Blank Kodi/XBMC MythTV channel icons

When mapping channel icons in my MythTV, they were showing up as blank! After some research, I determined this is the result from the removal of absolute paths from icon path in MythTV. Fixing this is a simple 2 step process.

1. Create a new storage group in MythTV called "ChannelIcons" and map it to the directory with all the icons, Typically: /home/mythtv/.mythtv/channels
2. Delete the cached empty icons off XBMC. On the firetv, they were located here: /storage/sdcard0/Android/data/org.xbmc.xbmc/files/.xbmc/userdata/addon_data/pvr.mythtv.cmyth/cache/channels

I used adb to remove the files:

adb kill-server
adb connect 192.168.1.XXX
adb shell
cd /storage/sdcard0/Android/data/org.xbmc.xbmc/files/.xbmc/userdata/addon_data/pvr.mythtv.cmyth/cache/channels
ls
rm *.jpg *.png

Software versions:
Ubuntu 14.04
MythTV 0.27
XBMC Kodi 14 release candidate

Amazon Fire TV as a XBMC MythTV Frontend

Amazon FireTV + XBMC + MythTV

I am quite pleased with using the Amazon FireTV as my MythTV Frontend using Kodi(was XMBC) and the myth plugin. Here are my overall views on the FireTV.

Pros:

• Wireless Streaming works well across the 5GHz band (YMMV)
• Quad Core in Fire TV can decode MPEG2 video without a stutter
• One streaming box to do Amazon Prime, Netflix, and MythTV
• HDMI CEC can turn on the TV
• Amazon Prime streaming starts instantly

Cons:

• XBMC 14 release candidate seems to be unstable on the box, changing recordings causes it to crash
• Cannot launch XBMC from the Fire TV home screen (must used buried application menu or FiredTV launcher that works most of the time)
• No power-off function (must wait for it to time-out)

Other Thoughts/TBD:

• PLEX works well with streaming CBS and CW shows as well as many others

Setup:

1. Download Kodi and FiredTV
• http://mirrors.xbmc.org/releases/android/arm/
• https://github.com/Redth/FiredTVLauncher/releases
2. Enable ADB on Fire TV
1. Settings
2. Developer Options
3. ADB -> On
3. Determine IP Address of Fire TV
1. Settings
2. About
3. Network
4. Install ADB on your computer
• apt-get install android-tools-adb
5. Start the adb connection
1. adb kill-server
2. adb connect <ip-address>
6. Install the 2 apks
1. adb install path/kodi.apk
2. adb install path/firedtv.apk

Xubuntu adb sideload Lollipop onto Nexus 5

As I was tired of waiting on the OTA to download directly to my phone, I decided to sideload it myself. Luckily, sideloading does not require root or an unlocked bootloader.

I followed this guide by Droid Life, but had to preface all adb commands with sudo as I was running it from my linux box. http://www.droid-life.com/2013/02/12/guide-how-to-use-adb-sideload-to-update-a-nexus-without-root-or-custom-recovery/

Fixing Tab in Xubuntu 14.04

One thing that was really annoying me was that on my Xubuntu 14.04 server, tab would switch windows by itself without holding alt. This was messing up my tab completion and putting tabs in files when using one of my VNC sessions.

After a bit of googling, I came across this forum which had other users experiencing the same problem: http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-1771058.html

The solution was simple.

1. Edit this file: ~/.config/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/xfce4-keyboard-shortcuts.xml
2. Find this line:
3. Change it to this:
4. Restart any session including VNC ones