[mythtv-users] how to use EXECTV parameters

Michael T. Dean mtdean at thirdcontact.com
Tue Apr 17 15:33:31 UTC 2007


On 04/17/2007 03:49 AM, Robin Neatherway wrote:
> On 4/15/07, Robin Neatherway <robthebob at gmail.com> wrote:
>   
>> 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>
>> -->
>>
>>     
>
> Noone have any ideas?
>
> Did I phrase my question in a bad way?

Basically, the arguments are exactly as given above ("%s") in the order 
given.  Myth will automatically choose an available capture card and 
does /not/ provide a way for a user to request a specific one.

The reason people can make games work is because they typically have a 
single combined frontend/backend with a single capture card or they 
split the RCA outputs from their game consoles to go into all capture 
cards or they move the connections as required or they just get lucky 
and the most-likely-to-be-chosen card is always available.

If you need a specific capture card, you'd probably have to just "steal" 
it from Myth permanently--i.e. delete the capture card from mythtv-setup.

However, rather than your approach, check out LIRC modes ( 
http://lirc.org/html/configure.html#lircrc_format ) and lircrcd, which 
you can probably use to get the effect you want.  Unfortunately, the 
best documentation I've found for the specifics of modes is the LIRC 
source code (not a lot of people written about how to use modes).  
Setting up LIRC modes is about 40% of the way down my MythTV TODO list 
(so I can't show you my example configs)...

Mike


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