I see why they call it "Myth" TV...

My project for last night didn't go so well. I wanted to see if I could watch TV on "SamButu" my Ubuntu Linux Samsung Q1 (original flavor).  I have this hybrid analog/digital USB tuner stick from Hauppage called the WinTV HVR 950  that says it works with Linux.  I also found that a project called  Myth TV  should allow me to watch and even record TV shows using my usb TV stick.  In Ubuntu, it seems that one goes about implementing Myth TV by installing a program called  Mythbuntu .  This Mythbuntu provides a dizzying array of options to configure a machine as a "front end" or a "back end" or a "desktop" or a  combo of two or three of the above.  I've linked to three different sets of instructions in this post for how one is supposed to go about installing the device and the Mythbuntu package.  Mythbuntu didn't show up as a "supported application" when I tried to use the add/remove menu on my desktop to install it.  However, it did show up when I changed the search setting to "all open source applications".  

This post isn't the last word on this subject but it didn't go well. I'm not sure that my computer ever actually recognized the USB stick properly and after deciding to install frontend, backend and desktop, plus a movie player, plus a bunch of codecs, I got a nice screen that looked like a Tivo but I couldn't watch anything.  

It was fourth and long (US football reference) so I decided to send in the punting team to remove Mythbuntu.  Why? Because now when my machine boots up and shuts down it says "Mythbuntu" instead of "Ubuntu" -- a nagging reminder of my failure to figure out Linux.  It had to go.  Guess what?  I couldn't just uncheck Mythbuntu in the add / remove menu! No! I had to use something called the Synaptic Package Manager to remove it.  I thought synaptic was an adjective that Matt Miller used to describe the keyboard on the new HTC Advantage.  I'm not sure what that has to do with Linux.  Nothing said how one goes about removing Mythbuntu using this mysterious synaptic application, but I saw a search window, I typed in "mythbunutu", some stuff came up in results, I marked them for removal, and  hit the button that said "apply." I think it's gone now.  At least I removed enough of it so that it no longer mocks me when I reboot.  I'm not finished with you Mythbuntu! I'll be back!