How to make a multimedia center with mythTV

I don't usually watch television. In Spain there is an important poverty of contents, and in addition it does not help the fact that a film with a duration of one hour and a half is transformed into a film of at least two hours with the amount of publicity they advertise.

Information about what you are watching.

After doing the center multimedia, this is my new form to watch television:
Once a week I program the essential programs for me, the films, some television series and sports like nba.
All this with the control and from a table of programs with which I don't have to worry about hours nor days, even it doesn't matter if they finally change the hour of programming, because the computer will be guided with the information that they send digitally with the channel and it will compare the names of the programs.

Select what you want to record without worrying about hours nor days.

The computer even can record 2 programs that are being given simultaneously in different transmitters, because I have two tuners, if the channels are in the same multiplex, I can record them all, that is about 8 channels.

Menu de grabacion.

My partner, who watches more television than me, watches it by traditional form, although she is amazed by the possibility of stopping the tv whenever she wants, for example when somebody calls her by telephone, and later she continues watching tv from the moment it had been stopped, with the possibility of skipping some advertisements.
The most important thing for me is that the computer can record simultaneously what I had ordered to it, although it is showing another channel.
It also records everything with all the information and it automatically classifies it in the tables of recordings to accede later easily.

Select what you have recorded.

When I finally sit down to watch tv, I look the table of recordings and I see what's interesting for me; If it is a film, I will be able to watch it in dolby surround and with subtitles. In addition mythtv clears the adverts automatically. Can you wish something more?

Films in dolby surround, without advertisements and with subtitles.

There are very peculiar details, like being able to watch the programs a little faster without the voices sound to the makineros pitufos. This is done by standardizing the pitch of the voices when voices have been accelerated

Watching a film in less time.

As everything in this life is not television, you can also listen to all the repertoire of music you have with a remote control.

Music player.

The search process is very easy and fast, or you can watch the recorded videos in the hard disk, selecting the cover image.

Easy and fast searching of your music.

Obviously, you can also watch DVD's and VCD's, with details as useful as copying them to your hard drive with a button in the remote control, and with the possibility to transcode to other formats, such as MPEG4, changing resolutions, etc...

Copy DVD to the hard disk and pass them to other formats.

Mythtv also have other options: films store, weather forecast, games (MAME), etc...

Select the film you want to watch.

Weather forecast.

Weather forecast 2.

And the most important thing, it's free GPL software, you have all the source available, and if you have coding aptitudes, you can modify MythTv to fit your tastes.

For example, I have integrated the surviliance security system into mythtv, in a way that pressing a button in the remote i can watch the webcams i have installed, and they alert me when they notice a movement.

Security camera control.

With the arrival of the digital television, things are getting better, and even better things as high definition will definitely arrive in short term.
Nowadays the channels are emiting signal with video quality similar to DVD, and multiple languajes, some of them with AC-3 sound encoded.

Select other languajes.

Making a remote:

One remote to control it all.

The first thing to have is a good remote. As the remotes that come with the capture cards are not good ones, I decided to make a infrared receiver, this circuit is connected to the input of the sound card, and control it with the Lirc Software.

Computer opened to show the infrared sensor.

Zoom of infrared sensor.

Buying capture cards:

I have installed 2 usb freecom dvb-t sticks.,

dvb-t usb sticks

Analog capturer bt878-bt848,

Analog capturer bt878-bt848.

And a satellite DVB-S card.

satellite DVB-S.

Installing Linux + MythTV:

I have installed a Debian linux, kernel 2.6.18.
All works by default, and the only enhancements that can be made is formatting the harddisk with XFS o JFS system, because they are so fast deleting the large files we are going to record.
Once installed the base system, it's only needed to install the mysql database server and finally Mythtv, following the instruccion in their web. MythTv is a descentralized software and can be installed in multiple computers, each one offering different media.

MythTV Configuration:

Principal Menu.

Configuration Menu.

Other multimedia software:

There are other multimedia free software even more powerfull than Mythtv, like Vdr, but MythTV is very easy to use and the WFA (wife factor aceptance) is very high, so we can have our wifes happy and we will be allowed to go on making hacks.