[mythtv-users] backend 4x pvr250 MB advice

[Maarten]

On Friday 30 July 2004 12:49, Charles Lavin wrote:
> On Fri, 2004-07-30 at 03:21, Steven wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I'm trying to set-up a backend with 4 PVR250 cards (will be serving 7
> > diskless frontends). Anybody out there with such a configuration? Any
> > ideas what motherboard features would be needed for this (4 PCI slots, I
> > know :-). Anything else I should look out for?

> 7 frontends seams a little crazy.  You could get away with 2 frontends.
> One dedicated box in the room you watch the most tv in and will get the
> most use.  And 1 frontend with the video/audio modulated and fed back
> into your cable system on an unused channel.  Then use an RF remote to
> control myth no matter what room your in.  It works great and will save
> you some cash.

What makes you think he uses all 7 by himself is beyond me.  Not many people 
even have 7 rooms, or 5 kids, to begin with.  No, to me it sounds like he is 
setting up a distributed PVR for a couple of apartments, or a whole building.
I might be wrong, but I don't think so.

Couple of points to the OP: 
You either will need gigabit ethernet, or several 100mbit cards in the backend 
to serve frontends I think.  It's rather dubious if 7 frontends can be driven 
though just one network card. The issue of disk I/O and PCI bandwidth plays, 
too.  You need to experiment, I would not expect a system to be able to 
maintain 4 recording streams and 7 frontend streams at one time, albeit that 
worst-case scenario will not happen often at all...
Maybe splitting the backend into two separate boxes with Gig-E between them 
and two cards in both will work better, I dunno.  That would at least help 
with the network bandwidth, as not all frontend streams will be served by the 
same backend.  This setup of yours is kind of uncharted territory of course, 
and that is obviously why you're asking here.

A friend of mine plays with the same idea, but then even worse -he wants the 
frontends to be connected over wifi- but that idea is still just in early 
planning stage. If that.
 
Maarten

-- 
Linux: Because rebooting is for adding hardware.