[mythtv-users] HD Homerun questions

Mark Knecht markknecht at gmail.com
Mon Jan 12 20:45:01 UTC 2009


On Mon, Jan 12, 2009 at 10:42 AM, Travis Tabbal <travis at tabbal.net> wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 12, 2009 at 11:26 AM, Mark Knecht <markknecht at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Possibly I could put the Mac Mini on a separate private network, wired
>> or wireless, so that it doesn't directly collide with all the stuff
>> currently on the network, and then let the other machine do the
>> playback with a VDPAU card of some sort.
>
>
> If you're using wireless G, you're going to have problems with HD streams.
> Particularly if you do more than one. If you have a wired, switched 100M+
> network, you should be fine. I use gigabit for my Myth stuff and it works
> great. I can have 3 streams going + the 2 recording from the HDHR just fine.
> I've considered moving the HDHR to it's own network, but it hasn't really
> caused any problems. I've also tossed around adding a second HDHR, but I
> just don't have enough conflicts right now to justify the expense. If I ever
> add another one, I'll probably move them to thier own network with a
> dedicated backend machine.
>

I'm sort of thinking of an internediate secondary backend for the
HDHomeRun. It would have it's own local disk and would be a 'local'
frontend for the HDTV. That way anything recorded on the HD server in
general just goes to the big screen in the family room and no where
else. I think that keeps all that traffic off the network. Longer term
I might consolidate everything into a new server when I get an
HDMI-type HDTV.

The model breaks down a bit when I consider streaming HD content to my
laptop or desktop machines in my office. (I work at home.) In that
case I either put up with a little network congestion once in awhile
or consider learning how to transcode HD material into some lower
level format for my remote machines. Is that possible? Can I keep a
copy of the original but also make an SD version for certain machines?
I've never asked Myth to do anything other than how it's set up by
default. I suspect I might need to get smarted about all of this.

To anyone who owns an HDHR I understand that it only tunes/decodes
unencrypted streams, but I'm wondering how many of those there are in
the Bay Area. (Or elsewhere) The Comcast web page lists about 75 or so
(rough count by eye) channels in HD. Some of them are over the air
local stations so I'm expecting that these are available via the HDHR
but lots of them look like cable channels that I won't receive. I
don't think we record more than about 30% of our recordings from
network TV stations so I suppose I'll only be able to get that 30%,
correct?

thanks,
Mark


More information about the mythtv-users mailing list