Preparing the Foxtel STU for MythTV

Bill Giannikos (bill2 at giannikos.com.au)

This guide will help you prepare your Foxtel (or equivalent) STU for MythTV. This guide will focus on Foxtel Digital but I believe it should also work with Austar Digital as well as the UK Sky Digital.

These instructions may also work with the Foxtel IQ but I can not be sure about that. However you may also have issues with getting Lirc working with the Foxtel IQ box. Please let me know if you are successful in configuring this STU.

Either Foxtel Cable Digital or Foxtel Satellite Digital will work, Austar Digital and a few others should also be fine as well.

• A MPEG2 analog capture card, see the Hardware Guide
• Scart to 3 RCA & S-Video (aka S-VHS) Socket Adapter - link
• 1 S-Video & 2 RCA Cables - link
• IR Blaster, see this Building a IR Blaster guide
• And a computer to run MythTV

First thing is to connect the STU to a standard TV so we can edit some of the menu options. Using the standard Foxtel remote control press the 'Setup' button, go to option 4 - 'System Setup' and press Select. You should see this screen:

Go down to option 4 - 'System Settings' and press Select. You should now see this screen:

Select the first option - 'Picture Settings'. Now change all the options to match the items on this image:

Note: Even if you do not have a 16:9 TV you should still select the 16:9 TV type here. You can then set MythTV to playback recordings in the 4:3 aspect ratio if you wish. The reason for this is because you still want to record the full video from the Foxtel box so if you do eventually upgrade to a 16:9 TV your older recordings will still be widescreen.

Save the settings with the 'Save New Settings' options. That's it for the setup so you can exit the menus now by pressing the Foxtel (or Austar, Sky, etc) button at the top of the remote.

First plug in the Scart to 3 RCA & S-Video (aka S-VHS) Socket Adapter into the right (when looking from the back) Scart port of the STU. Then plug the S-Video cable and the 2 RCA cables into the back of this. It should look as follows:

Note: Some Scart to 3 RCA & S-Video (aka S-VHS) Socket Adapter have a switch to select betwen Input and Output modes. Switch this to Output.

Now connect the other ends of the S-Video and RCA cables to your capture card.

Finally connect your IR blaster to the serial port of your computer and position the LED as close to the receiver of the Foxtel STU as possible. Pictures of this can be found at the Building a IR Blaster guide.