I have never ever been able to really use MythMusic up to this date. Since my music library is stored centrally on a file server and about 130 GB large, only well-written music players seem to handle the enormous amount of music and MythMusic takes a half eternity to load. Immediately when it loads, all you see is a list of strange songs that seem to be randomly picked from the music collection, and the player immediately starts to play. Hey, I never ever picked those songs, and I never even wanted to play those songs! Nevertheless, it starts the music (and it is the same song _every_ time I feel like trying out MythMusic).

Trying to navigate around, I discover I just not understand how the application works. Trying to navigate in with the remote control keys just gets me confused, how do I stop the music player? How do I edit the current playlist? How do I keep myself from being frustrated?

Since I am a heavy-duty MPD and ncmpc user I have learned that I have a few preferences when it comes to music players. Selection of songs should be ultra-quick and very thought-through. There is no reason to press the mouse 41 times just to select a new song, you have the database there and all I should have to do is to select the artist or song I want to play. Everything seems to be even more confusing because of the fact that it is almost impossible to se which control on the screen that is actually selected (this is probably a theme problem). MPD also has the strength that it always runs, and there is no dependance for an application to keep the music streaming from the loudspeakers. You can even log in and out, the music never stops!

Perhaps one could incorporate some design ideas from MPD in the new version of MythMusic? I would very much like to keep my music playing when I show photos for my friends with MythGallery. (MythGallery is also in need of some serious redesign, but let’s save that for another blog post…) The user should be asked with a friendly question whether to pause the music when TV mode is entered (I don’t like listening to music while watching TV) or the user starts the Myth NES emulator.

Perhaps I should write a witty little program that is nothing but a MPD client for MythTV? I don’t have the time, so if anybody out there could feel the call…?

Phew. Remember to help out with open source software, you can always help! Not a programmer? A complete computer illiterate? You are needed! If not for hardcore development, there is a big need for coordination, translation, support or donations! I believe MythTV is a very important system for the FLOSS world, and a shift in development speed is required. LiveTV seems pretty good to me already, we really need to get the “other” features really polished and thought-through. I (and probably many others) will want to play music, play games and show photos in a very, very simple way.

MythTV development team; I have nothing against you, just needed to get this little rant of mine down on the keyboard.

I really hope I can bring my little pet program, “evad”, to an enough usable state to release an alpha version of the code to bring some more professional designers and programmers to dissect and improve the code. I really like ncmpc, but the developer doesn’t seem to work on the code anymore, and the latest release was in the end of 2005.

Note 2: This guide is obsolete! Use at your own risk. This guide is a lot better!

My father and I recently bought a Hauppauge Nova-T 500 TV card to extend the functionality of our current TV computer. The nice thing with this card is the fact that it contains two tuners in one card, allowing two simultaneous TV recordings or watchings at the same time.

We unpacked the box and plugged the card in to our computer. The manual recommended the card to be put in PCI slot #1 or 2 for unknown reasons, but it felt best to comply. When we booted, however, I got confused.

We had indeed installed a PCI card, but there was no TV card in the PCI listing (given by the ‘lspci’ command). We thought there was something wrong with the card at first.

When inserting the card into a Windows computer, we understood where the problem was. At first, Windows recognized a new USB root hub on the computer, and only after that came the TV card. Hauppauge had made the ingenious decision of having two USB TV receivers on the card, controlled by an internal USB hub. The reasons for that I can guess is to save costs using the same chipset for both their external USB cards, and the internal what-seems-to-be-PCI cards.

So, back with the card to the Linux box, and discovering that there actually were a lot of new entries in the PCI listing, USB controllers. A quick glance on the USB listing (‘lsusb’ under Linux), showed a happy Hauppauge card.

After discovering the inner workings of the card, it was time to configure it. Apparently, the drivers were not included in the Linux kernel before version 2.6.19, and the most recent stock kernel for the Ubuntu system was 2.6.17. Time to go back and compile your own kernel from kernel.org.

If your system has at least kernel version 2.6.19, there is no need for compiling your own. The kernel version is checked with the command ‘uname -r’. In the kernel, you need to enable modular support for the “dib0700″ chipset, which is somewhere under Device Drivers > Multimedia. Make sure the dialog says “(M)” and not “(*)” for the specific driver.

After compiling and installing the kernel (providing those instructions is outside the scope of this document) you must reboot and then find a firmware file for the kernel to use. For this specific card I needed the file “dvb-usb-dib0700-01.fw”, which I couldn’t find anywhere on the net at first. The primary mirror for this file was offline, but after one hour of searching I luckily found an RPM containing several firmwares, along with this one.

To make the path easier for everybody else, I here provide these files on my server here.

NOTE: The above files are very obsolete, and should not be used. linuxtv.org has newer files.

So, extract the file named “dvb-usb-dib0700-01.fw” and copy it to the directory /lib/firmware. Then load the module dvb-usb-dib0700 using the following command:

modprobe dvb-usb-dib0700

(many systems require that you add “sudo” to the command line before the “modprobe” command.

You just loaded the driver into the kernel. Felt something? That was just the feeling of being one step closer to a working dual TV tuner card. Note that the “modprobe” command should return nothing if it works. If you get outputs like “FATAL: Module dvb-usb-dib0700 not found.” you have to make sure that you compiled in support for the TV card into the kernel.

If modprobe worked, check the output of the command ‘dmesg’. If it works, you should have something like this in the last few lines:

[ 47.706381] dib0700: loaded with support for 2 different device-types
[ 47.755845] dvb-usb: found a 'Hauppauge Nova-T 500 Dual DVB-T' in cold state, will try to load a firmware
[ 47.831894] dvb-usb: downloading firmware from file 'dvb-usb-dib0700-01.fw'
[ 48.004945] dib0700: firmware started successfully.
[ 48.106970] dvb-usb: found a 'Hauppauge Nova-T 500 Dual DVB-T' in warm state.
[ 48.107568] dvb-usb: will pass the complete MPEG2 transport stream to the software demuxer.
[ 48.107929] DVB: registering new adapter (Hauppauge Nova-T 500 Dual DVB-T).
[ 48.191285] DVB: registering frontend 1 (DiBcom 3000MC/P)...
[ 48.192903] MT2060: successfully identified (IF1 = 1220)
[ 48.657038] dvb-usb: will pass the complete MPEG2 transport stream to the software demuxer.
[ 48.657373] DVB: registering new adapter (Hauppauge Nova-T 500 Dual DVB-T).
[ 48.661165] DVB: registering frontend 2 (DiBcom 3000MC/P)...
[ 48.663158] MT2060: successfully identified (IF1 = 1220)
[ 49.129041] dvb-usb: Hauppauge Nova-T 500 Dual DVB-T successfully initialized and connected.
[ 49.129071] usbcore: registered new interface driver dvb_usb_dib0700

Basically, what it says is that the firmware gets loaded (“dib0700: firmware started successfully“) and that the frontend gets registered (“MT2060: successfully identified“) and finally gets the card to work (“dvb-usb: Hauppauge Nova-T 500 Dual DVB-T successfully initialized and connected“)

If this is your case, you can happily go on and set up MythTV or <insert your favorite PVR system here>.

Otherwise, let’s do some debugging. Most often, you forgot to provide the system with the correct firmware file. Extract the file “dvb-usb-dib0700-01.fw” to /lib/firmware, nothing else. Make sure you got support for your dib0700 in the kernel configuration and that the kernel is really 2.6.19 or higher. If you get stuck, post a comment in the form on the bottom of the page, and I or one of my many readers will probably help you.

Your TV card should show up in the directory /dev/dvb (might vary on other systems than my Ubuntu installation) as two entries; adapter0 and adapter1 (This might also vary if you have more TV cards in the computer).

Now, configure the DVB card as you would with any card. I use MythTV, and those instructions can be found here. I don’t feel like writing another MythTV guide here, there are so many out there already.

Happy tuning!

Note that I never tried connecting the remote control, many readers have commented that the remote doesn’t work yet. You will need a third-party remote or do as I am doing and use another card with a remote control.

As a conclusion, I find the Nova-T 500 an excellent card with good support under Linux except for the remote control. The driver seems pretty new, though, so there are probably improvements and bugfixes on the way in new Linux versions. Still, with our computer, a 1.8 GHz with 768 MB of memory, we can now record three DVB-T streams simultaneously (using one Nova-T 500 and one older Nova-T card) without any problems at all.

I can only recommend this card, although it still requires some compiling to get working. I believe Ubuntu Feisty Fawn (in beta at the time of writing) has support for the card out of the box (but you still need the firmware).

If this guide was helpful, I would appreciate you leaving a comment here. Also comment if something doesn’t work or if you have additional suggestions. Thank you!

1. Ubuntu Linux 6.10 “Edgy Eft” First and foremost, there is a new version of Ubuntu Linux, the Linux distribution I use for my machine. Ubuntu releases a new version of the operating system bi-anually, so even though this was not any surprise to me, it is always fun to get a new system on your computer.
2. Firefox 2.0 This whopping new version of the web browser everybody should use, with a great new look and many new features. I remember back in 2003, when I first made the switch from the big, bloated Mozilla web browser to the then-called Firebird 0.6 web-browser. Great work, Firefox team! Oh, and if you still are using Internet Explorer 6, or even worse, version 7, switch to this web browser instead. Just click here!
3. MPD (Music Player Daemon) 0.12 Being my favourite music player for the Linux platform, the developers of this trusty platform have finally put together a new release. Horray for the included icecast support, which means that putting up a private internet radio station will be very easy. Read about setting up an internet radion station in my article.
4. MythTV 0.20 I use MythTV for my family’s TV computer setup. It is an almost complete system for watching and recording TV shows and easily managed from a remote control. The new version brings MythArchive, a program that I have high expectations on.

And for the more tragic release:

• Internet Explorer 7 Ugh. Use Firefox instead and make this world a better place!

That was all for tonight.