[mythtv-users] accessing 2 BE's from one FE questions

[James Miller]

I've still got my old MythTV system running alongside my new one. I 
thought the new one might be ready to replace the old one a few weeks ago, 
but, incredibly, I'm still trying to get the new one fully operational. So 
I can't take the old out of service yet and am continuing with my testing 
of the new. Both systems are BE/FE combinations, btw, and both are on the 
same subnet on my LAN.

Since both systems are recording, I currently need to switch between the 
two to watch recorded programming and execute other tasks. It's not a 
whole lot of trouble to switch screen/monitor and sound inputs when I want 
to use one or other of the systems. But it strikes me that I might be able 
to obviate that and switch over more fully to the new system if I could 
cause it to hook, not only to its own backend, but to the old system's 
backend, as well.

I've done some preliminary research and discovered the possibility of 
setting up a slave backend, which I'm guessing would be applicable to my 
situation. As I understand it, I'd be needing to reconfigure the old 
MythTV as the slave backend, and the new machine as the master backend. 
While I think I could manage the reconfiguration aspect of this, I'm 
wondering, since the old machine is slated imminently to be taken out of 
service, whether it will be worthwhile?

At this stage I am uncertain how much reconfiguration and 
un-reconfiguration I'd end up doing. Can anyone who has such a system set 
up comment on how easy or difficult this configuration is? Any opinions on 
whether, since one of these machines is due to be decommissioned soon, it 
will be worth my while to set this up?