MythTV Setup in UK with Virgin Media

[andymck]

Hi

Has anyone here successfully setup MythTV with virgin media digital cable in the UK?

If so I could really do with your help...I have spent more time that I care to imagine trying to get this too work but no luck so far.

After going through the myth setup, i think i have managed to get it to find the channels, although they come up as "channel e3, channel e4, channel e6 etc "....problem is however it doesnt find any program guide info using the radio times feed.

The next problem i have is that I dont quite get the relationship between the mythtv setup and linuxmce...i.e. how do i get linuxmce to pass remote control codes using my installed WinMCE remote and IR Blaster to myth ? 

I did setup a new toplevel device for my digital tv box ( Pace DI400n) but how do i associate this with Mythtv ?

At this stage I am pretty lost as to where to go next with this and and pointers would be much appreciated.

Thanks

Andy

[steviebee_uk]

Hi Andy,
I will soon be installing Linux MCE and trying to set it up with my Pace Virgin Media STB - Did you get anywhere with this if so can you pass on your experiences?

I will let you know how I get on however I am wanting to connect an RS232 cable and channel change that way.

Thanks

Stephen

[andymck]

Hi Stephen,

I havent advanced much further since my plea for help

But i do think I now know what my main problem was, and that was I hadnt realised that with LinuxMCE the MCE I/R transceivers are not recognised as being able to blast and as such you cant associate the pace box with a parent device for control.  So i ordered a USBUIRT, which just arrived today and I hope to give the setup a go again this evening.

I also found this xml feed for the channels which may prove helpful for setting those up:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/justin.hornsby2/virgin.xml

Not sure yet how up to date it is....

Re the RS232 connection on the cable box, i thought i read somewhere these were disabled ?  If not then I too will give it a go using that....

Thanks

Andy

[danielk]

FYI Justin is an active MythTV theme designer, and can often be found on IRC on the #mythtv-users channel, or on the mythtv-users mailing list.

[andymck]

Stephen, fyi i got mythtv working with the virgin stb via infrared control...All the channels etc are in place, guide etc working....

It was straightforward enough once I got to the point where I understood how MythTV worked but to get to that point i had to make a few mishaps along the way...such as using the channel search facilty in myth setup....how i expected that to work I will never know, given that i had the stb connecting simply through composite in to my pvr card....

I used the xml feed (http://homepage.ntlworld.com/justin.hornsby2/virgin.xml) created by Justin Hornsby, modified one of his perl scripts to auotmatically create the source channel files for Myth, ran mythfilldatabase to get the guide for the source channels and then added a new script to assign the channel numbers using the same xml file.  So the xml file proved to be a good find and my thanks goto Justin for that.

I also used Venom986 process and script for setting up the channel changing via infrared control ( http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=4302.0 )...may not be relevant to you if you are able to do it via serial.  But it works a treat and means i can actually make use of all these MCE blaster I have lying around.

I will put the steps i went through down in a Wiki, for the benefit of others who may come at this as blind as I did, hopefully have that done for tomorrow evening. 

Andy