[mythtv-users] Can MythTV do this?

[Kevin Kuphal]

Kris Cote wrote:
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Chris Petersen" <lists at forevermore.net>
> To: "Discussion about mythtv" <mythtv-users at mythtv.org>
> Sent: Monday, January 30, 2006 12:31 PM
> Subject: Re: [mythtv-users] Can MythTV do this?
>
>
>   
>> Can MythTV be used to feed say, an apartment complex of 300 suites? What
>> type of hardware could be used? How many backend servers would be needed?
>>     
>
> One backend could theoretically do it, but you'd probably need more to
> just host the tuner cards.
>
>
> You'd need one tuner for every tv that would be displaying live tv at
> any given time.
>
> So 75 backends with 4 tuner cards each?
>
>   
Perhaps.  I think the guys at one of the other PVR software places 
recently blogged about an 11 tuner system using a combination of PVR-500 
(2 tuner / PCI) and USB tuners.  With hardware encoding, you could 
easily go above 4 tuners per backend.  I think your limitations come 
more in the bandwidth writing to disk and serving the content out. 

You can easily address the disk writing limitations by moving away from 
local storage on the backend to something more SAN like using 
FiberChannel. 

I think you can also address the serving/network bandwidth by using 
non-backend NFS servers to share the aforementioned storage.  While the 
frontend does need to talk to the backend systems for things like 
scheduling, etc., if it has local access to the files via NFS shares, it 
will use that for distribution leaving the backends alone.

I imagine part of the challenge of using Myth for this type of 
environment will boil down more to the questions of security and how do 
you prevent those 300 users from disabling other users scheduling rules, 
deleting content, or otherwise mucking about.  The system isn't designed 
for disparate users but more of a common househould...

Something to think about.

Kevin