[mythtv-users] Newbie questions about MythTV solution

[Joseph A. Caputo]

On Monday 20 October 2003 05:08 pm, Jerry Rubinow wrote:

[snip]

> I was figuring that all the media would reside on the backend machine
> and none on the frontends.  Should there be any problem with mounting
> the backend directory over the network on both frontends at once?


Shouldn't be a problem.



> >> From either frontend, I'd like to be able to: use it as a PVR,
> >> stick in a DVD and play it, stream audio, view pictures, look at
> >> weather info, and play MAME.  I only need access to MythWeb
> >> remotely, not from the frontends.  Should this be possible and what
> >> issues can I expect to have to resolve?
> 
> > Only that you need the hardware & processing power in each frontend to
> 
> > support whatever you want.  Keep in mind that what you refer to as 
> > 'streaming audio' (I assume you're referring to MythMusic) is really 
> > just hosting an mp3/ogg/flac player, with the music files located in a
> 
> > directory that may be local or network-mounted.  In general, nothing
> in 
> > Myth is 'streamed' other than the basic TV recordings.
> 
> In my envisioned setup, the backend has two tuners, both with mpeg
> encoders, and the frontends have mpeg decoding built into the
> motherboard.  What kind of processing power will I need on the backend
> in order to record two shows at once and playback two other recorded
> shows, one to each frontend?  The mini-itx boards on the frontends
> should be fully capable of playing back whatever video they're
> receiving, right?


In theory, using hardware for both encoding and decoding, neither the frontend 
nor the backend should require much processing power.  I don't have hardware 
for either one, so I do it all in software & can't really give you hard 
numbers as to what you would need.  The mini-itx boards, I'm led to 
understand, are a bit on the lean side as frontends with software decoding, 
but with the new hardware decoder support they should do very well, though 
that support is still under active development.

Anyway, the big thing you'll need to worry about (IMHO) in this setup is I/O 
bandwidth, both over your network and on your backend disk drive.  The MPEG-2 
files are large; I suppose 802.11g has enough bandwidth, but I wonder if 2 
simultaneous playback streams might be too much for it...?  Also, if you'll 
be recording 2 MPEG-2 streams simultaneously onto the same disk, make sure 
your disk drive & IDE chipset can handle the required sustained transfer 
rate.  I'd imagine any modern UDMA-33 drive or better is OK; others chime in 
if you have data regarding this!


> How about the wireless network - for anyone who has an 802.11g setup,
> how many video streams are you able to have going simultaneously?

See above.


-JAC