[mythtv-users] Secondary viewing location help

[jansenj]

I have an HD fontend/backend currently connected to an HD TV via DVI
and spdif to my amp.  I am trying to come up with a solution to be
able to watch my recordings in another room as cheaply as possible.

Here's the catch I just use OTA (hdhomerun), so 90% of my recordings
are HD bandwidth.  Note: I do have wired Ethernet to the secondary
viewing location.

So I've got a few thoughts and looking for any comments or feedback.

1. For $230 I could get an AppleTV, but its not clear to me how easy
it is to get that working for HD recordings, if I went this route, I'd
love to maintain the apple SW for the ability to rent movies if I
desired. Either way, cracking the unit would not be an option as I
don't have or have easy access to an Intel Mac.  Is this still a
viable option for processing 1080i MPEG2 using a myth gui on an Apple
TV?  I've read several success stories for using Apple Tv for SD
recordings, but not as many for HD recordings.

2. Cost prohibitive option would be buying a mac mini, space would
prohibit a shuttle PC even if you could configure one cheaper that
could still handle HD.

3. HD capable upnp player.  But I haven't had any experience setting
up the backend to play nice with a upnp media player, is there a how
to on configuring an XP or VISTA piece of SW that I could test out the
upnp capabilities of the backend? Plus I understand you loose all
commercial skipping abilities.

4. Cheapest option would be if I could use the existing hardware to
mirror the digital video and spdif audio on the analog counter parts
(TV out of the video card and headphone jack of the audio), then run
analog cables to by second viewing location, but I don't even know
where to start or if it is even possible with this option.  I realize
using this option as stated would only allow 1 recording to play at a
time, but that is acceptable for now.  I'm guessing someone has
thought of this before, but I have yet to see any indication that
anyone has done it.  Basically run two independent frontend sessions
off the same CPU.

5. And of course I could transcode every HD recording down to SD and
use an MVP, but I'd rather not have to wait for a day for the
transcodes to always finish, plus that is a lot more electricity to
use if I transcode EVERY recording.  Besides, in 0.21, there was not
an obvious way to drop resolution, but still maintain MPEG2
compression.  Can anyone help me in that department if it sounds like
thats the best option of those I've described.

I've been thinking about this stuff for the last 6 months and have not
made much headway, any comments or feedback would be much appreciated.