RPM's that you will need. The ones you need to google for are:
So far I haven't I haven't been terribly impressed with lirc, although when it does work it is very cool. As I said before, I really need to test the RPM but in the mean time I keep the keyboard within reach of the couch. :-)
A sourceforge project XMLTV is required for MythTV. It scrapes websites for tv listing information, and since websites change fairly often you generally have to upgrade XMLTV (and just XMLTV) fairly often. Fortunately I have figured out a way to only have to compile XMLTV itself, and not any of it's dependencies. The files you need to google for are:
Installing XMLTV: (get latest bz2 from xmltv.sourceforge.net)
tar -xvjf xmltv.tar.bz2
perl Makefile.PL
make
make test
make install (as root)
MythTV totally kicks ass, except that since it is under constant development the MJPEG support is currently broken. So for now you might as well use the stable version (0.7) until it is fixed. Check it out! MythTV has some excellent documentation which I will not duplicate here except to say that you can just install libqt3-devel-3.0.5-7mdk.i586.rpm, lame-libs-3.89-1.i386.rpm, and lame-libs-devel-3.89-1.i386.rpm instead of compiling them from source. That means the only thing you have to compile is MythTV itself.
Installing MythTV: (get latest bz2 from mythtv.sourceforge.net)
export QTDIR=/usr/lib/qt3
export PATH=$PATH:/usr/lib/qt3/bin
tar -xvjf mythtv-0.7.tar.bz2
./configure
make
make install (as root)
Configuring MythTV: (as root)
echo /usr/local/lib >> /etc/ld.so.conf
ldconfig
echo -e export QTDIR=/usr/lib/qt3 > /etc/profile.d/mythtv.sh
echo -e export PATH=\$PATH:/usr/lib/qt3/bin >>
/etc/profile.d/mythtv.sh
chmod 755 /etc/profile.d/mythtv.sh
emacs /usr/local/share/mythtv/settings.txt (/mnt/store ->
???)
mysql < database/mc.sql
./setup/setup
mythfilldatabase
This document was last updated January 16, 2003.
James Bearden
is not responsible for all information accessible from this web page.
Links to the rest of the Internet point to material maintained by many
other people and organizations. Please read the following
disclaimer before use of this WWW page.