Internet TV... without the internet TV bit.

So I bought a 32" LED backlit (not LED pixel) LCD Samsung a couple of months ago.  It's hard to compare "Internet" TVs because each brand puts their own spin on exactly what "internet" means.

The Samsung series 6 has an Ethernet port, and by default Windows (Vista and higher) detect it and ask if you want to "trust" it or not.  The TV detects DLNA servers you might have easily on your network too.

But what about this "internet" claim?  When I first bought it, there were some simple internet "apps" that you can choose from and install.  Mostly boring stuff from a TV perspective like Google Maps, Picasa, Facebook, Youtube, etc.  This is all good but not exactly what I'd call internet "TV".

Dell Inspiron 9100 infra red port

My old Dell laptop has a built-in infra red port on the front. In the 4 or more years that I've had it, I've had no need for the port.

Now that it is becoming my (MythTV) media centre, the infra red port becomes useful! Here are the steps I used to get it working. I had some small hassle with the built-in serial port driver taking over.

1. First, make sure it's enabled in the BIOS, and take note of the serial port it's attached to.
   
   There are no other serial ports on this laptop, so anything that looks like a serial port is likely to be the infra red port.
   
   
2. I used lirc to receive and configure the port.
   
   In Gentoo enable the lirc global USE flag (global means put it in make.conf because many programs can make use of it). Also add this line to make.conf:
   LIRC_DEVICES="sir"
   
   In other distros, you have to somehow build the sir driver.
   
   Also add the lirc USE flags hardware-carrier and transmitter. You can do this in /etc/make.conf, or better use /etc/portage/package.use, or better still, make package.use a directory, and add the file /etc/portage/package.use/lirc-20090806 with the contents:
   app-misc/lirc hardware-carrier transmitter
   
   (You can of course make any-named file in /etc/portage/package.use)
   
   
3. (re)compile! This includes lirc, MythTV, mplayer and anything else that might be able to take advantage of your new lirc USE flag.
   
   In Gentoo, you could use the command:
   emerge --update --newuse --deep world
   to find and rebuild all packages that have changed USE flags.
   
   
4. Now you need to load the lirc module. For com1, run this command:
   modprobe lirc_sir io=0x2f8 irq=3 threshold=5

options lirc-sir io=0x2f8 irq=3 threshold=5
   Also add this line to remove any conflicts:
   install lirc_sir setserial /dev/ttyS0 uart none; modprobe --ignore-install lirc_sir
   
   Make sure you run update-modules; then unload and reload the lirc_sir module after any changes to lirc.conf
   
   
5. Test your configuration with mode2. Run mode2 as root and then press buttons on a remote. You should see some output like
   pulse 591
space 96900
pulse 9042
space 2277
pulse 591
space 96900
pulse 9042
space 2273
pulse 594
space 96901
pulse 9042
space 2274
pulse 593
   
   If not, make sure you've unloaded any serial related module. Check dmesg after loading the lirc module to make sure your hardware is recognised:
   $ dmesg | grep lirc_sir
lirc_sir: I/O port 0x03e8, IRQ 4.
lirc_sir: Installed.
   
   
6. You're almost there! Now you can download remote codes from the LIRC website, or make your own with irrecord. I made my own, since my remote wasn't there.
   
   Copy the remote code file to /etc/lircd.conf
   
   Leave the /etc/conf.d/lircd blank or all commented out if you have the same hardware
   
   Start lircd: /etc/init.d/lircd

And that should be that!

Many thanks to:

• The LIRC project website
  
• The Gentoo wiki LIRC guide
• This Data Current blog post by Boian Berberov

Artec DVB USB in Linux

So I unboxed my Artec TV tuner card, now I have to get it working!

You need firmware and kernel modules. You can download the firmware for it here:
http://www.wi-bw.tfh-wildau.de/~pboettch/home/files/dvb-usb-dib0700-1.20.fw

Use wget or some way of getting it. Then move the file to /lib/firmware.

You also need the v4l-dvb kernel drivers (compatible with kernel 2.6.16 and up). In Gentoo, emerge media-tv/v4l-dvb-hg. Other distributions have instructions here.

Now insert the card. udev will handle loading the correct modules. My syslog output looks like this:

usb 1-3: Product: ART7070
usb 1-3: Manufacturer: Ultima
usb 1-3: SerialNumber: 001
usb 1-3: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
dvb-usb: found a 'Artec T14BR DVB-T' in cold state, will try to load a firmware
usb 1-3: firmware: requesting dvb-usb-dib0700-1.20.fw
dvb-usb: downloading firmware from file 'dvb-usb-dib0700-1.20.fw'
dib0700: firmware started successfully.
dvb-usb: found a 'Artec T14BR DVB-T' in warm state.
dvb-usb: will pass the complete MPEG2 transport stream to the software demuxer.
DVB: registering new adapter (Artec T14BR DVB-T)
DVB: registering adapter 0 frontend 0 (DiBcom 7000PC)...
DiB0070: successfully identified
input: IR-receiver inside an USB DVB receiver as /class/input/input7
dvb-usb: schedule remote query interval to 50 msecs.
dvb-usb: Artec T14BR DVB-T successfully initialized and connected.

Look for a line similar to dib0700: firmware started successfully. If you see Cannot find firmware file then make sure you downloaded the firmware properly, and check your system's firmware directory. Also check the firmware file name, as it might want a slightly different firmware file.

That's it! From there I plugged in an antenna, loaded MythTV, and watched some HD TV!

Artec USB DVB-T tuner card

I just purchased the Artec T14BR HD DVB-T TV tuner dongle for turning my old laptop into a MythTV box. It cost $46.90 including GST and postage from Deals Direct.

I now have a High Def set top box, with 80Gb hard drive for (essentially) $46.90. And if I want to make it a twin tuner HD STB, it's just another $46.90.

Here is the picture of the box:


And here are all the contents (note, no aerial, but I knew that):


And finally a close up of the interesting stuff:


The dongle has a window on either side, presumable for the IR reciever in the middle somewhere.

Support for Linux is supposedly good (stay tuned, haha!). lsusb identifies it as "Bus 001 Device 025: ID 05d8:810f Ultima Electronics Corp." The syslog output when I plug it in looks like this:

usb 1-3: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 25
usb 1-3: New USB device found, idVendor=05d8, idProduct=810f
usb 1-3: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
usb 1-3: Product: ART7070
usb 1-3: Manufacturer: Ultima
usb 1-3: SerialNumber: 001
usb 1-3: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice

This isn't "the" laptop, so I don't have any drivers installed for it, hence that's all for now.

I'll let you know how it works in my next post.