Setting up IceTV XMLTV in 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 Support.

Contents

1. Requirements
2. Setting up your EPG
3. Installation of the IceTV XMLTV grabber into MythBuntu
4. 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. If you install Myth using a distribution like MythBuntu, these will be installed for you automatically. See our section on MythBuntu below.
3. If you are using an alternate version of Myth, you can download a copy of the IceTV Perl Grabber here. General Myth setup instructions are close to MythBuntu, so please follow the relevant steps in our MythBuntu setup section.

Download IceTV Perl Grabber

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 Region's guide data you need, complete the following steps:

1. Go to My Account > Guide Settings from the menu on the IceTV website.
2. Enter your IceTV Member ID and Password if asked to login.
3. Select your Region from the drop down menu.
4. Confirm that the channels listed are the TV channels you receive in your location and then click on the "Save Settings" button on the page.

3. Installation of the IceTV XMLTV grabber into MythBuntu

We recommend MythBuntu, but you can use any distribution of MythTV with IceTV. These instructions were written for MythBuntu 10.04, but the grabber works with any recent version of MythTV.

1. Download and Install MythBuntu from the MythBuntu home page.
2. Once installed, run the Terminal program to download and install the IceTV XML grabber program.
   1. Click on the Applications menu, then Accessories, then Terminal
   2. Enter the following command to download and install the IceTV XML grabber program. Enter your admin password when prompted

   sudo wget -P /usr/bin https://static.icetv.com.au/downloads/tv_grab_au_icetv
   sudo chmod 755 /usr/bin/tv_grab_au_icetv

   1. Close the terminal by typing 'exit' or closing the window.
3. Run MythTV setup program from the Applications menu, System, then MythTV Backend Setup. Stop the MythBackend and enter your admin password if prompted.
4. Check the second page under the General menu (first option). Change the channel region to Australia. Change the Timezone to Auto.
5. Setup your video capture card under option 2 as per the MythTV instructions.
6. Go into option 3 (Input Sources). This is where you will setup the IceTV data source.

1. Create a new video source. Give it a name like 'IceTV' in the top box.
2. In the Listings Grabber section, select "Australia (IceTV)(xmltv). If you don't see this option, check you have correctly downloaded the tv_grab_au_ice program and set the correct permissions as per above.

1. Click on Configure.
2. Enter your IceTV User ID and Password.
3. The IceTV grabber will contact our servers and retrieve the list of channels setup under your User ID. Write down each channel and the ID's listed as you will need these later. These are referred to as the XMLTV ID's by MythTV. If needed, you can use the scrollbar to scroll down.
   If you lose this page, you can see the IDs on your computer's browser by viewing the User Channels page while logged in. If asked to login, enter your IceTV username and password into your browser login popup. 

1. Press Enter, then select "Finish".
2. Select "Finish" on the next page to create your new Video Source.
3. Go into the fourth setup option ("Input Connections") and link your capture card to the IceTV video source that you just setup. Do this by changing the Video Source dropdown to the name you used for the IceTV guide in the previous step.
4. Click the "Scan for channels" button and do a full scan.

1. Once all your channels have been scanned, the XMLTV ID's will need to be set.
2. From the main setup menu, choose 'Edit Channels'. From the Channel Editor page, press Enter on each channel in turn.
3. For each channel, do the following. This will link the channel to the guide data.
   1. Locate the XMLTV ID field.
   2. Enter the XMLTV ID number that you wrote down for this channel in the setup procedure above.
   3. Click on Next past the other setup pages for this channel, and Finish.
   4. Move to the next channel.

1. Normally there is only one set of guide data for each channel, even though some channels send the same programs to multiple channels. For example Seven Digital has three channels (7, 70 and 71 in Capital Cities; 6, 60, 61 in Regional areas), which generally have the same programming, plus 7TWO and 7mate. You only need to link one channel to the XMLTVID. For example link just channel 7 (or channel 6 depending on your region) to the Channel 7 XMLTV ID, and not 71 and 73. For the duplicate channels, you can turn off the "Visible in Guide" so they won't show up in the EPG.

4. Using the Guide

1. To browse the guide: Select "Manage Recording", then select "Schedule Recordings" 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 the MythTV section of our forum or contact IceTV Support.