Setting up IceTV and MythTV

To set up the IceTV Guide within MythTV under Linux please follow the simple instructions below. If you have any technical problems then please contact Customer Support.

Contents

1. Requirements
2. Setting up your EPG
3. Installation of the IceTV Guide XMLTV grabber
4. Integration with MythTV
5. Using the Guide

1. Requirements

1. To be able to use the IceTV Guide with MythTV under Linux you will need to have the following packages installed:
   1. Perl
   2. XMLTV
   3. MythTV
2. You will also need to download a copy of the IceTV Perl Grabber. This can be downloaded from the following link:

   IceTV Perl Grabber

   Download this file to somewhere known on the PC (for example your home directory).

2. Setting up your EPG

Choosing the channels that you receive in the IceTV Guide is done in the "My Account" area of the IceTV website. If you have not already specified which EPG you want, complete the following steps:

1. Go to the My Account section of the IceTV website.
2. Login if asked using your IceTV Member ID and Password.
3. Select your Timezone from the drop down menu, and also the Region that you are in. Confirm that the channels listed are the channels you receive in your region and then click on "Save Settings" on the bottom right of the screen.

3. Installation of the IceTV Guide XMLTV grabber

1. Ensure the required packages listed above are installed first.
2. Copy the tv_grab_au_ice file (This file is the "IceTV Perl Grabber") to the location where the other XMLTV grabber were installed (this will be in your PATH and will generally be in "/usr/bin". You can check this by looking for the other grabber files, they will have filenames like "tv_grab_*").
3. Make sure that the script is flagged as executable with the command:

   chmod +x tv_grab_au_ice

4. Integration with MythTV

1. Install MythTV using one of the methods described on MythTV.org. The easiest method is via a pre-packaged distribution, which is available for the majority of Linux versions.
2. Run "mythtv-setup" (for some distributions this will be called "myhtvsetup").
3. Check the settings under the first option. You might want to change where the video buffer and video recordings are saved to on the hard drive. You will also need to set the time offset to your local timezone (for example +1000 for Sydney), and change the region to Australia.
4. Setup your video capture card under option 2.
5. Go into option 3 (Input Sources). This is where you will setup the IceTV data source. Create a new video source. Give it a name in the top box.
6. Under the name, select Australia. Also change the frequency table below this to be Australia.
7. Click on Finish. A progress bad will come up on the screen and stop at 50%. Leave it at this stage and press Alt-Tab to get back to the terminal window that you started mythtv-setup from.
8. In this window you will be asked for your IceTV Member ID and Password.
9. Once the IceTV grabber has been setup "Done" will be printed on the screen along with the list of channels that are setup under your Member ID. Write down the ID's that are listed as you will need these later. These are referred to as the XMLTV ID's by MythTV.
10. Press Alt-Tab to get back to the mythtv-setup window.
11. Go into the fourth setup option and link the capture card from step (4) to the IceTV video source that you just setup.
12. Scan for channels under the fifth setup option.
13. Once all your channels are setup, the XMLTV ID's will need to be set.
14. Edit the channels. The last option on each page will be for the XMLTV ID. Put in the same numbers that you wrote down from step (9) above. This will link the channel to the guide data.
15. You can only link one channel to each set of guide data. For example Seven Digital has four channels which generally have the same programming, but only one channel can be set to each XMLTV ID. Therefore, it's best to set the channels that are not linked (including the "guide" channels) to not be "Visible in Guide" and then they will not show up in the EPG.

5. Using the Guide

1. To browse the guide: Select "Manage Recording", then select "Schedule" and then the first option "Program Guide". (note: the wording may change slightly depending on the skin you are using)
2. Another way of getting to the guide is while watching live TV. On live TV you can press the "m" key on the keyboard to bring up the menu. The first option on this menu is for the "Program Guide".
3. While on the guide screen you can use the arrow keys to scroll through different programs on the different channels.
4. You can select a show by pressing either the spacebar or the Enter key. This will bring up a new window with a detailed description of the show at the top and recording options at the bottom. This screen is where recordings can be scheduled and recording durations can be changed.

You should now be all setup to view the guide in MythTV, if you do not see this then please check that you have followed all the above steps correctly. If problems still persist you can check our Frequently asked Questions at MythTV or contact Customer Support.