[mythtv-users] How does MythTV w/Xbox client on XBMC compare toMCE 2005 ?

Jacques Poulin jacques at jpti.ca
Wed May 11 02:16:27 UTC 2005


Hi Greg,

The way it works with MCE 2005 is that there is no Ir blaster on the Xbox
itself.  Let's say I'm watching TV on a remote Xbox client to MCE.  Note
that all Xbox clients, as well as the MCE server, are all on the same
ethernet network.  If I press Channel Down on my remote in front of Xbox
client #1, the Xbox receives that signal, and sends it to the MCE server
through the network (Ethernet).  The server gets that this signal comes from
remote client #1, and it knows that remote client #1 is now using TV Tuner
#2 as its feed for Live TV for example (which is fed by Set-Top-Box #2).
The server sends the Channel Down signal out to the USB-connected IR
blaster/receiver, which has 2 Ir emitters connected to it, one of which is
stuck in front of STB #1's Ir Receiver, the other in front of STB #2's Ir
receiver.  This makes STB #2 change channel down.  The new feed gets sent
into TV tuner #2, and is forwarded to client #1...

Now, if I were sitting in front of the TV connected to the server's TV-out
(a projector in my case), I would aim my remote directly to the
blaster/receiver to send signals.  The MCE server will then know that the
signals are received from the blaster/receiver itself, and thus will act
upon whichever STB is presently feeding the Server's TV-out.

I'm simply looking for a solution that does it all, and does it all well.

XBMC (without the MythTV front end) simply lacks Live TV / PVR support.  But
it kicks ass when it comes to popular formats for any type of (passive)
content.

MCE does a fine job for the Live TV / PVR functions, and also for the
extender idea.  But with MS's goal to respect anything that has to do with
DRM, remote clients are limited pretty much to MPEG2 and WMV for video,
which sucks.

I was hoping that the MythTV front end to XBMC would bridge the gap.
According to your comment about fast forwarding in Live TV, I can see that
there are still shortcomings...

How about the real MythTV front end (the Linux one) for the Xbox ?  What are
its strengths and weaknesses ?

Thanks for your feedback.

> 
> I'm not familiar with the blaster/receiver, but the standard 
> DVD remote dongle receiver works fine under mythtv on the 
> xbox.  The blaster functionality is somewhat confusing to me, 
> since presumably the tuners you need to change channels on 
> will be hooked into your capture card(s) in the backend?
> 
> Having an IR blaster on an Xbox doesn't make a lot of sense 
> to me, since the xbox is just the frontend, so I must be 
> missing something here. 
> What's your source signal - cable, sat, ota?
> 
> > 6- Has anyone been playing around with the XBMC client, and 
> therefore 
> > could elaborate on what can and cannot be done with such a 
> solution ?
> 
> The XBMC-myth client is pretty bare bones at this point.  
> What it does, is let you play back recorded files (which 
> includes the ringbuffer for live
> tv) while getting show information from the backend database. 
>  It's serviceable, but hardly what I'd call slick.
> 
> IMO, it's main failing is in live TV playback, because it 
> treats the ringbuffer as "just another file" out of necessity 
> because it's piggybacking on the XBMC media playback 
> facilities.  This leads to problems like if you accidentally 
> seek past "live" the playback drops back to the menu and you 
> have to pick your channel again/buffer etc.
> 
> >From the sounds of it you're not going to be happy with the xbmc-myth
> interface, since it's a step backwards from your current 
> setup.  (No disrespect to the author, it's still in it's 
> early stages, and is amazing at what it does accomplish)  A 
> full mythfrontend on your xbox will provide a lot of features 
> that the xbmc scripts just can't hope to duplicate.
> 
> Greg
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