Unfortunately, my home setup consisted of a HD HomeRun Prime network tuner (which accepts only cable cards and QAM signals) and a few Windows Media Center PC's hooked up to TV's in my home. My ONLY set-top box was in my living room, hooked to my home theater. This is unfortunate because when I cut the cord - I had to come up with another solution to distribute my TV signal on my network. Enter MythBuntu!
I have been going back and forth on MythTV for years. Finally, I was at the point where I HAD to make the move. I had a few ATSC tuners from my HTPC trial days, so I tossed them in my old backup server - a dual core AMD with an 80gb boot drive and 4 2TB hard drives, raid 5. Turns out, one of the cards as defected while it was in storage on my shelf (in an anti-static bag) - but the other one worked! And each card has 2 tuners (AverMedia A180)! I downloaded MythBuntu and installed it on the 80gb hard drive, reformatted the Raid 5 and mounted it /mnt/storage - and symlinked all the mythtv directories over there. Problem solved - or so I thought!
The first issue I ran into was the card not showing up. The AverMedia is an old card, originally designed as a piggy back for a the MCE 150. Apparently, this A180 IS on the supported hardware list. It uses the saa7134 driver. However, it needs the NXT firmware available. This firmware was NOT available, nor was the script that MythTV says to use to download it! I hunted around for a couple hours until I found a forum thread that had it attached - as soon as I was able to get the firmware in place BINGO! The card was assigned as a frontend0 device I could now configure in MythTV Backend! This is also when I discovered the other card had died on me. That was a quick removal - it did not impair the ability to forge ahead!
While I was working on this, I wanted to be able to get some TV - mostly the Sunday Night Animation Domination on FOX. I hooked my antenna to my OLD RG6 distribution and hooked up my TV's. Wow- I cannot remember the last time I had RF to my TV directly!!! I ran the auto channel scan and picked up all the majors - I was a happy camper. However.. After a week or so, channel 11 (WXIA, VHF 10), disappeared! Nothing had changed!!! I was perplexed!! So I called the family member who knows the most about this - and he QUICKLY found my problem - THE ANTENNA!
So the long story short - Radio signals are sin waves. The higher the frequency the shorter the wave. The lower the frequency the longer the wave. VHF is higher frequency than UHF. A 4-bay antenna has very small elements on it. Elements are the metal "fingers" that grab the signal out of thin air. Since I only had the short elements, I needed some LONG elements to catch the LONGER wave! I didnt want to spend the money, take the time and use the space for a store-bought antenna - I already had one - I want to make work what I have in place already! I grabbed a few metal coat hangers, some pliers, a hammer, a few nails and some string and headed up into the attic! I stretched out the coat hangers to a minimum of around 18 inches and scraped off any plastic/color coating so I could make a solid connection to my already-existing antenna. I loosened the wing nuts where my F connector tied in and simply wrapped the coat hanger around the bolt. I tightened up the wing nuts and made sure the new elements would stay horizontal with the floor. They held well, so I did not need to support them with the string and nails ;) Quickly - VERY EXCITED about this new endeavor - I hopped down the attic stairs and ran to the bedroom. I brought up the TV's manual channel management menu and checked my signal - BOOM! There we have it!!! to maximize my cheap upgrade, I checked www.tvfool.com and google maps to make sure it was pointed the proper direction. I swung it slightly right and increased my signal another 15% or so! Ran the channel scan and picked up EVERY FRIGGIN CHANNEL! I went from around 32 channels found to well over 50! MythTV was also able to pick up every single channel that was listed on TVFool.com as well! WAHOO!
So now my next issue - all my media center PC's have Windows 7 installed. MythTV is linux based. To install a MythTV front end, I needed to reformat and reinstall. UGH! more work! Thankfully, I ran across Kodi. This is XBMC renamed. Turns out, Kodi has an extension that will tie into the MythTV API! You can manage recordings and everything! SUWEET! I ran with it! However, after a week or two (bringing this up to last night) - Kodi quit showing the "TV" menu item. In my initial research, it seems there is a bug that has yet to be tracked down. AT this point, I am considering taking the bullet and just installing linux. I should be okay with the hardware platforms I have - and the remotes I have work with the most common IR driver on linux. Should be a win-win... I have yet to make a full decision, but as you can probably tell, I am leaning heavy towards putting the work in moving to linux! Kodi has an Ubuntu minimal install, but I am weary of running into the same issue.. MythBuntu was quick and easy - so I may just go that route again. The hardwork of the backend and TV Signal is complete - the frontends are just clean up!
On path I have been considering is going with the HD HomeRun Extended - pretty much the same as my network tuner, except it comes with 2 tuners instead of 3 - and receives and ATSC signal. This could be used independently by what I already have on the network OR through MythTV. Face it, I dont have much to record on OTA broadcasting! However, the feature is GREAT to have what I DO record shared across all the TV's in the house!
I have attached a few pictures of the install. It is rinky-dink - but it took me 15 minutes - cost a couple coat hangers - AND ITS IN MY ATTIC - so aesthetics matter not - ONLY FUNCTIONALITY!
So the long story short - Radio signals are sin waves. The higher the frequency the shorter the wave. The lower the frequency the longer the wave. VHF is higher frequency than UHF. A 4-bay antenna has very small elements on it. Elements are the metal "fingers" that grab the signal out of thin air. Since I only had the short elements, I needed some LONG elements to catch the LONGER wave! I didnt want to spend the money, take the time and use the space for a store-bought antenna - I already had one - I want to make work what I have in place already! I grabbed a few metal coat hangers, some pliers, a hammer, a few nails and some string and headed up into the attic! I stretched out the coat hangers to a minimum of around 18 inches and scraped off any plastic/color coating so I could make a solid connection to my already-existing antenna. I loosened the wing nuts where my F connector tied in and simply wrapped the coat hanger around the bolt. I tightened up the wing nuts and made sure the new elements would stay horizontal with the floor. They held well, so I did not need to support them with the string and nails ;) Quickly - VERY EXCITED about this new endeavor - I hopped down the attic stairs and ran to the bedroom. I brought up the TV's manual channel management menu and checked my signal - BOOM! There we have it!!! to maximize my cheap upgrade, I checked www.tvfool.com and google maps to make sure it was pointed the proper direction. I swung it slightly right and increased my signal another 15% or so! Ran the channel scan and picked up EVERY FRIGGIN CHANNEL! I went from around 32 channels found to well over 50! MythTV was also able to pick up every single channel that was listed on TVFool.com as well! WAHOO!
So now my next issue - all my media center PC's have Windows 7 installed. MythTV is linux based. To install a MythTV front end, I needed to reformat and reinstall. UGH! more work! Thankfully, I ran across Kodi. This is XBMC renamed. Turns out, Kodi has an extension that will tie into the MythTV API! You can manage recordings and everything! SUWEET! I ran with it! However, after a week or two (bringing this up to last night) - Kodi quit showing the "TV" menu item. In my initial research, it seems there is a bug that has yet to be tracked down. AT this point, I am considering taking the bullet and just installing linux. I should be okay with the hardware platforms I have - and the remotes I have work with the most common IR driver on linux. Should be a win-win... I have yet to make a full decision, but as you can probably tell, I am leaning heavy towards putting the work in moving to linux! Kodi has an Ubuntu minimal install, but I am weary of running into the same issue.. MythBuntu was quick and easy - so I may just go that route again. The hardwork of the backend and TV Signal is complete - the frontends are just clean up!
On path I have been considering is going with the HD HomeRun Extended - pretty much the same as my network tuner, except it comes with 2 tuners instead of 3 - and receives and ATSC signal. This could be used independently by what I already have on the network OR through MythTV. Face it, I dont have much to record on OTA broadcasting! However, the feature is GREAT to have what I DO record shared across all the TV's in the house!
I have attached a few pictures of the install. It is rinky-dink - but it took me 15 minutes - cost a couple coat hangers - AND ITS IN MY ATTIC - so aesthetics matter not - ONLY FUNCTIONALITY!
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