8.6. MythTV

8.6. MythTV
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MythTV is a popular, open source PVR application. This section demonstrates how to install and setup MythTV on FreeBSD. Refer to the MythTV wiki for more information on how to use MythTV.

MythTV requires a frontend and a backend; however, it allows the user to have the frontend and backend on different machines.

For the frontend, multimedia/mythtv-frontend is required, as well as an X server, which can be found in x11/xorg. Ideally, the frontend computer also has a video card that supports XvMC and, optionally, a LIRC-compatible remote.

For the backend, multimedia/mythtv is required, along with the MySQL™ database server. Optionally a tuner and storage for any recorded data. The MySQL™ package should be automatically installed as a dependency when installing multimedia/mythtv.

8.6.1. Hardware

MythTV is designed to utilize V4L to access video input devices such as encoders and tuners. At this time, MythTV works best with USB DVB-S/C/T cards supported by multimedia/webcamd, as it provides a V4L userland application. Any DVB card supported by webcamd should work with MythTV. A list of known working cards can be found here. Drivers are also available for Hauppauge cards in the following ports: multimedia/pvr250 and multimedia/pvrxxx, but they provide a non-standard driver interface that does not work with versions of MythTV greater than 0.23. Due to licensing restrictions, no packages are available and these two ports must be compiled.

The HTPC wiki page contains a list of all available DVB drivers.

8.6.2. Setting up MythTV

To install the MythTV port:

# cd /usr/ports/multimedia/mythtv # make install

Once installed, set up the MythTV database:

# mysql -uroot -p < /usr/local/share/mythtv/database/mc.sql

Configure the backend:

# mythtv-setup

Start the backend:

# echo 'mythbackend_enable="YES"' >> /etc/rc.conf # service mythbackend start

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