[mythtv-users] Absolute minimum for MythFrontend

[jarpublic at gmail.com]

On Fri, Mar 13, 2009 at 1:04 AM, Bruce Nordstrand <brucen at ksl.com.au> wrote:
> Hi all
>
> I have a “frontend” with XBMC installed as the primary source. This box
> currently has not window manager at all. Because my wife misses commercial
> detection and because nothing matches MythFrontend for MythTV viewing, I
> want to install MythFrontend on this box. However, I have no idea what the
> bare minimum install requirements are for it. Any help would be appreciated.
> I am running on Ubuntu 8.04 (better for XBMC) and would be installing
> anything I need via apt-get.
>
> On another note, does anyone have any tips or scripts for running XBMC out
> of a Myth menu? This frontend will purely be for viewing recorded shows on
> the backend I have elsewhere in the house but XBMC will be used for
> everthing else.
>

The bare minimum depends on what you are playing back. HD H.264
recordings will have much higher requirements than low bitrate MPEG-2
content. If you can play it in XBMC then you shouldn't have any
problem playing it from mythfrontend. The mythfrontend program itself
has minimal requirements. Until recently I was running it on a 1 GHz
PIII with 384 MB of RAM, and others home gone lower than that. In
ubuntu, I would recommend install mythbuntu-control-centre. That will
install the gui mythtv control center that the mythbuntu guys
developed. From there you can check off that you want this to be a
frontend, and it will take care of installing all of the necessary
packages and configuring things that you need. It won't mess with the
rest of your system, it just makes the appropriate calls to apt-get
etc.

There are some posts on the list about incorporating XBMC as a button
in the mythtv menus. Search the archives. I don't think there was
anything fancy required, something like 'exec xbmc' with the standard
syntax for a button.