[mythtv-users] Client-Server hardware arch questions?

[Ben Davis]

Isaac Richards wrote:

>On Tuesday 13 May 2003 12:45 pm, Max wrote:
>  
>
>>So here are the questions:
>>
>>* How does the Myth frontend talk to backend? Is the video (audio, still
>>picture, etc) transmitted in-band or do I need to NFS export the directory
>>containing the common files? Is the media stream using TCP or UDP?
>>    
>>
>
>You can do both, actually.  The backend will stream the file on the fly to the 
>frontend for playback using TCP, but if you NFS mount the the recording 
>directories so they're in the same place on the frontends as they are on the 
>backend, it'll use that instead.  Currently, only TV recordings are 
>frontend/backend aware, but I hope to change that sometime after the next 
>release.
>  
>

I've been curious about this as well.. So is it possible to have a beefy 
backend  comp with two or more video cards, lots of disk space, etc,  
and then have "thin clients" for the TV frontends, with the only real 
requirements being TV-out?  For example, the frontends would only need 
to have 100mbit ethernet, a vid card w/ tv out, and a tiny hardrive (or 
ramdisk?) for the OS, right? If so, that would be incredible!