[mythtv-users] how to use EXECTV parameters

Robin Neatherway robthebob at gmail.com
Sun Apr 15 18:43:25 UTC 2007


I would like to use EXECTV to access the video on demand functions of
my set top box. However many more remote control codes are required to
navigate the menus of the set top box, so I have decided the best way
to do so is to use EXECTV to start a script that does the following:

1) Kills irexec
2) Starts irexec with a special config file that passes through
control codes to the irblaster for most of the remote buttons.
3) Runs mplayer (or xawtv I guess) to watch /dev/ivtv (not my other
tuner, which is hooked up to DVB)
4) When exit command is given, outputs a few codes to put the set top
box back in a known state and then restarts irexec with my usual
couple of bindings.
5) Back to Myth!

The snippet below I have taken from the usual tvmenu.xml file. I do
not quite understand how to the parameters are treated. Does Myth
select a free tuner to pass to the program? If so, we have a problem,
because only one tuner is applicable in this case. On the other hand,
I have read about people using this for games, so I suppose they must
have been able to choose a particular tuner. In that case, are the %s
parameters replaced by hand with whatever is appropriate? This seems
unlikely because it would be hard for Myth to know which one was being
used, particularly as different programs (such as mplayer) have
different ways of specifying inputs.

Cheers for any help,

Robin

<!-- EXECTV sample.  %s args in order are video, audio, and vbi devices
    <button>
       <type>TV_PLAYBACK</type>
       <text>Passthrough Mode</text>
       <action>EXECTV xawtv -f -device %s -dspdev %s -vbidev %s</action>
    </button>
-->


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