Apt remove problems
 

I installed mythtv about 3 months ago and had my database backend on a different server, I have since changed that to hold the database on the same machine as the mythtv frontend. I attempted to reconfigure it, broke it, so I thought I"d reinstall it. I used an apt-get remove mythtv and all it's relevent parts, then did an apt-get mythtv, lo and behold the database backend is STILL LOOKING TO INSTALL WITH THE OLD SETTINGS. What on earth do I need to delete to get dpkg to reconfigure from scratch?

Try dpkg --purge mythtv and then reinstall it.

Tried, it's still pulling configuration information from somewhere I can't find and trying to contact the db server on an invalid IP address.

If the package was configured using debconf when you first installed it, there's a cache of that initial configuration somehere under /var/lib/debconf (or something like that).
If that's the case you should delete that cache.
It's a plain text file so you can grep that file.

/var/cache/debconf/config.dat had an entry for that old IP address. thanks for the tip!