Central Queensland Linux User Group

Building your own home entertainment system is pretty easy. Here is a brief guide to MythTv and XBMC.

Before you try anything with Mythtv, save yourself some grey hairs and check that the hardware you have, or intend to buy, is supported: http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Category:Hardware

You can install Mythtv on most distros, but for ease of use I would recommend using either Mythbuntu ( http://www.mythbuntu.org/ ) or Mythdora ( http://mythdora.com/ ), as both have excellent tools for configuring Mythtv and both have excellent install default settings. As an alternative, an existing Ubuntu install can be converted to a dual desktop/Mythtv install by running the following in a terminal: sudo apt-get install mythbuntu-control-centre

Regardless of how you install Mythtv you will want good Australian program guide information available and the best is provided via the Sheppard scrapper, which is pretty easy to install: http://svn.whuffy.com/wiki/Installation

I use XBMC as a universal frontend for my MythTv backend and other functions, as I prefer both its looks and functionality, particularly with respect to web movie scrapers/guides: http://xbmc.org/about/

On Ubuntu installing the latest XBMC is pretty easy via the ppa: https://launchpad.net/~team-xbmc/+archive/ppa

To hook XBMC up as a front end for Mythtv go into the Videos section and select ‘Add Source’ from the menu. Hit enter on the name (where is says ) and type this:

myth://username:password@10.0.0.1/

where ‘username’ is the username you use to connect to your MythTV mysql database and ‘password’ is the password. If you didn’t change anything from the default MythTV install, this is probably ‘mythtv’ and ‘mythtv’. Hit enter here, and arrow down ‘Enter a name for this media source’. Name it ‘MythTV’ and click ‘OK’ ( http://adamhaeder.com/wordpress/2010/01/19/how-to-configure-xbmc-as-a-my... ).

Last of all, to get the best out of XBMC in terms of online movie scrapers, themes and plugins, you need to install the SVN repository installer (as outlined here http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=HOWTO_install_XBMC_for_Linux_on_Ubu...). Don't be confused, this is an add on to XBMC, not an ubuntu repository.

In Ubuntu the SVN Repositories are not automatically added. You must add them manually.

* First, download the SVN Repo Installer from:
* http://xbmc-addons.googlecode.com/svn/packages/plugins/programs/SVN_Repo...
* Extract it to the ~/.xbmc/plugins/programs directory.
* Select XBMC Media Center: Applications -> Sound & Video -> XBMC Media Center
* Scroll down to Programs.
* Select program plugins.
* Select SVN Repo Installer
* Select xbmc-addons
* Select plugins
* Choose the plugins that you want to add (i.e., videos)

There are lots of scrapers to choose from, but the best in terms of movies is Navi-X and my personal favorite is Ted Talks. Keep in mind that the idea of an XBMC repo for scrapers, themes and plugins is new and at this stage there is not a lot of quality control, so expect some scrapers to break from time to time.