Installation

There are a few things that need to be done during the installation of the system. As the system is delivered it uses analogue audio. The following sections describe what may need to be changed for you.

Audio Connections

The audio can be sent either digitally or as analogue. If the system is being connected to a television through a SCART connector then analogue is used. If the system is connected to a AV receiver/decoder then one of the two digital connections can be used. The optical digital connector located at the top right corner of the rear panel or the coax digital output at the bottom of the rear panel. See Figure 1 for the locations of these connectors.

To configure the system to use digital output the file /etc/asound.conf needs to have the following lines changed to:

pcm.!default { 
    type plug 
    # Uncomment digital-hw for digital output and comment analog-hw. 
    # `#' is the comment symbol. 
    #slave.pcm analog-hw      # analog by default 
    slave.pcm digital-hw     # digital by default 
    # These downmix the audio to 48kbps 
    #slave.pcm dmix-analog    # analog downmix by default 
    #slave.pcm dmix-digital   # digital downmix by default 
}

This is a little bit confusing but the configuration only needs to be done once.

Figure 1: Rear Panel Connections

Network Connections

An Internet connection is required for automatic updating of the TV schedule and program updates. The Internet connection can be through either a CAT6 network cable or through a wireless LAN. When the machine is powered on it will use try the Ethernet cable connection first and then the wireless LAN. The wireless LAN can been configured for WEP 64 security encryption. See Figure 1 for the locations of these connectors.

The wireless LAN needs to have the ESSID configured and the WEP KEY changed to match your wireless LAN router or access point. These setting can be changed by editing the /etc/sysconfig/wireless file.

Both the Ethernet and the wireless LAN connections use the DHCP service, so they automatically receive an IP address and other network information.

System Machine Name

The system name has been set to ``freevo'' this is used when connecting to the machine from another PC. It can be changed by editing the /etc/sysconfig/network file and changing freevo to another name.

Date and Time Service

The system time is automatically updated from the Internet. The file /etc/ntp.conf is automatically configured from the DHCP server that provides the IP address.

Web Browser Password

Freevo also has a Web server that allows programs to be scheduled for recording from another PC. The user name and password to the web browser are freevo and freevo respectively. These can be changed in the file /etc/freevo/local_conf.py. There are many other preferences that can be changed in the local_conf.py file but these need to be changed very carefully otherwise freevo may not run correctly. (The current update system caused these changed to be overwritten every day.)