[mythtv-users] Re: Ultimate affordable VMWARE 4.0/MythTV box suggestions?

[Tobias Blomberg]

On Saturday 27 September 2003 04.49, Romel Llarena wrote:
> Tobias,
>
> I was hoping to put together one central "server" both
> NT and Linux while running Linux clients. Since it was
> doubtful that a video capture card (PVR-150) would run
> on VMWARE I thought "Hey, why not have the clients run
> the encoding and save to the backend?" At least I can
> access the video from any MythTV frontend and possibly
> Windows media player on my network. It would be nice
> to archive to DVD as well.

Hmmm... sounds a bit backwards to me but it should work. The drawback is that 
if your network goes down, you'll lose the current recordings. Better to 
store the files where they are recorded, on each backend. I guess this is 
transparent to MythTV so you will not notice what backend the recording 
actually is at (correct me if I'm wrong). The problem is accessing the files 
from Windows. Then you need to know which backend to look at. But even if you 
know where to look, the file names are not very user friendly 
(4_20030915210000_20030915215500.nuv). I'd just access them through MythTV 
and leave it with that. I have seen some people working on being able to play 
the files via MythWeb. This may be the solution for you.

I still don't understand why you just don't put the PVR-card into the server 
since you were going to run Linux on it anyway as the host OS. Then start a 
Windows server under VmWare if you like. You shouldn't need to run any VmWare 
Linux guest OSes unless you have some obscure needs. Someone pointed out a 
performance problem running capture and VmWare on the same machine. I don't 
think this will be a problem if your server has enough power. A dual 
processor machine may be a good idea. But I don't think it's necessary. 
Depends on how much you load the windows server. I run my backend on a PII 
300MHz with a PVR-250. It does not have any problem recording files @ 
5000/8000 Mbit (<10% CPU load) at the same time as streaming the video to 
another frontend. Playback sometimes get choppy, but I think that is a 
frontend/network issue. It's mainly when an OSD dialog is shown. My backend 
server is also doing some other stuff (DNS, DHCP, mail, web, WINS, PDC, NFS, 
CID) but it's only on my home network so the load is not very high.

And also, are you aware of that Linux can do some Windows tasks (file sharing, 
printer sharing, domain controller) ?  I don't know about AD, but certainly 
the old NT4 way of doing it will work. Maybe you don't need windows at all 
(== no Windows/VmWare license fee)...

/ Tobias


>> I'm probably missing something but why don't you just
>> install the
>> MythTV
>> backend on the host OS directly ?
>>
>> / Tobias