Smart Home Blog

A few days ago new version of XMLTV was released. The changes of v. 0.5.52 are following:

• tv_grab_uk_rt: lots of improvements.. should upgrade
• tv_grab_re: better season/episode number handling
• tv_grab_be: responding to source site changes
• tv_grab_fr: better title detection
• tv_grab_huro: now generates stop times
• tv_grab_na_dtv: responding to source site changes
• tv_grab_pt: responding to source site changes
• tv_grab_za: improve episode tags
• not working, removed: tv_grab_il, tv_grab_nl_wolf
• some bugfixes and polish.

XMLTV is used in the PVR software such VDR or MythTV to get and parse EPG data.

[via MythTV News]

After Roku released Netflix Player and opened codes of its software people started thinking about using it as MythFrontend. Amazing functionality – decoding MPEG2, MPEG4, DivX, H.264 and support HD content (1080i/720p), nice design and, of course, good price can make with Netflix Player the same as was done for Hauppauge MediaMVP. It isn’t a problem that the player is designed for Roku IPTV service. MediaMVP was also expected to work in the Microsoft environment. But now it’s full-featured front-end for MythTV. Well, let’s see.

[source: MythTV News]

CommandIR 2 – a second generation of hardware extension for Linux media PC’s, was reviewed on the MythPVR.com. It allows to control Linux box itself and any A/V equipment via IR. The CommandIR 2 is equiped by four independently controlled IR blasters, on-board IR receiver, wired IR receiver (optional), six software controllable LEDs (they can be used to indicate something like starting recording, high level of system load etc) and USB port to connect the PC.

The CommandIR 2 is design specially for Linux. MythTV supports it from the box. But for other Linux distributions the CommandIR 2 can be configured manually.

The CommandIR 2 seems very interesting devices to extend control of home entertainment system. It’d be nice to add it into LinuxMCE since it already supports GC100, IRTrans USB, Tira-2.1 and USB-UIRT.

[via MythPVR.com]

I already wrote about project “Asterisk Voicemail for iPhone”. It give possibility for all owners of iPhone to access and manage their Asterisk voice mail messages. Now it’s time to add to that cool gadget watching videos recorded with MythTV.

The new software allows not only streaming recorded video from MythTV back-end to the iPhone but also browse recorded shows, look at show details and even control your other (PC based) MythFrontend with a web-based remote control.

The MythTV for iPhone uses the same approach as Asterisk Voicemail for iPhone. There is no iPhone native application. Instead of that it uses customized web interface. So, theoretically, you can access to your MythTV back-end from any place where is WiFi access.

MythTV for iPhone can be downloaded from the Google Code Project. Also you can find there detailed instructions howto install, configure and use that software.

Live demo after jump.
Read more »

Once I blogged about MythTV client for Nokia’s Internet Tablet Nokia770/N800/N810. It was a good chance to watch LiveTV directly on the device. Now I found that the full MythTV front-end was ported to Maemo. It was possible because MythTV was moved to Qt4 (version 0.22 will use it). Author said that Maemo’s port works fine with MythTV 0.21 server. Also he promised to port back-end as well. I think that it’s useless but maybe somebody know how to use it in a practice.

By the way, I use now VDR. So, I’m really interested to have its front-end on N810.

[via MythTV News]