Once you have completed configuration of your backend systems, the next step is to configure the frontend client. You should run the MythTV setup program before using any other modules such as MythMusic, etc. to correctly initialize the database.
When you start mythfrontend, you should have a number of choices. Before doing anything, go to TV, then to Setup and configure the frontend client.
The General screen has configuration items that don't really fit anywhere else. The first configuration item asks you to indicate the number of seconds to record past the end of a program, which is useful if the broadcast network or your system clock are out of sync and will help prevent you missing the end of a program. Note that MythTV currently does not have the ability to start early.
To change the value, use the left and right arrow keys to increment and decrement the number of seconds. When you're satisfied with the result, use the down arrow to put the input focus on the Next button or press RETURN to continue to the next page.
The next page has a number of options to do with how channels are displayed on your system. The help text will give you more information. Move the focus to Next and press the space bar to continue.
The final General page sets up some final configuration items. See the help text for more information.
This set of screens is mostly concerned with how MythTV will look on your system. From here, you can choose different themes and set the resolution of your system.
Fairly self explanatory. Note that the alternate program guide does not use the same font settings as defined in Appearance, so if the EPG is unreadable this is where you make the adjustments to fonts, number of elements displayed, etc.
The one configuration item which may cause problems on your system is the "Deinterlace playback" setting. MythTV uses a linear blend algorithm for deinterlacing, which will improve how the image looks on your screen. Deinterlacing requires that your processor support SSE. (Streaming SIMD Extensions, aka "MMX2"). Early Intel Celeron (those that don't use the Coppermine 0.18um core and are usually <600Mhz), Pentium Pro and Pentium II CPUs do not have SSE, so make sure that you haven't enabled deinterlacing if your processor doesn't support it. If you enable it, and your processor doesn't support SSE, you will get "Illegal Instruction" errors.
To determine if you've got SSE, you can:
$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
[snip]
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca
cmov pat pse36 mmx fxsr sse
Notice the sse at the end of the line - this tells you that this processor will be able to deinterlace correctly.
Currently, MythTV supports two different video encoders, MPEG4 and RTJPEG. Take note that RTJPEG has lower CPU demands, but makes large files, and MPEG4 has high CPU demands, but makes smaller files.
NOTE: although the width and height can be changed to almost anything, if you start MythTV and don't see video or you get "segmentation fault" errors, it is likely that the video4linux (v4l) subsystem did not like the height and width parameters specified. It's best to leave the default as-is until you're sure that MythTV is operational.