MythTV is a popular, open source Personal Video Recorder (PVR) application. This section demonstrates how to install and setup MythTV on FreeBSD. Refer to mythtv.org/wiki for more information on how to use MythTV.
MythTV requires a frontend and a backend. These components can either be installed on the same system or on different machines.
The frontend can be installed on FreeBSD using the multimedia/mythtv-frontend package or port. Xorg must also be installed and configured as described in Chapter 6, The X Window System. Ideally, this system has a video card that supports X-Video Motion Compensation (XvMC) and, optionally, a Linux Infrared Remote Control (LIRC)-compatible remote.
To install both the backend and the frontend on FreeBSD, use the multimedia/mythtv package or port. A MySQL™ database server is also required and should automatically be installed as a dependency. Optionally, this system should have a tuner card and sufficient storage to hold recorded data.
MythTV uses Video for Linux (V4L) to access video input devices such as encoders and tuners. In FreeBSD, MythTV works best with USB DVB-S/C/T cards as they are well supported by the multimedia/webcamd package or port which provides a V4L userland application. Any Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) card supported by webcamd should work with MythTV. A list of known working cards can be found at wiki.freebsd.org/WebcamCompat. Drivers are also available for Hauppauge cards in the multimedia/pvr250 and multimedia/pvrxxx ports, but they provide a non-standard driver interface that does not work with versions of MythTV greater than 0.23. Due to licensing restrictions, no packages are available and these two ports must be compiled.
The wiki.freebsd.org/HTPC page contains a list of all available DVB drivers.
To install MythTV using the port:
#cd /usr/ports/multimedia/mythtv#make install
Once installed, set up the MythTV database:
#mysql -uroot -p < /usr/local/share/mythtv/database/mc.sql
Then, configure the backend:
#mythtv-setup
Finally, start the backend:
#echo 'mythbackend_enable="YES"' >> /etc/rc.conf#service mythbackend start
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