1. First things first.

1.1 What is MythTV?

MythTV is a suite of programs that allow you to build the mythical home media convergence box on your own using Open Source software and operating systems.

MythTV has a number of capabilities. The television portion allows you to do the following:

• You may pause, fast-forward and rewind live Television.
• You may install multiple video capture cards to record more than one program at a time.
• You can have multiple servers, each with multiple capture cards in them. All servers are centrally managed and all programs are scheduled by the Master backend.
• You can have multiple clients (called "frontends" in MythTV parlance), each with a common view of all available programs. Any client can watch any program that was recorded by any of the servers. Clients can be diskless and controlled entirely by a remote control.
• You may use any combination of standard analog capture card, MPEG-2, MJPEG, DVB or HDTV capture devices. With appropriate hardware, MythTV can control set top boxes, often found in digital cable and satellite TV systems.
• Program Guide Data in North America is downloaded from Zap2It.com, a subsidiary of Tribune Media Services. This free service is called DataDirect, and provides MythTV almost two weeks of scheduling information. Program Guide Data in other countries is obtained using XMLTV. MythTV uses this information to create a schedule that maximizes the number of programs that can be recorded if you don't have enough tuners.

• MythGallery, a picture-viewing application
• MythVideo, a media-viewer for content not created within MythTV
• MythDVD, a DVD viewer / ripper
• MythMusic, a music playing / ripping application which supports MP3 and FLAC
• MythGame
• MythWeather
• MythNews, a RSS news grabber
• MythBrowser, a web browser
• MythWeb, which allows you to control your MythTV system using a web browser. With MythWeb, you can schedule recordings, delete files, change keybindings and more. With proper security, you may even schedule a program over the Internet and have it immediately acted on by the scheduler.
• MythPhone, phone and videophone using SIP.

1.2 QuickStart

Custom mini-distributions are available to make it easier to install MythTV. A mini-distribution removes many of the "general purpose" workstation / server software packages that may be installed by default if you use one of the big-name OS packages.

See http://mysettopbox.tv if you'd like to install a custom version of Knoppix optimized for MythTV.

See http://linpvr.org/ if you'd like to install MythTV onto a VIA Epia M machine.

See http://bit.blkbk.com/ if you'd like to install MythTV on an XBox.

See http://wilsonet.com/mythtv/ for instructions tailored to RedHat's Fedora Core distribution.

1.3 Upgrading from previous versions

The upgrade from previous versions should be transparent. Any changes to the database structure should be applied automatically.

It is strongly recommended that you back up your database before installing a new version of MythTV.

See Saving or Restoring the database for instructions.

1.4 How to obtain this document

This HOWTO document is maintained at the primary MythTV website: http://www.mythtv.org by Robert Kulagowski mailto:rkulagow@rocketmail.com.

NOTE: Please note that I am NOT the author/programmer of the MythTV application! I can not give you personalized installation support. If you are having issues installing MythTV you should examine the archives, or post your question to the MythTV-users mailing list.

This document is available as a single-page HTML document at http://www.mythtv.org/docs/mythtv-HOWTO-singlehtml.html or as a PDF at http://www.mythtv.org/docs/mythtv-HOWTO.pdf.

This HOWTO is for MythTV v0.18.

1.5 Document conventions

The following conventions are used throughout this document.
boldface - used for program names.
typewriter - used for program paths.
emphasis - Pay attention here.

Pay more attention.

Ignore at your own peril.

1.6 Mailing lists / getting help

It's recommended that you join the user list at http://www.mythtv.org/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users. The developer list is at http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-dev. Please keep the developer list strictly for development-related issues.

Searchable archives for the lists are available at http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/.

1.7 IRC

There are two IRC channels dedicated to MythTV which can be found on irc.freenode.net

• mythtv
• mythtv-users

The mythtv channel is where the developers discuss code. It is not a user-support channel. Please don't ask non-development related questions there.

Really. Even if there's no one in the mythtv-users IRC group or everyone seems to be ignoring you.

1.8 Bugzilla

If you feel you need to contribute to a bug database, use the MythTV Bugzilla at http://www.mythtv.org/bugs/.

1.9 Contributing to this document

Contributions to the HOWTO are welcome, especially if you find a grammatical or spelling error, or if the wording of something is just plain confusing.

If you'd like to make a new contribution, feel free to email it to me mailto:rkulagow@rocketmail.com, but as the maintainer I retain the right to edit or choose not to use your submission.

If you would like to submit an update or contribution, please send it as either SGML or as plain text. NO HTML. The source used to create the HOWTO is in SGML / Linuxdoc. See the Linuxdoc HOWTO at http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Howtos-with-LinuxDoc.html for information on the linuxdoc format itself, or look at the mythtv-HOWTO.sgml file as an example.

Do not be afraid of SGML. A quick look at the source of this HOWTO will show that it is not difficult, so at least try to submit as SGML.

SGML patch files are the easiest. Run a diff -u origfile newfile > doc.patch and mail it to the address above.