Python and MythTV (a MythTV Front-End) - iPhone remote for MythTV | Legatissimo.info - hzgn.com

HZGN.COM
welcome to my space

Welcome to:hzgn.com

hzgn.com

HOME

Homepage

Add to favorites

NAVIGATION -

HOME

Python and MythTV (a MythTV Front-End)
Published by: rose 2009-01-07

i recently setup mythtv and am waiting for my pvr-250 tv tuner card to arrive. while i wait, i have setup the xbox version of mythtv that runs linux but was a bit disappointed. it takes a long time to boot up and a lot of the features are already handled by xbmc (e.g. weather, games, music, videos, dvd). the only additional feature that i currently want to use is the ability to view recorded tv shows, program recordings, delete recordings, look at tv schedule. as a result, i started playing with the python interpreter in xbmc.

after writing some scripts, i have a few questions. i'm new to python (just learned it on the weekend) so if the language supports something natively, i might not have discovered this yet so go easy on me.

1. does the xbmc version of python provide hooks to access smb shares natively? i found a pure python implementation of the smb client side protocol and have been able to get that working nicely but i was just wondering if there already exists a way to do this? i know that xbmc.player() can access files over smb shares if the "url" is constructed properly but i haven't found a way to do this using, for example, nt.listdir(dir).

2. xbmc obviously parses xml. is this exposed anywhere in the python interpreter? in order to bootstrap to the mysql database, i need a place to store the hostname, database name, user, and password. i was thinking of adding this to my xboxmediacenter.xml file. if there was a way for python scripts to get access to the parsed config file or to call the xml parser on a file, that would be handy.

3. does anyone know of a pure python mysql client interface module? in order to learn python, i wrote a python module that supports connecting and authenticating to mysql over a socket, select, insert, update, and deleting of rows in the database, creating and dropping databases. it does what i need it to do and i'm willing to contribute this to the project... but i'd like to add some more documentation to it and use it in a useful script so that i can make sure i'm happy with the api. if there already exists such a beast, then there's no point in me working any further on it.

4. i ran into a weird problem with the following code:

import xbmc

filename = "smb://banshee/videos/foobar.avi"
xbmc.player().play(filename)

the avi starts to play as expected but when i hit stop on the xbox remote, the screen goes black and the xbmc interface never comes back. i haven't waited to see what happens when the entire avi finishes. i am using the march 9, 2004 build... is this a known problem? if you replace the avi file with a mp3 file, it seems to work fine. any ideas?

5. someone mentioned in the forum about having buttons bound to python scripts... it would be fantastic if a user could add a button to the main xbmc menu (e.g. mythtv) that launches a python script. at the moment, the only way i could launch my scripts is to go into the settings ->scripts screen and pick the name of my script. i tried creating a shortcut to the python script so that i could pick the shortcut under programs but this did not work. i tried placing my python script in an apps folder but it didn't work either. is there any other way to launch a python script other than through the settings screen?

keep up the great work on the python interface! the possibilities are endless...

hi,

i had this problem a while back. i narrowed it down to the fact that mplayer doesn't support the current .nuv files that are generated by the latest version of mythtv. i did spot a supposed patch for mplayer to fix this but i could not get it to work.

how did i get around this? what i did was spend my money on a hauppage pvr 350 tv card. with this card mythtv records .nuv files that are viewable in mplayer. how come? well, because the pvr 350 actually creates an mpeg file and mythtv just renames it as a .nuv. mplayer is clever enough to work out that the file is really a plain mpeg file and plays it.

hope this helps, took me ages to work all this out !!

i see values like:

t�l�journal

from that value, the mythweb module gets the following:

t�l�journal

how do i convert it so that python will output it correctly? i tried using the unicode() function to convert the string but kept getting exceptions that the ordinal is not in range... anyone else figured this out?
madtw, mysql stores 'special chars' afaik in utf-8 format. to get the correct string in python you should use

unicode (thestring, 'utf-8')

i just saw your message today... haven't read the board for a few days.

which version of xbmc are you using? i have no idea why you have to copy everything into the same file to get it all to work... if you are using the same version as i am, then it doesn't really make sense why it isn't working.

did you ftp the files into the correct location? gui.py, smb.py, nmb.py, mysql.py, simplexml.py, mytvcfg.py should be in /python/lib but mytv.py and mytvsettings.py should be in the /scripts dir.

if you can't play the .nuv files over a smb share then obviously mytv.py won't work either. did you try playing a ringbuf.nuv file or an actual recorded program (e.g. 1014_20040414213000_20040414220000.nuv file)?

which tuner card do you have? i am using a hauppauge ntsc pvr250 and i record in mpeg2 format at 480x480. 720x480 also worked for me. i haven't tried rtjpeg or mpeg4 because i don't want to use extra cpu cycles transcoding.

which version of mythtv are you using? i am running version 0.14 compiled from a tar ball with no problems...

are you going to have a yes/no dialog box pop-up at the end of a recording?

instead of playing a show when you select a show from the recorded show window, i was thinking of having a popup window that gives you the option to "play recorded show", "delete recorded show", or "cancel".

at the moment, there is no way for a python script to know when the player finishes. darkie mentioned that he was trying to think of a way for this to be possible but i haven't heard anything since.

i didn't even think to try linksboks... :d

update to a later xbmc build, the build you have is missing some things in python

i'm still having troubles getting these scripts to run with any of the xbmc versions i have. i can get the settings script to run without a problem, but all other scripts terminate immediately except for the mytv.py script which simply hangs xbmc.

i have a feeling this is because the builds i'm getting don't have the python directory and i'm using an older version of the files in the python directory (from a 4/23 build). do i need to somehow find a xbmc build that distributes the python stuff as well? if anyone could pm me where to find such a thing i would be very greatful. this is driving me nuts.

tim

count me in in the interested people :)
xboxmediacenter + mythtv is a killer duo
alright... i have updated the scripts for mythtv 0.15.1. you can't schedule shows yet through the tv listings screen but that will be the next area of focus unless problems are found with the other screens. you can grab the latest version from here (http://changeling.ixionstudios.com/xbmc).

i'm having trouble with the 5/3 cvs build of xbmc using the 0.6 version of the mythtv scripts. i can run the settings script fine but when i access 'my tv' xbmp just hangs.

any suggestions?

is there any logging that can/is done anywhere? i didn't see anything in the xbmc standard log.

looking forward to seeing this work!

tim

hi madtw,

i'm trying to get your myth-support to work, but i'm having a lot of trouble. the 0.2pre4 version won't even start - getting the exception:

system error: null result without error in pyobject_call
in file ..., line 1 "import gui"

the 0.2pre3 version starts up fine, but when i try to play a recorded show, xbmc either dies or just plays wired sounds. no exception in the python output. i think my settings (including smb are ok).

i'm working on a new version of xmbc (compiled yesterday) and i tried all kinds of tv formats (including 480x480). i'm working on pal.

would be happy for any help!!!!

thanks,

michael

ok - i played around with the .nuv files. even as a plain smb share, i cannot play those files. i get the same syntoms as with the mythtv support - i either just hear some scratching noises, or xbnc hangs. can anybody which format to use?

i tried pal 384x288, 384x576, 480x480. i also tried rtjpeg and mpeg4 codec. i didn't play around with the audio codec yet....

also i still get the same null error when i try to use the 0.2pre4 version of mytv.

please help,

michael

great release madtw :)
if you need any help... i'll gladly give up some time in the coding effort to bring this to mythtv frontend like standards

from bugs.txt
- 07-05-2004 fixed: creating dialogs with python crashes xbmc

and that is exactly the problem you're seeing :) .

thanks darkie for the quick reply and the info.

stickman thanks for the info. at the moment, i'm focusing on getting access to the mythtv information in the database without using the mythtv protocol. the main driver for this is so that i can watch recorded shows without firing up the full blown linux mythtv frontend on the xbox. also, i'd like to be able to view tv listings on the xbox and since mythtv has it all in the database already, i might as well grab it from there instead of hitting zap2it again.

eventually, i'd like to get scheduling, etc. working... so at some point i'll have to delve into the protocol.

anyway, for those interested, here (http://changeling.ixionstudios.com/xbmc/xbmc_mythtv-0.1.tar.gz) is a tar file containing the mysql python module that i wrote... it also includes the pysmb modules for accessing smb/cifs remote file systems.

i just put together a new cut of xbmc mythtv from the cvs repository. you can grab it from the usual link http://changeling.ixionstudios.com/xbmc/.

1. when you select a program, it starts playing (you can hear the audio) but it does not display the video. you have to press x or display to see the video playing.

yeah, i've noticed that too... there isn't much that i can do about it in the script as far as i can tell (maybe someone can correct me if i'm wrong). i think it is an xbmc issue in that it sets focus to the python script window instead of the player screen even though the python window was closed in the code. it might also be related to the window close issue i posted about earlier... where the window seems to get events even after a close. darkie any ideas on what i can do in the python code to fix this?

2. when i press stop or reach the end of the video, the whole thing freezes and the screen goes black. i can't get back to xbmc or play the tv program anymore.

this is a known issue with python. darkie said that it has been fixed in cvs but we need to get a new build of the python library to fix the problem. hopefully someone will do that soon...

here's a simple little patch for gui.py so it stretches the background to the right size on pal systems:

def ( self, title, width=-1, height=-1 ):
if width == -1:
width = self.getwidth()

if height == -1:
height = self.getheight()

self.width = width
self.height = height

this way it uses the default size of the screen rather than hard-coded values.

i can help test the scripts for you but i only have the xbmc build from 3/9/2004.

i wasn't sure by your comment if you meant the xml stuff or if you meant the mythtv stuff. if you want to test the mythtv stuff, i started on the 3/9/2004 build and i think it is fine or at least as good as the 3/16/2004 build. i switched to the unofficial 3/16/2004 build hoping that it would include the stuff that darkie added but it didn't.

oh well... patience. :)

30-05-2004 02:20:53 * file "q:\scripts\mytv.py", line 84, in ?
30-05-2004 02:20:53 * * mythtv.conn = mythtv.connection(
30-05-2004 02:20:53 * file "q:\python\lib\mythtv.py", line 52, in
30-05-2004 02:20:53 * * raise serverexception, reply
30-05-2004 02:20:53 serverexception: ['reject', '8']

thats the error im getting. *i had been having the dumb cant access errors, finally got them worked out. *i just started using my mythtv box so im sure im missing something. *any ideas about this? *im using a cvs build from 5/24/04 python 1.3, and ill be testing it with a build from 5/30/04 here in a bit. *ill see if that helps any at all. *tia.

sigtom
i believe this is refering to the myth protocol version being out of sync. you are probably using a recent mythtv cvs version or have just installed the new 0.15 release, which the myth.py script can't handle yet.

i had problems as well when i tried the 5/3 build. even this script caused xbmc to hang:

import traceback, xbmcgui

dlg = xbmcgui.dialog()
dlg.ok( "info", "hello world" )
del dlg

so i reverted back to the 4/27 build and everything seemed to work fine after i deleted the tdata directory for xbmc. i didn't try deleting the dir when i tried the 5/3 build so maybe that's why it was hanging. i've been meaning to try a newer build but haven't gotten around to it...

i just upgraded my mythtv box to .15.1 and my xbmc-mythtv files to .10. so far most everything is working (view recordings and play recordings). one strange thing is happening in the recorded show listings. the list of series to the left is repeating. so i am getting:

all programs
family guy
simpsons
all programs
family guy
simpsons
all programs
family guy
simpsons
etc...

is this a bug? maybe this is noticable since i currently only have 2 shows recorded. normally there would be shows from 10+ series.

thanks for all the hard work!

i've been thinking about this for some time. recently i suggested adding mythtv frontend support as a feature, but maybe it will be possible to implement at least the main features through python.

i assume you already might know this, or maybe there's even better documentation, but i'll link (http://winmyth.sourceforge.net/mythprotocol.html) it anyway.

as soon as you have some working code i'll beta test it for you and i'll try to help to improve it :)

have you started something with livetv yet?
i have been able to watch live tv through xbmc. the way i did this was to create a symbolic link to /dev/video0 in the myth recorded show directory (the dir that is shared over samba to xbmc). then i launched the xbmc player on that link. the drawbacks with this are:

- the player steals all input events while it is active
- as a result channel switching had to be done through a pc
- no on screen display to show channel number, show info, etc. like the myth front end

if someone added a python callback to the xbmc player, it might be possible to build channel switching into live tv. i was thinking of a calback where a return value of 0 indicates that the event was consumed by the python script and a value of 1 indicates that the player should process the event as normal. this would allow the python script to trap certain input events and pass other events on to the player. (comments darkie?)

in order to do custom osd, maybe an api to the player's subtitles capabilities could be used. i don't know enough of the internals of the player to know if this would work or not...

streamed playback would be the best approach for doing this so that the myth protocol could be used but is a magnitude more difficult to implement (if i was guessing). not to mention it would be very specific to myth so i don't think it would be something that would be high on the xbmc developers' list.

i'm using more or less the current version of xbmc (tried a few versions...)

about the .nuv files - i just got a wintv pvr 250 and it works. seems that xbmc is only supporting mpeg2 .nuv files.

about the library problem - i tried almost everything. i have no idea what's going wrong. i can load libraries from xbmc, but i have no access to your stuff. at one point i had the 0.2pre3 version working with library support - then i just copied the 0.2pre4 version over it and since then nothing is working again.

i want to play around with your python files (i'm pretty new to phyton). so if i will code something, i will just go with the big file solution..... will be on vacation next week anyways, so it might take some time - maybe till then i found out how to use libraries.....

have you started something with livetv yet?

ok, i got it working. i had to use the python.rar from 2/12/2004. the one in cvs does not work apparently. now i'm having another problem though. only some of my recordings show up (the newest ones). the older ones aren't there. not a big deal, just giving you a heads up.

tom
i haven't noticed that issue with any of my recordings. the recorded show screen does a join on the channel and the recorded tables using the chanid. my guess is that join is broken because of bad data. can you run the query that mytvrecorded.py runs using a mysql client? compare the count of the rows returned by the query to the count of the rows in the recorded show table. if the count is different, then some shows will be dropped because the join is broken because of bad data. if it is the same, then compare against the number of .nuv files on the filesystem. if the counts are different, then you're database is missing some entries. if everything looks good with the counts in the database and filesystem, then it could be a problem with the script...

also, the scripts have been run using mythtv 0.14 and a fairly recent cvs build (myth protocol version 4 - latest is version 5+). if you are using a different version, then you're on new ground.

thanks, will give it a spin tomorrow :)

whats the status of this? i'm interested in setting this up and im just wondering if this project is dead or if theres still development being done.

madtw, mysql stores 'special chars' afaik in utf-8 format. to get the correct string in python you should use

unicode (thestring, 'utf-8')

i already tried this before posting about it above. apparently it is not utf-8 because exceptions are raised by python. the '�' character causes an exception to be raised.

anyway, the solution i have in place seems to be working... thanks for the suggestion though.

i just tried xbox-myth 0.9 with the 2004-05-15 build of xbmc. when i access the recorded shows everything freezes.

apparently, you are not running xbmc_mythtv-0.9 because the deprecation warning was fixed in that version by adding the following comment at the top of the gui.py source file:

# -*- coding: iso-8859-1 -*-

the warning is about some characters that are in comments. you can delete the offending lines or add the comment above to silence python. since you are still getting that warning, i don't think you installed everything correctly or you installed an old version or you didn't reboot xbmc after installing the latest version.

i get the future warnings as well... i did not write smb.py and i'm not sure what the correct fix is until python 2.4 comes along so that is why they are still in the source. to be honest, i haven't spent any time looking at it because the module works despite the future warning in that module... in fact, i'm not convinced that those warnings will cause problems even in python 2.4 since the functions that use those constants aren't used for playback or for copying a smb file.

a friend was having similar problems as you and i am still trying to figure out how to fix his install. my install of build 2004-05-15 by untermensch works fine. you might want to look into why you are getting warnings when you shouldn't... and verify that you are using the same build or maybe newer.

jswu: cool... i think i'll add the ability to delete recordings soon as well. i've been finding myself using the web interface to delete stuff but it would be handy to be able to do it from the xbmc after watching the show. :)

just gave it a try. everything is working and looking great! good job!

i have been using xbmc-mythtv to view my mythtv recordings and then using the mythtv web interface to schedule and delete my recordings. thanks!

hi, i am trying to get this thing to work but i always get the "socket is not connected" error. i do have smb working fine. ( am watching movies from smb server)

xbmc_mythtv: xbmc_mythtv-0.12
mythtv ver: 0.16 (protocol: 13)
xbmc ver: 1.0.0 09-10-04

the error message i got when press "tv guide" and "recorded shows" --> 10057, socket is not connected.

"status" button works fine tho.

my xbmc_mythtv configuration:
protocol: 13
path prefix: smb://urban:password@192.168.2.35/mythtv

any help will be much appreciated.

travis

hi there.

first of all, thanks ohhhh thanks for this script. mythtv is awesome, but booting xebian just for watching recorded shows is really annoying... now there's a solution :)

anyhow, i still have a little problem using it (but it doesn't seems to be xbmc myth related).

if i try to watch a recorded show, at best i have some weird sounds that is video sound with some extra noise. at worst, it doesn't do anything.

i got this if i try to launch a show from xbmc myth, but it does the same if i launch directly the file from the smb share from the video selection... i double checked, nuv files are associated with video (i run xbmc 1.1.0, latest available from avalaunch, mplayer 1.0pre5-3.3.3 of 2004/10/17)

any clue?

thanks in advance, and thanks one more time for this wonderfull feature.

so i must be missing something. *i've got a mythtv backend running, i've got xbmc running. *i've got access to the setup menu options and can even pull in listings of my recorded shows. *when i click on an episode to play it, i get an error that says "'(cannot connect tree, errclass:1 and errcode:5)',1,5"

should the samba share point to my /myth directory or to the /myth/tv directory or some other directory? *i've curious to compare the output quality with the xbox myth setups i've tried. *any help would be appreciated.

btw, i've been able to access the samba share from my windows machine and can read the files just fine.

http://winmyth.sourceforge.net/mythprotocol.html

there's information about the protocol they use there. hopefully that will help you out.

tom

i was having a problem with the buttons along the top (power off, home, reboot, credits) - it seemed the button images were mis-matched to the commands. anyway, it problem was in the home.xml in the mediacenter skin that came with one of the xbmc-mythtv archives. i cleaned it up to fix the problem. madtw, if it is not already fixed, i can email you the xml file if you want it.

hmmm... as far as i can tell, the font displays those characters as a big square. even '*' doesn't render nicely. i think all that is needed is a replacement font... but i could be mistaken. darkie, is there something i can do in the script to fix this?
all xbmc labels (buttons / lists/ etc) in python support both normal strings and unicode strings. so the best way is to convert from utf-8 to unicode and use that unicode string

i believe this is refering to the myth protocol version being out of sync. you are probably using a recent mythtv cvs version or have just installed the new 0.15 release, which the myth.py script can't handle yet.
tharvey:

yeah im running 0.15, forgot to include that in my post. ill wait to see if/when 0.15 is working with xbmc, and fire it up then. thanks for letting me know.

1. when you select a program, it starts playing (you can hear the audio) but it does not display the video. you have to press x or display to see the video playing.

2. when i press stop or reach the end of the video, the whole thing freezes and the screen goes black. i can't get back to xbmc or play the tv program anymore.

looks like the latest build resolved these problems! thanks darkie and whoever else fixed those issues. i haven't had a chance to try the virtual keyboard yet... but i'll get back to it this weekend.

i haven't made much progress over the last couple of days because i was busy getting the tuner card working in linux 2.6.4. everything is working great now so i'll get back to python scripting.

bheremans: thanks for the link... that comes in handy for learning the mythtv protocol.

i think this is great idea. thank you for doing this.

i can help test the scripts for you but i only have the xbmc build from 3/9/2004.

i wasn't sure by your comment if you meant the xml stuff or if you meant the mythtv stuff. *if you want to test the mythtv stuff, i started on the 3/9/2004 build
i meant the mythtv stuff. i downloaded the 0.2 xbmc-mythtv files from your site, and was able to get everything running. i needed to install the python.rar files. i also needed to include the username/password for the tv recording folder on my mythtv box in the mytv.xml smb setting.

excellent work! it was able to query the mysql db and get a list of recorded tv programs and access the tv program share when i selected a program. but a couple issues:
1. when you select a program, it starts playing (you can hear the audio) but it does not display the video. you have to press x or display to see the video playing.
2. when i press stop or reach the end of the video, the whole thing freezes and the screen goes black. i can't get back to xbmc or play the tv program anymore.

ok, thank you. i'll look into the log file later tonight.

davidred: could you do an 1080i version as well?
i am using the project mayhem skin as well

google mythtv, theres your answer.

1. does the xbmc version of python provide hooks to access smb shares natively? *i found a pure python implementation of the smb client side protocol and have been able to get that working nicely but i was just wondering if there already exists a way to do this? *i know that xbmc.player() can access files over smb shares if the "url" is constructed properly but i haven't found a way to do this using, for example, nt.listdir(dir).
no, this is not possible.
2. xbmc obviously parses xml. *is this exposed anywhere in the python interpreter? *in order to bootstrap to the mysql database, i need a place to store the hostname, database name, user, and password. *i was thinking of adding this to my xboxmediacenter.xml file. *if there was a way for python scripts to get access to the parsed config file or to call the xml parser on a file, that would be handy.
python has some xml parser modules in it's library but i haven't add those yet to python for xbmc (just forgot to add it, but will do it soon).
if you read some documentation on www.python.org you will see that there is support for xml files.
3. does anyone know of a pure python mysql client interface module? *in order to learn python, i wrote a python module that supports connecting and authenticating to mysql over a socket, select, insert, update, and deleting of rows in the database, creating and dropping databases. *it does what i need it to do and i'm willing to contribute this to the project... but i'd like to add some more documentation to it and use it in a useful script so that i can make sure i'm happy with the api. *if there already exists such a beast, then there's no point in me working any further on it.
there is a pure mysql python client but it is only available as a python dll module. and if there is only one big problem left for python it is loading dll modules and especially if they are not compiled for the xbox. so currently not possible.
and if you want to share what you already have, please. i think a lot of other user find this usefull.
the avi starts to play as expected but when i hit stop on the xbox remote, the screen goes black and the xbmc interface never comes back. *i haven't waited to see what happens when the entire avi finishes. *i am using the march 9, 2004 build... is this a known problem? *if you replace the avi file with a mp3 file, it seems to work fine. *any ideas? fixed in current cvs
5. someone mentioned in the forum about having buttons bound to python scripts... it would be fantastic if a user could add a button to the main xbmc menu (e.g. mythtv) that launches a python script. *at the moment, the only way i could launch my scripts is to go into the settings ->scripts screen and pick the name of my script. *i tried creating a shortcut to the python script so that i could pick the shortcut under programs but this did not work. *i tried placing my python script in an apps folder but it didn't work either. *is there any other way to launch a python script other than through the settings screen?
binding scripts to buttons is possible. have a look at cvs/skinning.txt. somewhere at the end of the document there is this
button control:

*<control>
...
...
<script>q:\scripts\update_tvguide.py</script>
*</control>

i'm running a mythtv backend with a dvb-t receiver, and i've been using xbmc to play the .nuv files back manually - i just found this project, you can imagine my delight. :)

however, whilst the "mytvsettings.py" script executes fine (i've set up all the appropriate options), the "mytv.py" script always terminates with a "typeerror: unsupported operand type(s) for +: 'int' and 'tuple' ". i'm running a cvs build from 9/4/04, i've also tried a cvs build from 1/4/04 with the same problem.

looking at the debug log, the problem looks to be in the mysql.py library. i get some debug just prior to the error, specifically:

file "q:\python\lib\mysql.py", line 655, in __getstringandseekpos

iPhone remote for MythTV | Legatissimo.info::
I also tried installing some cgi and python apache mods using apt-get. mythtv's frontend is set up correctly already as well, as i tested it with the
http://www.legatissimo.info/node/355HOME

MythTV - O2S Wiki::
Jan 11, 2008 Start mythfrontend (Applications > Multimedia > MythTV Frontend) and change the following settings (under "Utilities / Setup > Setup"):
http://o2s.csail.mit.edu/o2s-wiki/MythTVHOME

*tmpstring = self.msg[self.position:self.position + length]

i'm a coder by day, i've had a go at tracking it down but haven't had much luck, i'm not familiar with pyton and there doesn't seem to be any elegant way of debugging it in xbmc. any ideas you guys have would be appreciated!

meanwhile i think i'll start to study up on python, if i can get this thing going i can see myself wasting hours helping to extend it. :) the default mythtv front-end isn't exactly fault-tolerant, it's a pain to boot via linux, and i've found xbmc's playback to be far better anyway.

is this still in the works coz the links are dead (or i'm trying to download from the wrong place :( )
i was thinking of setting up a mythtv box and if development of this addon is still goin well i probably will *:d
still works for me. are you downloading from http://changeling.ixionstudios.com/xbmc/?

thanks for the feedback... i made the changes you mentioned. at the moment there is a lot of hard coding for ntsc. if you have any other pal friendly changes, pass them on and i'll try to include them.

i just installed the 2004-04-13 build of xbmc. you can grab the latest changes from here (http://changeling.ixionstudios.com/xbmc/).

this version is much smaller because the xbmc release i got had a bunch of the .png files extracted in the skin directory. that means i can probably remove the explicit pathing to the files from my scripts in the long term if the files get included in textures.xpr but for now i just removed the files from my release.

once the functionality is rich, i'll try to figure out how to make the script more skin friendly.

fyi... made a small bug fix. if you have problems quitting out of some screens (i.e. it doesn't let you go to the previous screen by hitting back), grab the latest version from the usual (http://changeling.ixionstudios.com/xbmc/) place.

count me in in the interested people :)
xboxmediacenter + mythtv is a killer duo

i did find a possible bug. if i select a show from my remote control and select it again before the show details screen comes up, i get an "invalid literal for init(): ok" error. after that happens, i get errors for anything that i select.
yep, i have fixed it in cvs but haven't made a new release yet. the problem stems from the fact that onaction() and oncontrol() callbacks are threaded and if you store anything on the stack, it can become outdated very quickly. i'll try to put together a new release shortly...
what is this 'tdata' directory thing? i've never heard of that... where is it?
the e:\tdata\0face008 directory stores xbmc settings. sometimes if you don't delete this directory when upgrading, it causes xbmc to hang or behave erratically. the last known build to work with the xbmc mythtv scripts is 4/27. i haven't had time to test a newer upgrade so if someone else has, please post about it.
it seems it badly displays non ascii strings
like �� that are translated to 2 symbols (bad utf8 handling ?)
hmmm... as far as i can tell, the font displays those characters as a big square. even '*' doesn't render nicely. i think all that is needed is a replacement font... but i could be mistaken. darkie, is there something i can do in the script to fix this?

should the samba share point to my /myth directory or to the /myth/tv directory or some other directory? *i've curious to compare the output quality with the xbox myth setups i've tried. *any help would be appreciated.

point it to the folder where the tv recordings are, so /myth/tv. if you need a username/password to access your samba share, you will also need to include that in the path (smb://user:password@ip/share/)

fyi... here (http://changeling.ixionstudios.com/xbmc) is a new pre-release version of the mythtv frontend for xbmc. this version includes a gui settings screen as well as mythtv recorded show playback. any issues/comments are welcome.

that worked a treat! thanks very much. i was also getting a problem in mytv.py at the start of "displayshow" where "channel" is set, i don't have "callsign"s set up for the channels and i was getting a string concatenation error. i've patched my local copy to ignore callsigns for now. thanks again! :d

i have tried to get this running but i keep getting the below error. anyone have any ideas or thoughts on what i can do to fix this.

traceback:
file "q:\scripts\mytvsettings.py", line 1, in ?
import gui
file "q:\python\lib\gui.py", line 410, in ?
class dialog( xbmcgui.dialog ):
attributeerror: 'module' object has no attrivute 'dialog'

the python file that i am running is python23.zlib and xbmc is from 8-7-04

i figured out my problem... basically i'm an idiot. *i wasn't updating xbmc properly as my bios requires me to rename the xbe from default.xbe to evoxdash.xbe and i was forgetting to do that.

once i pulled my head out, and properly updated xbmc (running 5/26 cvs now, with python.rar v1.3 and xbmc-mythtv 0.9) everything seems to be working as it should, including popup dialogs from scripts! my original problem was that i had not allowed access to the mythconverg database from any machine and the error dialog was crashing xbmc as i had an old cvs version.

tim

what is the secret to getting a host value to 'stick' in settings? i can change/modify all the other values, but no matter what i put in host, it's always blank when i open settings back up. also tried putting it in the mytvsettings.py file, but it's still blank when i run the script and go to settings.

i completely wiped out xbmc, and reinstalled it from the version avalaunch installs for you (1.0 (05.09)), so i'm assuming this is the september 5th release? running mythtv version 16 (so protocol 13, right?)

i've installed xebian and mythtv frontend on my xbox already (so i know the connectivity to my backend works), but if i can avoid that one minute bootup and just use xbmc that would be great. well, i can watch them now using xbmc, but it's hard figuring out the show you want to watch with file names like 1047_20040930223000_20040930230000.nuv!

thanks for any help on this...

here's the error i get now. it says (running) for a second next to the script. i unrared python.rar into my xbmc/python directory. xbmc is my main frontend so it's on my c:\. any ideas?

18-05-2004 23:52:48 traceback (most recent call last):
18-05-2004 23:52:48 file "q:\scripts\mytvsettings.py", line 1, in ?
18-05-2004 23:52:48
18-05-2004 23:52:48 import gui
18-05-2004 23:52:48 systemerror
18-05-2004 23:52:48 :
18-05-2004 23:52:48 null result without error in pyobject_call
18-05-2004 23:52:48
have you ftp'd all the python files in python/lib that were included in the xbmc_mythtv-0.9 package? if not, then that explains why the import is failing.

can you run other python scripts successfully? if not, then it sounds like you either have a bad build or the python support files weren't installed correctly.

other than that, i don't know what else to suggest except try a different build... the builds that i have been using are about 23.8mb compressed in size and python has already been setup correctly. i have noticed some builds coming out at 16mb or so... these usually don't have python included.

once you get python working properly, you'll need to run the mytvsettings.py once to supply info specific to your config. after that is done, you should run mytv.py. the other .py files in the scripts directory won't do anything... they will eventually be moved to the python/lib dir or included in one of the files in that directory. it is just easier to debug them as separate scripts at the moment...

i haven't had a chance to upgrade to mythtv 0.16 yet so it is possible that it won't work if something has changed since 0.15. the status information is pulled from the myth status port which is totally different from all other screens so it appears that nothing has changed with status but something is different on the main backend port.

[ubuntu/intrepid] mythtv 0.21.0+fixes18722-0ubuntu1 (Accepted)::
Oct 16, 2008 libmyth-python mythtv-backend-master ubuntu-mythtv-frontend for transcoding MythTV tasks ubuntu-mythtv-frontend - Metapackage to
http://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/intrepid-changes/2008-October/008823.htmlHOME

mythtv 0.21.0+fixes18207-0ubuntu6 (source) in Ubuntu::
In order to be useful, it requires a mythtv-frontend installation, either on the same This package contains files needed for some python MythTV add-ons.
http://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/mythtv/0.21.0+fixes18207-0ubuntu6HOME

the scripts have been tested with mythtv 0.15.1 (protocol 8).

if you have logging enabled in xbmc, then it might be useful to have a look at the xbmc.log file to see what the call stack was when it got the exception. you could also enable debug in the scripts if you're familiar with python code.

otherwise, you'll have to wait until i can upgrade and test the scripts using mythtv 0.16 - unless someone else has figured things out already and can post the fixes.

i had a quick look at the code that causes the typeerror exception to be raised. struct.unpack() returns a list instead of a scalar value. if you add [0] after each call to struct.unpack(), hopefully it will work.

i was fairly new to python when i ported the code in mysql.py from a perl module and didn't really test all scenarios as thoroughly as i would've liked. my main goal was to get database access working for what i needed.

given that all the struct.unpack calls were incorrect in that function, i wouldn't be surprised if you hit some other problems in the untested code. you can enable debug in the mysql module by adding "debug=1" to the parameter list when the mysql.connection() object is constructed in mytv.py.

let me know if you run into any other problems so i can fix the module...

is this still in the works coz the links are dead (or i'm trying to download from the wrong place :( )
i was thinking of setting up a mythtv box and if development of this addon is still goin well i probably will :d
the link jswu posted is still valid and will probably be valid for a while.

development was just recently started on this and i intend to continue working on it over time.

i upgraded to mythtv 0.16 this evening and have uploaded a new version of the scripts. i haven't done a whole lot of testing but it appears to be working. you can grab it from the usual (http://changeling.ixionstudios.com/xbmc/) place. oddly enough, this release is version 0.13 that coincides with myth protocol version 13 that is supported by the latest mythtv. ;)
@madtv:
damn good job! this is exactly what i'm looking for! :bowdown:
using mythtv 0.16 as standalone-server, xbmc cvs and your xmbc_mythtv-0.13 here...working great!

what about translations? i'm working now on german translation for your xbmc_mythtv. any plans to integrate language specific subdirs for the next version?

will post when done translating... think, i'm done this afternoon (gmt+1)...

-
larry

just to let you know that translation to german language is finished (so far). had to include some very small changes to design.
thanks. i grabbed the file. i need to go through the code and change all hard coded text to do language lookups using xbmc.getlocalizedstring(). that's the proper way to do translations so that the code doesn't need to be modified. your translations will be useful for creating a german language file.

hey! great job. i just tried xbmc_mythtv 0.7 on a 2004-05-09 build of xbmc.

i have tried viewing the recorded shows, playing shows, saving and deleting shows. all works great!

i did find a possible bug. if i select a show from my remote control and select it again before the show details screen comes up, i get an "invalid literal for init(): ok" error. after that happens, i get errors for anything that i select.

that's odd... no one else has reported this problem. when you hit the back button on the controller or menu button on the controller, the settings screen writes out the settings to a file called mytv.xml in the xbmc application directory. if that isn't working then you can create the config file yourself and ftp it into the directory. here is a sample to help you get started:

<mytv>
<host>yourhost</host>
<database>mythconverg</database>
<port>3306</port>
<user>mythtv</user>
<password>mythtv</password>
<mythtvport>6543</mythtvport>
<mythtvstatusport>6544</mythtvstatusport>
<mythtvprotocol>13</mythtvprotocol>
<pathprefix>smb://%h/mythtv</pathprefix>
<localcopypath>e:\videos\</localcopypath>
</mytv>

yes, mythtv 0.16 uses protocol 13, 0.15 uses protocol 8.

[edit] if you are running mythtv_xbmc-0.13, there was a close screen bug that might have caused an exception to be thrown so that the config file couldn't be saved. if you're using 0.14, then this sounds like a new problem.

fyi... i have just put up xbmc_mythtv-0.8.tar.bz2 (http://changeling.ixionstudios.com/xbmc/xbmc_mythtv-0.8.tar.bz2).

thanks. i grabbed the file. i need to go through the code and change all hard coded text to do language lookups using xbmc.getlocalizedstring(). that's the proper way to do translations so that the code doesn't need to be modified. your translations will be useful for creating a german language file.
well, if you need any further assistence/help for translating to german language (ie rewriting, completing, ...) just drop me a mail. will begin work quickly then.

we're using your "plugin" day-by-day now. it's so easy and clearly now using xbmc to view/manage the mythtv-recordings; specially for my girlfriend.

again, thanks for your work!

howdy
0.7 works really nice for me except a little thing.
it seems it badly displays non ascii strings
like �� that are translated to 2 symbols (bad utf8 handling ?)

a friend was having similar problems as you and i am still trying to figure out how to fix his install. *my install of build 2004-05-15 by untermensch works fine. *you might want to look into why you are getting warnings when you shouldn't... and verify that you are using the same build or maybe newer.
sorry, i had tried versions 0.7 thru 0.9 with the 2004-05-15 build i had. the log was probably from a pre-0.9 version. none of the versions worked with the 2004-05-15 build i had, so i think the xbmc build was probably bad.

anyway, i just tried 0.9 with the 2004-05-18 build and everything is working fine now. great job.

hey madtw,

i have been running the latest version of xbmc-mythtv, and everything is great! love the delete feature. my mythtv box is now running purely as a backend.

is anyone running xbmc-mythtv with version 0.15 of mythtv? i am thinking about upgrading, and was wondering if there would be any problems with xbmc-mythtv.

many thanks!

could someone please explain to me what exactly mythtv is? yes im a bit of a n00bie but it sounds like im missing out on such an exciting script.. which i dont even know what it does!

i think if you upgrade that you won't have those problems anymore. after upgrading to myth tv 0.16, i had date format errors as well so i ended up making some changes to the scripts. however, those changes only take effect if the protocol version is >= 13 because myth tv 0.15 seemed to be working fine.

ahh...i didn't know about the mytv.xml file! *mine looked like this:

<mytv>
<host />
<database>mythconverg</database>
...snip...

so i guess the host line got messed up somehow. *i know i didn't manually edit it, but perhaps i screwed it up by going into the other .py files or something. *anyway, i deleted it, went back to settings and fixed everything, and now it works just fine. *thanks for the assistance!

oh, and great work! *this script is very cool. *now i can save the 2.5gb or so of hd space that my xebian/mythtv frontend setup takes up on my xboxes. *this will be especially handy on the one with the stock hard drive (for xbox live access).

sure, send me the home.xml file that you modified and also the build version of xbmc that you are using. the home.xml that i included in the latest release of xbmc mythtv was from the 2004-03-28 build. if you used an older or newer version then that might explain why things didn't work as expected. i'm not sure how to release my skin changes on an ongoing basis...

30-05-2004 02:20:53 file "q:\scripts\mytv.py", line 84, in ?
30-05-2004 02:20:53 mythtv.conn = mythtv.connection(
30-05-2004 02:20:53 file "q:\python\lib\mythtv.py", line 52, in
30-05-2004 02:20:53 raise serverexception, reply
30-05-2004 02:20:53 serverexception: ['reject', '8']

thats the error im getting. i had been having the dumb cant access errors, finally got them worked out. i just started using my mythtv box so im sure im missing something. any ideas about this? im using a cvs build from 5/24/04 python 1.3, and ill be testing it with a build from 5/30/04 here in a bit. ill see if that helps any at all. tia.

sigtom

alright.. easier said than done. :)

i looked into it a bit but haven't had much luck yet. the mythtv database is supposedly using the latin1 character set. when i select values in the database using the mysql client, i see values like:

t�l�journal

from that value, the mythweb module gets the following:

t�l�journal

so apparently mysql is storing the value correctly... when i retrieve the value in python and print it out, i get the first value - not the second. how do i convert it so that python will output it correctly? i tried using the unicode() function to convert the string but kept getting exceptions that the ordinal is not in range... anyone else figured this out?

edit: it appears that mysql prefixes "special characters" with \xc3 when sending them over the network. i put in a hack for now to strip the character and convert the character after it appropriately and it seems to work for the data i have in my myth database. i'm thinking the proper solution is to change the database to store everything in unicode so that when it is retrieved over the network, everything is sent in unicode. i'm not sure the supporting tools to fill the myth database work with unicode even... so for now this'll have to do until i can confirm the correct way to fix this.

hi

i've done the localisation for pal in 0.9 - is there somewhere i can put them to get them included in the release?

i'm using python.rar v1.3, xbmc-mythtv 0.9, and xbmc (built in the middle of may - sorry, i'm not in front of the system at the moment) and mythtv 0.15 and have the same error as mentioned previously (serverexception: ['reject', '8'] ).

anything i can do to help? i'm not much of a programmer but can do stuff like shell-scripting. also, is there any additional localisation i can do for the uk/pal?

cheers

mike
yep, send any localisation files you have modified to the email address included in the readme file in the xbmc-mythtv package. i'll take a look at the changes and include them in the next release.

dooze is in the process of installing mythtv 0.15 and will make any necessary protocol changes to the scripts - expect a new release fairly soon once he has it working smoothly again. it may be a matter of just sending the correct protocol version request... at least that's mainly what was needed when working with the latest mythtv cvs builds.

fyi... those of you wanting to try out the xbmc mythtv python scripts with the latest cvs build, i just installed the 2004-05-15 cvs build and everything seems to be working fine.

recorded show viewing/managing, tv guide, and status are implemented. scheduling is being worked on as we speak... it won't be long now. :)

don't know what's wrong with my setup. i deleted the tdata directory. i tried 5/08 and 5/09 cvs builds but when i click on the setup script, it says running and then it goes away and nothing happens. i don't have the my tv icon either. i had an old february cvs version on it before that i deleted. any ideas? thanks.

tom

edit: found i have to install python.

as i said in another topic, i managed to read the listing.xml created by xmltv but there's a bug in thecurrent version of�xbox python that prevents it to work. but darkie said he will fixes this soon.
i think it is ficxed already.

cvs-note:
24-03-04 added: pyexpat module to python, should fix all those (pyhon) xml problems

take a look at the python script at this page : http://www.visi.com/~erl/

i just tried xbox-myth 0.9 with the 2004-05-15 build of xbmc. when i access the recorded shows everything freezes. here is what i see in the xmbc log:

17-05-2004 10:43:19 q:\scripts\mytv.py:1: deprecationwarning: non-ascii character '\xa1' in file q:\python\lib\gui.py on line 456, but no encoding declared; see http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0263.html for details
*import gui, nmb
17-05-2004 10:43:20 q:\python\lib\smb.py:94: futurewarning: hex/oct constants > sys.maxint will return positive values in python 2.4 and up
*sv_type_domain_enum * * = 0x80000000
17-05-2004 10:43:20 q:\python\lib\smb.py:315: futurewarning: hex/oct constants > sys.maxint will return positive values in python 2.4 and up
*cap_extended_security = 0x80000000
17-05-2004 10:43:20 q:\python\lib\smb.py:621: futurewarning: hex/oct constants > sys.maxint will return positive values in python 2.4 and up
*if server_flags & 0x80000000:

when i do not use the libraies (gui, nmb, smb...), but copy all in one file eg mytv.py it works fine. no idea why i cannot access the libraries.....

michael

works fine, including non ascii chars
thanks a bunch, and i mean it :)

so finally figured out that maybe it has to do with the format of my files. *i changed to 640x480 from the default 480x480. *other than that, i think my settings are pretty much default. *are there any things about the format of the recording that could keep xbmc from being able to play the shows?

i sorta got further trying to record a really old show that i still had on hand. it would play "something" but audio-only. it certainly wasn't the audio track to the recording... it was as if random binary data was trying to be played as audio... not quite static, but definitely not intentional audio.

--rothbart

i'm still not able to run the mytv.py script... it just hangs xbmc. however i still 'can' run mytvsettings.py just fine. i've upgraded to xbmc cvs 5/9, and am still using v0.6 of the scripts.

any idea what could be wrong?

what is this 'tdata' directory thing? i've never heard of that... where is it?

thanks,

tim

ok, i got it working. *i had to use the python.rar from 2/12/2004. *the one in cvs does not work apparently. *now i'm having another problem though. *only some of my recordings show up (the newest ones). *the older ones aren't there. *not a big deal, just giving you a heads up.

tom
still having trouble with this. *i'm now using xbmc 4/23 with the python.rar from 2/12. *the mytv.py script hangs xbmc and the mythsettings.py script works fine. *a simple test script with a dialog also hangs xbmc so i'm thinking perhaps i'm getting an error which is displayed via a dialog which hangs xbmc.

i've seen posts refering to a debug log which shows info about python scripts running. *where is this log and how do i enable it? *i see no references to python scripts in the standard 'xbmc.log' in xbmc's homedir.

i'm not at all familiar with python, but am about to take the plunge. *what is a really simple way to open/create a logfile and print info to it so that i can put some debugging in the script to see whats going on?

thanks,

tim

after a crash course in xbmc skin design i've just added support for mytv to show up in the project mayhem skin with support for resolutions upto 720p 16:9.

can i get the contact details of the owner of the project so i can email the updates?

cheers
great... send me the updates and i can include them in the release. the email address is in the readme file.

i just installed the september 5, 2004 build of xbmc and updated the release for the project mayhem skin. you can grab the latest release from here (http://changeling.ixionstudios.com/xbmc). instead of modifying the main screen, i just added a new entry into the submenu off the main screen. this is much easier to maintain going forward... but if you have something fancier, i have no problem including it. :)

i have been using happily version 12 with mythtv 0.15 for some time now. however since the last three days, selecting 'recorded shows' or 'tv guide' returns an error popup 'time data did not match format: data=2400- '. selecting status works ok.

mythfrontend on linux works correctly.

thinking about a corrupted database, i have manually cleaned the database of any guide and shows data and ran mythfilldatabase again. still same error.

i'm fine to upgrade to 0.16 and the latest xbmc_mythtv version, but does anybody think it will fix this ?

pointers or suggestions to debug would be appreciated!

are you able to use this to schedule recordings at this point, and not just play back?

this is an awesome project,
i hope it can become a full blown mythtv client, integrated into xbmc,
so i can access my games, dvd's, pics, music,
all from one backend, via xbox client for any tv,
or any mythtv client...
truly amazing. i have my nexus-s card on order, and am downloading knoppixmyttv (http://www.mysettopbox.tv/knoppmyth.html)as i type. for those that don't know, nexus-s gets you any of the free to air, or dvb-s channels that are broadcast without having to subscribe to diretv, or dish, see listing here (http://www.lyngsat.com/freetv/united-states.html)

madtw: great job! i've been hoping for some mythtv support from xbmc for a while now.

i've been thinking more about the possibility of watching live tv from xbmc. i too have an ivtv-supported card, and could also symlink /dev/video, but as you mentioned earlier, there are some serious drawbacks to doing so. i started looking at how mythfrontend does it, and i believe they use a ring buffer to play the video from. this can be observed by watching for a .nuv file to be created when you start watching live tv from mythfronted.

i then started looking for ring buffer support in mplayer, and came across this page (http://projects.sault.org/mebox/livetv.php). it describes ring buffers, and provides patches for mplayer which enable such support.

the only thing i'm unsure about is which part of myth creates the ring buffer- the front end or the back end. if the back end creates the ring buffer, it'd be simple to implement a live tv function. if the front end handles the creation of the ring buffer, then i think we'll have to wait for some more features from xbmc.

lastly, i was stepping though some of the xbmc souce, and looking for ways to add python hooks for the osd, so channel numbers could be displayed (this looks promising). as far as changing channels goes, however, i'm unsure about one thing: if a video is playing, and the user presses a key on the remote, does the script's button callback method get called? if not, then channel changing would be a little more difficult.

just to let you know that translation to german language is finished (so far). had to include some very small changes to design.

grab it here:
xbmc_mythtv-0.13.01.tar.bz2 (http://www.com-in.de/larry/xbmc_mythtv-0.13.01.tar.bz2)

-
larry

for some reason i cannot access the link! i get the standard "the page cannot be displayed" error.

i think i'll add the ability to delete recordings soon as well.
deleting a recording would be really useful. are you going to have a yes/no dialog box pop-up at the end of a recording?

another thing i have been experimenting with is using the xbox web browser, linksboks, and pointing to the mythtv web server. this way everything can be done thru the xbox.

hi,

i just re-installed using the latest myth (0.16) and everything works great. thanks for all the hard work, and if there's anything i can do from the pal side (or even anything else?) then just let me know

cheers

mike

just tried it
display is fine
thanks a bunch :)

wondering if anyone can help me?

i have installed the latest cvs version of mythtv and mythweb to overcome a problem where mythweb was causing mythbackend to hang. however, now i've done so the wonderful xbmc_mythtv is out of sync in terms of protocol version. i was wondering what i need