How to install Hauppauge 2250 with Mythtv and Ubuntu
Date of install: 10/14/09
Date for writeup of howto 10/20/09
Date of last update to this howto: 11/06/09
The dates are so you can tell how relevant this guide still is.
Operating system: ubuntu 9.04 Desktop
Download the desktop version. Burn the .iso to a CD. When you boot to the CD just follow the on screen instructions. Accepting the defaults will usually work. There are lots of how tos on installing ubuntu so I won’t go into that here.
You’ll know pretty quick if you are having problems with your equipment, either the video won’t load, you won’t have sound. Ubuntu today has little trouble with most standard drivers.
The video capture card is a bit different which is why I’m writting this “how to” in the first place!
Boot into your shiny new Ubuntu operating system and run updates from the terminal window. You’ll find it under applications in the menu. Enter the following into your terminal window, entering the root password when prompted:
sudo apt-get update
and reboot
sudo reboot
or use the GUI menu to reboot.
Follow the instructions below that lowsky put together. This is where I make sure to give him his due.
You don’t have to follow the link, I’ve included his instructions below.
Instructions for using HVR-2250 in MythTV (also works on HVR-2200 or any video capture card using the SAA7164 chipset) you need to be running Ubuntu 8.10 or higher for these drivers.
Enter this into your Terminal it is the code for the firmware and to install it
wget http://www.steventoth.net/linux/hvr22xx/22xxdrv_27086.zip
wget http://www.steventoth.net/linux/hvr22xx/HVR-12x0-14x0-17x0_1_25_25271_WHQL.zip
wget http://www.steventoth.net/linux/hvr22xx/extract.shCode
sh extract.sh
sudo cp *fw /lib/firmware
you need to install mercurial and build essential for the next steps
sudo apt-get install mercurial build-essential
then we need the driver using this command to fetch
hg clone http://kernellabs.com/hg/saa7164-stable/
now change to the directory
cd saa7164-stablethen run make
make
that will take some time, go grab a drink and wait it out, when it completes run this command
sudo make install
wait for that to complete and reboot
from the command line
sudo reboot
Install mythv now. Easy with apt-get.
sudo apt-get install mythtv mythtplugins
Follow the on screen prompts. you’ll have to put in a password for the mysql database. remeber this one because you’ll be asked for it again later. That’s about it for installing mythtv. The backend should start by itself.
cleanup:
I added mythfrontend to the applications that start on boot, disabled the screensaver and other power options that might cause my backend to not record or the frontend to shut down. The last step was to configure my remote. this used to be easy for me. I had the older hauppauge grey remote. Jerod Wilson had wonderfull instructions on how to complete that install.
Now that he is doing mythdora (a great app that does most mythtv stuff for you, but doesn’t seem to work with the 2250) finding just the part to install my remote has become a pain. This time around I built my very own remote from scratch.
I use a mceusb2 IR reciever. mostly because its got a nice long cord and has a better look than the IR recievers that come with most cards. I should note that I wasn’t able to
get the IR reciever that comes with the 2250 to work. At the time of this howto that portion of the driver doesn’t seem to work.
I ended up using irrecord to build my lirc.conf file from scratch. I just ran the program
irrecord
and followed the on screen instructions. The app will warn you some, but basically you have to hit “enter” twice before you start mashing buttons on your remote. Push all the buttons so you can see if any of them won’t work for you. Each button press will display some dots, apparently the number of dots varies for different remotes.
When that is complete, you’ll be prompted to enter a name for a button on your remote. I just used the lables for each button on my remote. this makes it a bit easier. When complete, don’t enter any more names and hit enter. The file irrecord.txt will be built for you in /etc/lirc. Here’s the original mythv lircrc file that I got for the old hauppauge remote.
future link to file
I then edited it with “vi” and replaced the old name with the new ones I created for each function. Each function actually maps to the keyboard commands for mythtv. I have to admit, when I created my own file the remote is much easier to use than some of the prebuilt configurations I’ve used the the past. One last reboot and I was up and running. Let me know if you have any questions.