MythTV

Ok, so I've had a MythTV box for quite some time, but recently I've done some cooler stuff with it - I've also got a local friend who's done some pretty neat stuff with it too. Well, indirectly - not really with Myth per-se, but with stuff Myth uses (You should see his Satellite Dish farm).

To start with, said local friend had a spare DVB-S card that he wasn't using, and I mentioned some time ago I was interesting in getting - so he sold it to me... (must pay him..) The house I'm renting at the moment already had a small dish on it, pointing at Optus B1. The previous tenants had Satellite TV, from the local provider, Sky, which has a presence on B1. The goverment owned broadcaster also has some FTA stations on it, which are the target.

Anyway, after futzing around, and upgrading the Myth box to a 2.6 kernel for support of the DVB-S card, I get things working, but not in MythTV. Takes me a good week to work out that the DVB testing utility in the setup program hardcodes the LNB values for a Universal LNB, As opposed to a Ku Band LNB that are all too common here. Grr. Grr. Grr. So I finally get things working in Myth. Damn, that DVB-S picture is crisp.

Right, about this time, I also noticed that the xmltv source I was using to get EPG data dried up - an old website that was discontinued by the entity that owned it - somehow tied up with the broadcaster, but I don't know for sure. This is where the local friend comes in. Drew has been mucking around with pulling the EPG data out of the DVB-S stream that the PayTV provider (Sky) has on B1 - and he was successful. The added bonus is that he provides the data in xmltv format..

So, the next problem was that the Audio I was feeding from the Myth box into the TV was really low, so I had the mixer wound all the way up so you could hear things - but playing videos was still really really quiet.. Turns out that the sound card is emitting line-level audio, but the TV is expecting something with a little more meat...

To solve this, I decided to purchase a simple Stereo Ampilifier kit from the local Radio-Shack-alike, Dick Smith Electronics. The K-5008 looked like it'd do the job nicely.

After building, then realising that I'd wired the 9V supply socket backwards, sadly, after I'd fried the chip... Then purchasing a replacement chip, I had a working Amp that meant I could finally wind down the volume in the software mixer, and actually have decent audio across the board within MythTV. Excellent.

I'm still pissed off that I managed to wire the socket wrong, when I swear I checked it at least three times before I soldered it...

The only downside, is that now it's actually possible to hear the 'muted' audio emerging from the line-in (for the TV tuner card)... It is very faint, and as long as you don't wind the TV volume up too far, you can't hear it...

[23:14] [/Hacking] [permanent link]