Upgrade to Digital

[ricks03]

I'm currently running MythTV .21 on CentOS5 (kernel 2.6.18) with a analog WinTV PCI capture card, recording to a second drive formatted for XFS, using SchedulesDirect for channel information. That environment has been rock-solid stable and recording for many years.

My cable company has (of course) recently changed from analog to digital, which breaks the above. I love MythTV, so I clearly have to upgrade. When I do so, I'd like to add the ability to record two channels at once. As I mostly watch network TV which is available OTA, I'd like to cut the Time Warner cord, and just record OTA. I have my TV working with a digital antenna.

I remember struggling a lot with ivtv and drivers for the capture card the last go round. In researching digital capture cards (like the Hauptpauge WinTV-HVR-2250) it looks like for the drivers I need the newer Linux kernel, so it looks like I'm going to be upgrading Linux to CentOS7, MythTV to, and the capture card all at the same time. For simplicity, I'm likely to build a second server, and just move over the MythTV database (and files). The WinTV-HVR-2250 supports both QAM and ATSC


I'm trying to puzzle out the "best" upgrade path. I figure build the CentOS7 box with the new capture card, but I'm not quite sure the optimal path to upgrade my system from .21 to .27.4

Any suggestions?

[dekarl]

I remember struggling a lot with ivtv and drivers for the capture card the last go round.

If you want to record US OTA transmission and about two of them at once, then you can avoid driver issue by using a network attached tuner. The downside is that its an additional box.
For an upgrade from fixes/0.21 to fixes/0.27 you need to do an intermediate step on fixes/0.24. Basically install a CentOS that comes with fixes/0.24 on the new box, restore the database, let it upgrade to fixes/0.24, then backup the database and install your target release, and restore the intermediate backup, let it upgrade to fixes/0.27.

[Gary Buhrmaster]

My cable company has (of course) recently changed from analog to digital, which breaks the above.

You did not mention your MSO, but it is not unusual that when they drop the final analog transmissions they also remove clear QAM, requiring a CableCARD OCUR tuner (a simple clear QAM tuner will not work for you). However, there are too many cable companies to generalize what options you may have should you choose to continue using cable as a content source (i.e. if you want some thoughts, you will need to specify). For OTA, there are numerous options for tuners, and as long as you choose one of the ones that are in-kernel (many are, the list is at the linuxtv.org site http://linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/ATSC_Devices ) the pain of out-of-kernel drivers that you remember with things like ivtv are no more. But, the HVR-2250 is now usually shipped as as a HVR-2255 (no matter what the outside of the box says), which is *not* the same card as the HVR-2250, and is only supported with the latest and greatest drivers (which are not in all kernels, and I do not think any el7 ones (but I admit I have not checked the most recent kernels)). As dekarl mentions, the SD Connect is network attached, and avoids the kernel driver issues.

[ricks03]

Per my above, I have no interest in continuing with my cable company; the goal here is to cut the cord.

Thanks dekarl for the insight on the network attached tuner, and the upgrade path.

Thanks Gary for the info that the 2250 is really a 2255.

[ricks03]

Will the network attached tuner work with .21 ?

[wesnewell]

Personally, wouldn't get network attached tuners, but whatever. Here's something you may want to look at.
http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/ATSC_Devices

[ricks03]

wesnewell, why not? Seems like a great solution on the face of it.

[wesnewell]

Expensive, additional box and power, but mostly because it eats up network bandwidth.

[ricks03]

Yeah, I Saw a post somewhere talking about using a second nic to the server, and just directly connecting to provide perfect bandwidth. made sense to me.

[ricks03]

Have any suggestion on the best way to install .24 on a new CentOS 7 deploy?

[noscgag]

I recently upgraded from MythDora 0.21 to Mythbuntu 0.27. I can give you all the nitty gritty details later if you want (I kept detailed notes), but roughly here is what I did:

Install Ubuntu 10.04.4 Desktop in a VM, then install mythtv 0.24 on that. I wasn't able to install 0.24 on Ubuntu 14.04 so had to resort to 10.04.4.
Backup your current 0.21 database and copy the backup to a place the VM can see it.
On the VM restore the 0.21 database (remember, the VM has Myth 0.24)
Run mythtv-setup on the VM, this will upgrade the 0.21 database to 0.24.
Backup the new 0.24 (on the VM) and put it some place accessible to your new 0.27 machine.
Restore the 0.24 database to your machine running 0.27.
Run mythtv-setup on the 0.27 machine. This will upgrade the database to 0.27.

Again, not all the details, but this is the gist.

It took me a very long time to figure out how to get 0.24 running on something so I could do the intermediate conversion, as I couldn't get 0.24 to run on any current version of Ubuntu. Since you are using CentOS you may have a different (better) experience.

[ricks03]

Could also be wildly harder. I've PM'd you my email address.