I recently installed a complete DVB MythTV setup that works really well with Australian Free-to-Air TV. I’ll write more about the actual setup in another post, but the really neat aspect is how I’m using my XBox as a frontend and the customisations I’ve done to the XBMC skin. Whilst I know that you can install MythTV on a Linux Installation such as Xebian, the long startup time and the fact that I use XBox Media Centre (XBMC) regularly meant that I wanted to integrate MythTV with XBMC.

The xbmcmythtv project is a set of Python scripts that provide an XBMC interface into a MythTV backend. Now I’m sure anyone who is familiar with XBMC scripts is able to get xbmcmythtv running without too much trouble. I highly recommend you get xbmcmythtv from CVS as it supports the latest Protocol 15 MythTV version 0.18.1. Once you get the script running, you’ll find it so useful that you will want to access it as quickly, and as neatly, as possible. The screenshot below is the first thing I see when my XBox boots up.

For those of you more familiar with the XBMC interface, you’ll notice that the ‘My Pictures’ button is missing and that the ‘My Videos’ graphic is displaying while ‘My TV’ is selected. The rotation of these items and creation of the ‘My TV’ option is done by editing the Home.xml theme file. For the Project Mayhem III skin, this file is contained in “skin/Project Mayhem III/PAL16×9″.

At the top of the Home.xml file, the images are dictated by the ‘id’ numbers which then flip the texture field. For each of the textures below, you’ll want to assign the ids I give below.

<control>
<type>image</type>
<id>104</id>
...
<texture>4x3home-myPrograms.png</texture>
</control>

<control>
<type>image</type>
<id>106</id>
...
<texture>16x9home-myfiles.png</texture>
</control>

<control>
<type>image</type>
<id>105</id>
...
<texture>4x3home-mypictures.png</texture>
</control>

<control>
<type>image</type>
<id>102</id>
...
<texture>16x9home-myvideos.png</texture>
</control>

Finally, in order to move the ‘My Programs’ button down one, and place ‘My TV’ in the top spot. Further down Home.xml you’ll need to find the sections below, and make the relevant changes. Note the removal of the ‘HyperLink’ tag in the first section, but the addition of the ‘Execute’ tag.

<controlgroup>
<control>
<description>My Programs normal push button</description>
<type>button</type>
<id>2</id>
...
<label>My TV</label>
<font>special13</font>
<execute>q:scriptsxbmcmythtvmythtvmain.py</execute>
...
</control>

<control>
<description>My Pictures normal push button</description>
<type>button</type>
<id>4</id>
...
<label>0</label>
<hyperlink>1</hyperlink>
...
</control>
...
</controlgroup>

So now I’ve got an easy button to click which gives me instant access to Live TV, the Electronic Program Guide (pictured below), Recorded Programs and MythTV Status. It works extremely well with only the occassional minor bug despite the xbmcmythtv project being in its infancy.

If you’ve setup xbmcmythtv yourself and have some additional tips, or you’d like some assistance getting it all to work then post a comment below!