#! /bin/sh
#
# mythbackend
#

PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin

BACKEND=/usr/local/bin/mythbackend
BACKEND_NAME=mythbackend

MYTHUSER="myth"

test -x $BACKEND || exit 0

set -e

case "$1" in
  start)
        echo -n "Starting MythTV: $BACKEND_NAME"
        su ${MYTHUSER} -c "$BACKEND -v all -d -l ${MBE_LOGFILE}" &
        echo "."
        ;;
  stop)
        echo -n "Stopping MythTV: $BACKEND_NAME"
        killall $BACKEND
        echo "."
        ;;
  *)
        echo "Usage: $0 {start|stop}" >&2
        exit 1
        ;;
esac

exit 0

Tags for this post: mythtv() book()

• Started working harder to ensure video filenames are unique once imported into MythTV, I now prepend video files with epoch seconds at time of import
• DIVX (not divx) doesn't need transcode, added. Check for the existence of the video directory, and return an error if it needs creating.
• Handle storage groups, check for the existence of the data directory
• Updated docs
• Complained about the poor state of SWF support
• WMV support
• FLV support

Tags for this post: mythtv() mythnettv()

• zap2it shutdown is still slated for September 1, 2007
• MythTV developers, and others, have teamed together to form Schedules Direct as a replacement
• There are forums for Schedules Direct discussion
• Schedules Direct will be charging around $5 US a month, at least initially
• The first 100 beta testers have been added, and bugs found
• Code has been added to the development version of MythTV to start handling Schedules Direct (although you are not forced to upgrade to use the new guide data source)

Tags for this post: mythtv() guidedata() usa() zap2it()

Like all sessions of the Open Source Developers @ Google Speaker Series, Michael's presentation will be open to the public. Doors open at 6:30 PM at our Mountain View campus; guests should plan to sign in at Building 43 reception upon arrival. Refreshments will be served and all are welcome and encouraged to attend. Michael's presentation will also be taped and published along with all of the public Google Tech Talks.

Tags for this post: mythtv()

I'm surprised and disappointed that the installation of MythTV through pre-built packages or a CD distributions like KnoppMyth or MythDora were not covered deeper than a sentence or two in passing. This is likely to be a turn off for readers who were hoping for a quick and simple method of getting MythTV up and going.

...

On the whole I consider this a good book that is excellent for the new to intermediate MythTV user, although advanced users may pick a few good pieces of information out of it as well. It was well written and covered most items at just about the right introductory (yes -- practical) level. Once it has taught you the basics, you can then go and look up more details online for features you want to get more information about.

My main concern would be the assumption of prior Linux knowledge. The introduction states you need limited or no experience with Linux or Unix. I think that in this case, some time should have been taken to introduce complete Linux newcomers into the Ubuntu environment, which is something that wasn't touched on an awful lot. The installation of Ubuntu was well-covered and is generally a very simple process, but after that not much time was given to familiarise the user with the Ubuntu environment used throughout the book.

The rest of the book is extremely well written, clear and is a very good companion to MythTV. True to its name, it takes a practical approach to solving problems and if you're a Linux user interested in setting up a MythTV installation, it will make a very good resource.

Tags for this post: mythtv() book()

• Initial work on transcoding smaller files to something else
• Better error checking for MySQL configuration and accessibility
• Fixed bug where MythNetTV was unhappy if there were no channels configured in the MySQL database
• Found, and hopefully fixed, a bug where program dates were not always being tracked correctly. Also added a check to make sure this doesn't happen again
• Added --markread, which lets you mark old shows as already downloaded

$ ./mythnettv --statistics
Programs tracked: 735
  Google EngEdu: 350
  Scoble Show: 85
  linux.conf.au 2007: 74
  Mobuzz TV: 82
  dl.tv: 32
  Net Cafe: 2
  Foo: 1
  ABC News: 2
  Australia: 1
  Play School: 1
  Diggnation: 72

Programs still to download: 50
  Google EngEdu: 49
  Diggnation: 1

Data transferred: 103 gb (111017264341 bytes)

Tags for this post: mythtv() mythnettv()

- Continued use of the service to support commercial products, in violation of the agreement.
- Commercial products continued to grow despite previous appeals that this activity stop.
- There are significant changes to the supporting data structure forthcoming and we could not devote resources to the continued upkeep and enhancements of the service.
- Maintenance of the service is impacting our resource pool for other projects.
- We sought alternative options but were unable to find a solution.
- We recognize the hardship this creates for the user community. We are open to alternative solutions and would consider proposals that met the needs of the user community and our company.
- We looked into options to turn this into a paid service however we do not have the infrastructure at this time.

Tags for this post: mythtv() guidedata() usa() zap2it()

IMPORTANT MESSAGE:

For several years we have offered a free TV listings service to hobbyists for their own personal, noncommercial use. In October of 2004 we posted here an open letter saying the future of Zap2it Labs was at risk because of certain growing misuses of the Zap2it Labs data. Unfortunately this misuse has continued and grown. These misuses, combined with other business factors have led to the decision to discontinue Zap2it Labs effective September 1, 2007.

We thank those users who have honoured the terms of the agreement, and we suggest you consider the many TV listings options offered by the commercial licensees of TMS TV listings data.

If you would like to discuss how to license TV listings for commercial use, please let us know by e-mail (labs@zap2it.com) and include your company name, telephone number and the best time to reach you. We will respond to your inquiry as soon as possible.

We anticipate this decision will generate discussion and invite you to respond via the Zap2it Labs forum. We will do our best to respond to relevant questions posted on this forum in a timely manner.

• Doom! The guide data stops, we all go home. This seems particularly unlikely though. It would take many people ignoring the problem, and just accepting that their MythTV systems are going to stop working.
  
  
• Some sort of scraper using XMLTV is written. This is in fact how guide data is obtained for most other countries at the moment. This technique is discussed in my MythTV book (Amazon), and is well understood. I would expect new XMLTV grabbers for the US to start appearing in the next few days.
  
  
• A conglomerate is formed to buy a commercial license to the guide data, and then sells that in XMLTV form to US based MythTV users. This option seems less likely to me, although not impossible. It would take someone being willing to buy the license for the data, on the assumption that enough people would actually pay for a XML feed. Lots of people have said they would, but there is already arguments over how much they would b willing to pay and it's yet to be seen if those people will actually front up with the cash. It should also be noted that this sort of arrangement has been tried in other countries, and seems to invariably fail.
  
  
• Another company steps up to provide guide data for free. There are lots of companies which have this data for their own uses now. Examples include the various TV guide web sites out there. They might chose to provide the data as a way of generating good will, as well as because providing the XML will cause less load on their systems than being automatically scraped to produce a third party XMLTV feed (the second option). This was the reason that the Zap2IT feed started being provided in the first place after all.

Tags for this post: mythtv() guidedata() usa() zap2it()

The animated thumbnail of the recording appears in the bottom right of this example image.

Enabling a filter

mysql> select distinct(category) from recorded;
+--------------------------+
| category                 |
+--------------------------+
| banana                   | 
|                          | 
| Children                 | 
| Sitcom                   | 
| Holiday-children special | 
| Cooking                  | 
| Crime drama              | 
| Reality                  | 
| Documentary              | 
| House/garden             | 
| Talk                     | 
| Special                  | 
| Comedy                   | 
| Children-special         | 
| Animated                 | 
| Science fiction          | 
| Auto                     | 
| Docudrama                | 
| Travel                   | 
| Science                  | 
| Drama                    | 
| Home improvement         | 
| Fantasy                  | 
| Suspense                 | 
+--------------------------+
24 rows in set (0.00 sec)

Bananas make for good filters

Filtering to only show Children's recordings

No filtering at all

The recordings menu

Entering a password

Selecting a new filter

Tags for this post: mythtv() filter() parental()

#!/usr/bin/python

# Copyright (C) Michael Still (mikal@stillhq.com) 2007
# Released under the terms of the GNU GPL

import MySQLdb
import os
import re

from socket import gethostname

# Connect to the MythTV database based on the MythTV config
config_values = {}
home = os.environ.get('HOME')
config = open(home + '/.mythtv/mysql.txt')
for line in config.readlines():
  if not line.startswith('#') and len(line) > 5:
    (key, value) = line.rstrip('\n').split('=')
    config_values[key] = value

db_connection = MySQLdb.connect(host = config_values['DBHostName'],
                                user = config_values['DBUserName'],
                                passwd = config_values['DBPassword'],
                                db = config_values['DBName'])
cursor = db_connection.cursor(MySQLdb.cursors.DictCursor)

# Regexp for what is allowed in the symlink name
unsafe = re.compile('[^a-zA-Z0-9\-\:_]+')

# Find the recordings directory -- this assumes you haven't used an
# identifier string for this machine...
cursor.execute('select * from settings where value="RecordFilePrefix" and '
               'hostname="%s";' % gethostname())
row = cursor.fetchone()
basedir = row['data']

# Now find all the recordings we have at the moment
cursor.execute('select title, subtitle, starttime, basename from recorded;')

for i in range(cursor.rowcount):
  row = cursor.fetchone()

  title = row['title']
  subtitle = row['subtitle']
  if subtitle == '':
    subtitle = str(row['starttime'])

  title = title.replace(' ', '_')
  title = unsafe.sub('', title)

  subtitle = subtitle.replace(' ', '_')
  subtitle = unsafe.sub('', subtitle)

  extn = row['basename'].split('.')[1]

  try:
    os.mkdir(title)
  except:
    pass

  try:
    os.symlink('%s/%s' %(basedir, row['basename']),
               '%s/%s.%s' %(title, subtitle, extn))
  except:
    pass

$ find . -type l
./Masterminds/Air_America
./Tech_Now/Getting_Famous
./Babar/To_Tell_or_Not_to_Tell
./Babar/The_Intruder
./Babar/Special_Delivery
./Babar/Conga_the_Terrible
./Babar/The_Celestville_Enquirer
./The_Backyardigans/Viking_Voyage
./The_Backyardigans/Cops_and_Robots
./The_Backyardigans/Eureka
./The_Backyardigans/Movers_of_Arabia
./The_Backyardigans/Save_the_Day
./Go_Diego_Go/Rainforest_Race
./Go_Diego_Go/Cool_Water_for_Ana_the_Anaconda
./Go_Diego_Go/Great_Jaguar_to_the_Rescue
./Go_Diego_Go/Diego_Saves_the_River_Dolphin
./Go_Diego_Go/Jorge_the_Little_Hawk_Learns_to_Migrate
./How_Its_Made/2007-06-08_09:30:00

Tags for this post: mythtv()

"If you're interested in setting up a PVR, then this is definitely a book to check out. Apress sells the paper version for $30, and offers an eBook for $15. Amazon offers it for $19.79, but I doubt that price will last long. I definitely give this book a 5 out of 5..."

Tags for this post: mythtv() book()