[mythtv-users] Four webcams, time shifting

[Bruce]

MythTV users,

I'm trying to do a video art project and I'm trying to understand if MythTV 
is the right tool - hope you can help.

It involves taking recordings from four different webcams, delaying them by 
varying amounts (1 minute to 12 hours), and displaying the image on four 
screens (1 per webcam source).

The hardware requirements are a bit flexible and I'd like high quality 
video but really low cost (typical!). If I can find four cheap used 
computers, each could run their own copy of MythTV to do the timeshifting. 
If I can find enough video cards for one hefty computer to handle all 4 
streams, I could do that too. I'd rather not have to buy expensive hardware 
video encoding cards.

My initial thoughts were to try to do this with VideoLAN, but it just 
doesn't have the same PVR (i.e. timeshifting) capabilities. I could 
probably kludge together the 1 minute delay, but the longer times become a 
headache.

It's basically timeshifting I'm trying to do, so a PVR package might be the 
best bet. I gather MythTV can take webcams as inputs, as long as I have the 
right Linux-compatible webcam?

Many thanks in advance,

Bruce