[mythtv-users] Virtual Tuners / Channels ?

PAUL WILLIAMSON pwilliamson at mandtbank.com
Wed Apr 19 12:55:43 UTC 2006


>>> derek at rivertower.ie 04/19/06 8:23 AM >>>
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> Hi Everyone,
> 
> Would it be possible to use MythTV in a hotel type environment 
> with one (or more) "media" servers that have real tuners - one 
> tuner per channel - - and then have the MythTV boxes in every 
> room with some kind of "Virtual Turner" that just gets the 
> real-time stream from the streaming servers in the building?

Sure, anything is possible.  But the virtual tuner would not be 
virtual, it would just be a tuner...

> I looked at "Myth Stream" as a solution but I don't think that 
> it would incorporate in with the normal MythTV channels.

Right.  Read on!

> Maybe all I need to do is work out how to get a /dev/videoXX 
> that is, eh sort-of somehow, NFS mounting the real remote 
> video stream and then tell MythTV that that Video device is 
> a tuner with only one channel tuned on it?

Simple - only have one channel defined in the database for 
that tuner.

> I love MythTV and have been using it at home for a couple of 
> years now but someone has been asking me about a big 
> networked system with set-top boxes and I'm obviously 
> thinking about MythTV for the job.

This has been discussed at length before.

What you want to do will involve lots of tuner cards, pretty much 
a slave backend/frontend setup in every room, or a lot of 
slave backends in one location and frontends in every room.

Depending on how you want to do it, it could be very difficult, 
or very easy.  My setup is a very small one, but could 
easily be expanded with just more slave backends.  I've now 
got a total of 8 feeds coming into my system, and frontends 
distributed in every bedroom (4), the kitchen, the family room, 
the media room in my basement, my workroom in the 
basement, a mobile one for plugging in to various points 
outside when necessary and one in the garage.

The feeds I have are traditional cable wired straight into 
a pvr500, one into a pvr250, two more into pvr150s, one 
into a HD-3000, and two from firewire on DCT-6250s.
That doesn't count the 4 cameras outside, only because 
I haven't figured out how to integrate those without 
a tuner card for each one yet.

I have two slave backends, the second is for the HD-3000 
and the two firewire inputs.  If I want additional pvrx50s, 
I have 4 more slots to expand in the backend.  When I need 
more firewire, I'll need another backend, but I'll need 
more DCT-6250s as well.  Adding a frontend is pretty simple, 
but I haven't gotten them to netboot yet.  So upgrading 
is a nightmare for 5 of them.  The others are mediamvps.
We don't watch much live tv at all anymore, as I have just 
about anything stored on disk.  Backing up is a problem too, 
but I'm always looking for drives to add to the network.

The bottom line, is if you want each room to have the 
individual ability to watch any channel, each one has to have a 
tuner card dedicated to it for live tv.  If you only want to 
offer content stored on the hard drives, that would 
make the installation a whole lot easier (IMHO), and make 
the costs a lot lower.

Paul



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