MythTV as a Digital Hub
MythTV can do more than just show TV—it can be a complete digital hub for your home. Learn about MythTV’s various plug-ins that extend its capabilities.
As alluded to in “Create a DVR with MythTV” [Hack #77] , there’s much more to MythTV than just recording and time-shifting TV. MythTV has a plug-in architecture that allows you to add an array of modules to extend the capabilities your MythTV system and make it a true digital media hub for your home.
All these plug-ins are available individually, or you can grab all of them (and all dependencies) in one fell swoop if you have configured yum per [Hack #77] Just type:
# yum install mythpluginsMost other distributions provide the plug-ins via the package manager, but if yours doesn’t, you can always grab the source code from the Download page at http://www.mythtv.org.
After installation, fire up the MythTV frontend, and you should find numerous additional buttons throughout the UI, grouped in (hopefully) logical places—for example, MythWeather and MythNews are accessed under the Information Center menu on the main MythTV frontend menu. Most plugins are configured within the Setup section of the MythTV frontend. A quick hit list of the most popular plug-ins with brief descriptions follows.
MythVideo
Got a large collection of DVDs you’ve painstakingly converted into video files that your computer can play? Maybe a large library of digitized home movies? Wouldn’t it be nice to have it all cataloged and ready to ...