[mythtv-users] Really frustrated trying setup MythTV

[Jason Ward]

So, despite 3 years more experience of Linux under my belt, I still find
MythTV bizarrely hard to setup.

I won't go into the trials and tribulations I've been through to get
where I currently am, but it has been a long and frustrating road.

Right now, as best as I can tell my back end is not downloading
schedules from The Radio Times, no idea why, I just see that "error 2"
was reported.  Although schedules off the air appear to be working fine.

I have questions about DVB-T and DVB-T2 tuners in the same backend, does
the fact that one of the turners sees more channels than the other mean
that I need to have 2 separate video sources, one for each type of
tuner?

Having installed the back end via fresh downloaded Mythbuntu ISO and use
Myth-Control-Centre to switch to v0.27 is there a reason that Ubuntu
Update Manager refuses to do the upgrade needed and I have install
aptitude and manually force the upgrade to happen?

I've installed the frontend on my main PC, but it kept installing the
backend as well, I had to go into Myth-Control-Centre to explicitly
switch to Frontend only, I can apparently connect to the backend with
credentials asked for when the front end first runs, but I can see no
data from the backend and I keep getting a an error overlay telling me
that "mythcontext" could not contact the master backend.

I have no idea what mythcontext is, how its setup or what it does, and
Googling for information just led me to source code.

All I want is have a frontend that I point at the backend and have just
work, can someone give me any help with this task?

Sorry guys and gals that I'm sure work hard and invest much time into
MythTV, much as I know its a great system when it works, but I'm very
frustrated after many hours of trying to make MythTV work it seems to me
to be temperamental (it seems to work then it doesn't), needlessly
delicate (little changes cause unrelated parts to fall over) and
unrelentingly complex to setup.  If I had the skills myself, or the
money to pay for someone else’s skills, I would I would be investing
into the "just make it work" category.

Jason