[mythtv-users] Totally hosed Myth, could not upgrade from .27 to .28

[Captain Hook]

So this is kind of a long story which has resulted in my totally
breaking MythTV, but bear with me please.

Stats:
Mythbuntu 14.04
Myth .27+fixes
Working fine for nearly 4 years

This all began with me wanting to install Kodi on my dedicated MythTV
frontend.  I could not connect to the backend with Kodi so I started
looking into the Myth backend logs, which indicated that there was no
security pin set.  I went into the MythTV backend setup and noticed
that the security pin field was blank.  Entering 0000, rebooting,
removing it, changing it to 1234, back to blank, back to 0000; none of
these things helped.  I decided perhaps I should upgrade from .27 to
.28 and maybe that would resolve the issue.  When I went into Myth
Control Centre, I attempted to change the update repos from .27 to .28
and I noticed that it was still asking me to input the
"YouMustBeThisTallToRide" password to enable .28 as it still thought
it was in beta.  I ran an update, an upgrade, etc. and it continued.
I decided I would then remove MythTV (sudo apt-get remove mythtv) and
reinstall.

Since doing this, my install is completely screwed up.  MythTV Control
Centre still shows .28 as beta, Mythweb is broken, and I can connect
to the backend with my dedicated front end and the recordings display,
but I cannot play them and only get a static green screen.

I've removed and reinstalled Myth again to no avail.  I cannot run my
frontend on my backend either; when I attempt to play a recording it
just closes and goes back to the desktop.

I am at a loss here.  It seems like I am probably best off purging all
of this and restoring my database backup but I'm hoping it doesn't
come to that.

Any thoughts on the direction I should follow?

Thanks.