MythTV in Oz

[rodr]

It's pretty quiet in the Australia forum, so maybe a rambling post will not be too unwelcome.

I was a happy MythTV user in the USA (Northern California) and as a recent transplant to the Coffs Harbour area am looking forward to "giving it a go" here. My US-specific HDHomeRun was not an option and I could not find anyone in Oz that has the Australia model in stock, so ended up ordering a Hauppauge WinTV-dualHD which should arrive in a week or so.

I upgraded my old MythTV PC to Mint 19 and found and installed the Hauppauge PPA and related packages without incident. What's available here are channels from ABC, SBS and three commercial providers. Looking forward to seeing what the embedded guide data looks like and if commercial flagging will actually work. The roof-mounted antenna appears somewhat battered and may also need some attention.

More to come.

[flitter]

Welcome to Australia!

I’m running the HD Homeruns (old ones) quite happily in Sydney and I’m surprised that changing the firmware to the European/Australian version wouldn’t make them work here.

I find the embedded guide okay but you need to set much wider buffer zones on your recordings as the Aussie networks can start up to 5 mins early and 25-30 mins late if they have an ‘event’ show on (eg any reality TV final) and the on screen guide doesn’t adjust for it.

I’m using shepherd for the TV guide and I find that word well but does need reconfiguring every 2-3 months.

I’ve never got the commercial flagging to work here reliably as the networks are inconsistent in their use of the triggers (having said that it may be different in the regions as you have affiliates rather than the networks direct).

Good luck with your setup and make sure that you also have the digital side channels for each network when you complete your channel scans.

Enjoy!

[rodr]

Hi Flitter! Very interesting thought about changing to the DVB-T firmware... just tried that but alas, HDHomeRun Config just produces an error message. Perhaps it has ATSC-specific hardware. It did allow me to upgrade to the latest ATSC firmware.

Thank you very much for the other tips as well. Sounds like this will be an adventure.

[rodr]

The Hauppauge WinTV-dualHD arrived today and all is good so far. We have 35 channels with great reception and the embedded program guide is good for about a week forward... it took some time to populate. A PCIe card should work as well, and I can see how a quad tuner may be useful since recordings are set to start a few minutes early and end late.

An advantage over the HDHomeRun is that there's no added local network congestion.

I was going to test with Kaffeine first but couldn't find any settings in it for Australian frequencies.

[rodr]

With only a couple of days of light usage, commercial flagging has been OK. That's a large part of the appeal of MythTV here. Still figuring out what we want to watch... Australian sports and politics are still mysterious to us. The amount of American-sourced programming is a bit surprising.

[flitter]

Glad to hear the commercial flagging is working for you! It could be that it’s much better on the regional networks than in Sydney as they need the flagging to handle local commericals.

Can’t help much with what to watch I’m sorry, there’s not a whole heap of local programming here and most people watch US or UK content (or other languages depending on where they’re from). If you start by watching The Project, then that’ll give you an easy intro to the news and politics. The TV season is only just starting though so I’m sure you’ll find more local stuff soon.

You’re in NSW so rugby league and cricket are the sports here! Although I recommend rugby union (Go Wallabies!). Everything else is pretty much on Foxtel.

You’ll find lots of shows run against each other so more tuners is better!

[BigKevin]

Anyone have a setup guide to do MythTV 29 on Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS that works in Australia, I have tried and tried to do it always had to get help from a friend in the past. I did manage to do it once on Ubuntu 12.4 LTS but never been able to do it again. I do Windows day in and day out fix everyone else computer, but stuffed if I can get my head around Linux , I know a little but not enough to do it without a GOOD Guild to follow.
PLEASE HELP

[nexzzt]

Anyone have a setup guide to do MythTV 29 on Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS that works in Australia, I have tried and tried to do it always had to get help from a friend in the past. I did manage to do it once on Ubuntu 12.4 LTS but never been able to do it again. I do Windows day in and day out fix everyone else computer, but stuffed if I can get my head around Linux , I know a little but not enough to do it without a GOOD Guild to follow.
PLEASE HELP

Hi BigKevin,

I don't have a guide, but I've been using MythTV in Oz (Brisbane) for close to 10 years now. I'm currently on Mythtv 0.29 and Xubuntu 18.04.1. I'm happy to help with any questions you have.