[mythtv-users] TV Tuners, backend PC, etc

[Travis Tabbal]

> I'd like to be able to freely tune each TV set (via its frontend PC)
> independently to a live TV stream (obviously coming from any of the
> available TV tuners, on the *backend* PC).  If possible, I'd like to be
> able to independently initiate recording on the stream being watched from
> the frontend box (i.e. to be recorded/encoded in the backend).
> Additionally, for instance, if I wanted to use a laptop as a viewing
> station, the same features would be available.
>


That's how Myth does it. The liveTV stuff is just another recording, so any
FE that wants to view live will just get the first available tuner for that
channel. If a recording is scheduled though, I believe it will prompt the
live TV watcher asking what to do. I don't use Live much, and the one use I
do have for it, I dedicated a tuner to it. For the Laptop, just install the
FE app and you should be good to go.



> It's my understanding that all of this is possible, but I'm unclear
> whether the "watching live TV over the network" would be feasible and
> moreso whether it would be user-friendly (i.e. as opposed to actually
> having to select the tuner, etc).  For instance, ideally one would simply
> select to view "channel 7" in the UI and the backend/frontend would decide
> which tuner that can support that channel is available, and produce that
> stream for the user's viewing pleasure.
>


It works about the same as a cable box / TiVo type box. You tell it a
channel, and it finds a tuner and streams the content to the FE. The user
doesn't know the details. For recording, the user can tell it to record
something and the BE will handle it.



>
> Can you MythTV experts make any recommendations as to strategies to
> follow?  Would MythTV be deployed on all tiers (backend and frontends)? Is
> there any documentation you recommend I read on how this could/should be
> best accomplished?  What about (recent) hardware guides? I know there's a
> (monthly?) HTPC construction guide being produced, but I was unable to
> re-find the link... any pointers here will also be very much appreciated.
>
> For now, budget isn't an issue - I'm not rich by any standard, but I want
> to draw the plans and diagrams that will give me the functionality I want,
> and THEN decide what functionality to cut in order to reduce the budget to
> where I want it to be.
>
> You should assume that any network connectivity will either be 802.11n
> wireless (2.4Ghz most likely, possibly 5Ghz as well), or 100Mbps ethernet
> (if necessary).  The key feature is that I want the frontend PC's to simply
> be playback stations - their only input is whatever the backend PC makes
> available as output streams.
>


If you want HD, wifi, even "N", isn't good enough with multiple clients.  A
single machine can usually get away with it if the bitrate is low enough,
but a couple machines will kill it. 100M ethernet will be far better if you
can make it happen.

It's easy enough to get what you want, your network will be the biggest
issue. You can even netboot the FEs if you have a wired connection. Most
wireless cards don't have PXE support... I don't have any local storage in
the FE machines.

For hardware, it depends on what you want. Playback of HD streams will
require either a big CPU or a supported video format and accelerated
decoding from the GPU. For SD, just about anything you can still buy will
work. I've had good luck with VDPAU and a recent NVidia card. My content is
either MPEG2 OTA broadcasts or h264 from transcoded from DVDs and such.
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