[mythtv-users] Master backend/storage, 1 or 2 machines?

[Brad Templeton]

On Wed, Aug 16, 2006 at 08:24:54PM -0400, Steven Adeff wrote:
> I lived with 6 other people (all fraternity brothers outside of 
> our House),
> having Myth for the whole apartment would most likely have 
> required
> something of similar setup.


I've found there can be quite a difference between what
you feel you need before you work with Myth and what you
end up needing.

First of all, people don't appreciate at first how much
they will drop away from surfing live TV.   I personally
have fallen into the "very close to never" camp, so much
so that I would not miss it much if Myth didn't even
support live TV.   Others won't go so far but just about
everybody drifts away from doing it much.

For most people, your view of the urgency of watching
a show close to airtime vanishes, with some modest exceptions
(water cooler shows, news, sports.)

Instead you go to watching shows you have decided to
watch.  If you use tvwish or tivo suggestions, you get
enough random stuff thrown in to satisfy the craving for
something different.

Realizing that, you learn that it's the number of frontends
that control how many people can watch a different show at
once, and every PC can be a frontend.  But you also learn
that people can more readily share a frontend even with
different tastes, because there is no rule governing when
you watch.

You also find out that for many shows, particularly
non-broadcast, they are aired multiple times, letting just
one tuner do the job.

I suspect that once people adapt, even a large group can get
by on far fewer tuners.   Especially when you consider that
in a real crisis, some of the TVs are still TVs and can
watch live.   No family should be watching this much TV (though
I realize that's an opinion) but even a frat house seems
unlikely to run into a situation where there are 8 different
shows, all on at the same time, not repeated at any later
time, that people are so keen to watch.  You think it would
happen but it doesn't, once people get past surfing.

(Plus, soon you will be able to legally buy downloads of
most of these shows, and you can already find them with
more questionable ways in most cases.)


Now, I can still see the need for an 8 tuner box.  A
show like the Daily Show likes to record all the major
networks and news channels all the time to make funny
clips.  They might need even more than 8.   An eventual
system for an appartment building, if it became legal to
do this, could use more than 8.  I would look into the
USB encoders in that case.

(USB will also let you have lots of serial controllers
without taking slots.)