PCQlinux 2007 desktop edition bundles MythTV this time that converts your PC
into a complete media center. MythTV lets you play DVD and CD video, listen to
MP3s and play audio CDs too. Not only this, you can also watch any TV channel
you want to, plus you can even pause the live TV programme while watching and
can go back to where you want to watch it from. Not only this, you can schedule
the recording of your favorite TV programme if you are not at home and watch the
recorded one later. You can even configure MythTV to show important news from
your favorite news site. Plus get your local weather report and play games as
well. For this, all you need is a PC with a good graphics card with TV out,
plenty of hard-disk space, a DVD drive, sound card, an internal TV tuner card
and a TV of course.
To begin with, you need to install the PCQLinux 2007 Desktop edition. Once
installed, boot the machine with second non-Xen kernel “PCQlinux-up
(2.6.18-1.2798.fc6)”and connect the TV cable to your Tuner card. If you have a
DTH (Direct to Home) connection, connect video cable to the Video in of you
tuner card and use composite-to-stereo cable for sound. Now from the X Window,
open a terminal window Start Menu> Accessories, and issue 'lspci -v' command.
This will show lists of video interface and capture cards that are installed in
your machine. In this list check whether kudzu (linux hardware detection
program) has detected your tuner card or not. Then check whether PCQLinux 2007
has created the devices /dev folder using this command:
# ll /dev/video ?
It shows the device list as /dev/video0, /dev/video1, and so on. We used an
internal PC TV tuner card from INTEX worth Rs 1,400. To check whether the card
is working properly, go to Start Menu>Sound and Video and run 'TVtime television
viewer'. This will open TVtime interface, initially a blue screen. In order to
configure it, right click on the blue screen and it will show a set-up menu,
where you have to configure audio and video settings according to your setup.
For example, we were using DTH box and we have connected its video-out to the
tuner card's Video-in using a video A/V cable.
We configured it to take video composite input. So once the setting is
correct, you can see the TV channels on your monitor. You have to do the same
for sound. Note that you can configure both mono or stereo sound as per your
needs.
Configuring remote control
Next step is to configure the remote device, so that you can navigate menus of
MythTV. We used the remote control of a tuner card with a small work around.
Open /etc/modprobe.conf file and add the following line.
alias char-major-61 lirc_gpio
Next, copy appropriate lircd.conf file in place. Configuration files can be
found in /usr/share/doc/lirc-0.7.0/remotes/
# cp /usr/share/doc/lirc-0.7.0/remotes/avermedia/lircd.conf.avermedia98
/etc/lircd.conf
Note: You have to identify the lircd.conf file according to the IR
hardware you are using, else the IR may not work for you.
Configuring MythTV
MythTV requires MySQL to run. So to configure MySQL, issue:
# service mysqld start
#/sbin/chkconfig mysqld on
# mysql -u root mysql
mysql>UPDATE user SET Password=PASSWORD('ROOT_PWD') WHERE user='root';
mysql>FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
mysql> quit
mysql -u root -p < /usr/share/doc/mythtv-0.20/database/mc.sql
After this, tune MySQL according to MythTV. In order to do so, open /etc/my.conf
and add the following line under
key_buffer = 16M
table_cache = 128
sort_buffer_size = 2M
myisam_sort_buffer_size = 8M
query_cache_size = 16M
Save this file and restart MySQL service again using the 'service mysqld
restart' command.
Before starting MythTV, you have to configure it with your TV Tuner card and set up the database where MythTV will store its recorded programme information |
Now you have to configure the video capture and capture card into your MythTV
setup. For this, go to Start Menu>Sound and Video and start 'Mythtv Setup'
program. This will open the MythTV setup interface. Here first go to General and
click on subsequent Next buttons till you finish. Next go to 'capture card'
option and select 'New capture card'. Here select 'analog v 4l capture card' and
you will see “ video device where it says 'configured to /dev/video0' and press
Finish. Now select 'Video Source' > 'New Video Source' option, give a new name
to it and click on Finish. After this, go to 'input connection', where you will
see the list of input connections that your capture card can support. Select
each one and change the entry 'None' from the selection text box, to the name of
the video source that you have created above.
To configure it's the back-end database of MythTV, where it will record your
TV programs etc, open a terminal window and issue the following command.
# service mythbackend start
# /sbin/chkconfig mythbackend on
# mythfilldatabase
# ln —s /dev/dvd /dev/cdrom
Now MythTV is ready to serve you. All you have to do is to just connect your
TV to your display card's TV out port. Then from Start Menu>Sound and Video and
run Myth TV front end. This will start the MythTV interface. And you can enjoy a
media center environment directly on your television.
Using MythTV
Launch MythTV front end as mentioned above and you would get the following
options: Watch TV, Media Library, Manage Recording, Information Center, Optical
Disk and Utilities/Setup. From first option you can watch live TV. Second option
shows media library like recoded programs, movies and playlist of your favorite
MP3 files. The Manage Recording option lets you schedule recording of your TV
channel and records the programs at specified scheduled time and automatically
records them for you if you are out. And later you can watch them from 'Managed
Library' option. The 'Information Center'gives you updated real-time news feeds;
the 'Optical Disk' section lets you view DVD movies and/or listen to music from
CD.
Myth TV front-end screen, shows options like Watch TV, manage recording, information center, optical disk and utilities/setup |
MythTV can emulate some game emulators, but you'll have to install them to
get a functional MythGame. The emulators include x-mame, fce
ultra and snes9x. You can install the required packages via yum as follows.
# yum -y install xmame fceultra snes9x
Once you have downloaded the package, configure MythGame through the MythTV
configuration section (MythTV> Utilities/Setup>Media Settings> Game Settings).
MythGame scans the games and you can launch them by selecting them.
Playing audio/video
PCQLinux 2007 desktop edition also bundles with it Mplayer, a media player that
plays different types of audio and video formats. Installed as default in both
Personal Desktop and Workstation, this player offers a never before feature on
Linux—the ability to play Windows Media including the latest Windows Media 9. In
video formats, Mplayer plays DVD, VCD, AVI, DivX4/5, MPG, WMV, QT and RM. In
audio it plays MP3, WMA and Ogg. To use Mplayer, go to the Start menu>Sound and
Video, and start the player. This opens a graphical interface for you, which has
a video screen and a video player.
Play your DVD or DivX video files using this player, be it in AVI, DivX4/5, MPG, WMV, QT, RM or any other AV format |
Right click on the video screen and select the media file or VCD/DVD you want
to play. The video player interface easily allows you to perform common
functions such as play, pause, fast-forward and rewind. Similarly while playing
audio, the player also has an equalizer for fine-tuning.
The player can then be controlled by a combination of keys, which you can use
to change the volume, play, pause, fast-forward, etc. For instance, the keys —
'/' and '*' are used to control volume levels while the right and left arrow
keys are used to fast forward and rewind.