The last major problem with our MythTV box has been fixed. Our previous IR blaster was underpowered and would occasionally lose a digit when signalling our set-top box to change channel. It was very occasional, but it’s annoying to be looking forward to a programme on BBC 3 (channel 16) only to discover that you’ve recorded the second half of one programme and the first half of another on Nederland 1 (channel 1).
Anyway, with the arrival of a new IR blaster from New Zealand, this problem is now past tense. This unit transmits a stronger signal, so it is able to reliably change the channel of our Thomson cable box. If you’re wondering why I had an IR blaster sent from New Zealand, it’s because I wouldn’t have a clue where to buy one in this country.
And with that, almost a month to the day since I first installed MythTV, all of the teething troubles and minor irritations we’d been living with are now gone. The wavy lines on the capture cards are gone, the VFD on the front of the case works, the menus fit on the screen, the fonts are properly scaled, the playback freezes are gone, time-stretching now works, external audio now works, fast-forwarding and rewinding now work properly, OpenGL works, the network connection is now reliable and fast, channel changing on the set-top box works reliably, and the programme guide has data for all the channels that we receive.
It took a long time to get to this point, but now that we’re here, this is possibly the most powerful PVR in the country, in terms of the flexibility it offers. Neither dumb PVRs (which are just video recorders with a hard drive) with the Guide+ EPG (broadcast via the cable) nor Microsoft’s MCE offer a solution with a complete programme guide for all of the channels in UPC’s digital TV package. Thanks to MythTV, we’re fortunate enough to have one, not because it provided one out of the box, but because the software has a modular design and is based on open standards and APIs. It was easy to write an XMLTV grabber to pull down data for the missing channels from Chello.
Thanks to Isaac and the other developers for turning out such a terrific piece of software; and thanks again to Peter for prodding me into resurrecting the bits of hardware that had been lying around in my home office for six months. It’s been unbelievably good fun getting all of the bits and pieces to work together.
With a little bit of luck on the hardware front, this system will provide us with a lot of pleasure for quite some time to come. Of course, my hoping for luck with my hardware might be sorely tempting fate.
Hi Ian,
Thanks for your detailed account of setting up your Myth box! Inspirational! I also live in a UPC area and was thinking about subscribing to their digital service – I am currently on their analogue package and that is working well with my Myth box (albeit two channels are wavy).
What I found a pity with UPC is that you can’t use a DVB-C card with a CI decryption module – it seems you can in other areas of NL. This would avoid the circuitous IRBlaster route.
Good work and thanks for documenting it so well!
Cheers,
Fred.
You’re very welcome.
Yes, it’s a great shame that you can’t just use a DVB-C card with UPC. This means that high quality MythTV recordings just aren’t possible, least of all in HD.
My new TV has 2 CI slots in its separate tuner box and it would be great if I could just stick a module and CA card in there. Sadly, that’s not an option.
It also means that I can’t use any of the DTV intelligence built into the TV, leaving me stuck with whatever UPC’s box is able to do.