[rossdret]

BLUF: Looking for a practical (easy) solution to marry PVR (with EGT) into XBMC.

I would like to get MythTV working in XBMC and cannot figure out a solution to get the two to marry up. I even considered doing a dual boot and getting Ubuntu but realized that installs of XBMC and MythTv aren't that easy...also didn't see one that married all three.

I also looked at the windows version of MythTV but after the Install I got a missing DLL error. I am really racking my brain I thought this would be a little more simpler than this. So far this is way above my head, I often see compiling source code comments and get frightened.

Anyone that can help or steer me in the right direction ....I would be truly indebted to. I always try to read and figure things out on my own...but this is information overload for me....3 days and all dead ends.

[rdarwish]

I am happily running Debian Squeeze with MythTV 0.24 just fine. Granted, I am only recording off of ATSC over the air recordings, but it is all working happily together. I am using the tsp fork of XBMC available here: https://github.com/tsp/xbmc. I use XBMC for everything for the most part, but the PVR functionality is still in beta stages. I still use MythWeb to do all of my scheduling and maintenance of my mythtv backend, but I don't ever use mythfrontend for anything. However, what is in there is quite usable. Whatever recordings are in the machine are viewable through XBMC, with art and descriptions, and you can view/play them just like other media in your collection. You can also go through the guide as well, but in my experience, I haven't had too much luck in getting recordings scheduled through the XBMC interface to sync up with what MythTV thinks I want. But I am sure that will be fixed as the code gets integrated into the mainstream branch and more people are able to test and fix things.

I also have sickbeard, couch potato, transmission, samba, apache, and mediatomb all running on that same box. It's not exactly an amazingly powerful machine, but it runs smoothly, and I very rarely have to reboot for anything, often going for almost up to two months before a reboot.

I use two Hauppauge HVR-1600s for my tuners, and use one of them as the receiver for a Harmony 550 remote, and it all works great when set up as a MCE Remote. I do use another computer (Mac) to set up the remote using the Logitech software.

I have the audio running out to a stereo receiver through RCA cables, and the video running to a TV with DVI cable. I am able to play everything just fine, and haven't had any issues with formats or overworking the machine. After years and years of trial and error (Windows: Windows Media Center, GBPVR, SageTV, Linux: MythTV/MythFrontend, mplayer, other media players), this setup has been the most robust and proven the most capable of playing just about anything.

I have also found Debian to be the most stable and easiest to get set up the way that I want it to be. Others (Ubuntu, Mythbuntu) were easier to get installed, but were harder (for me) to customize the way that I wanted. Debian is clean enough to only install what you want from the beginning, but still capable of allowing you to remove and add stuff later on without too many problems.

This is just my experience and these are just my opinions, so others may disagree, but I hope that this helps to give you a bit of focus in your search. And remember, the journey is the fun part! Sometimes I miss all of the problems that I had getting to this point because of the fun I had in figuring out how to get it all going together. Now, the system is pretty self-sufficient, and I have all of my media updated all the time without much input/work on my part.