[mythtv-users] Questions from a prospective MythTV user

[Stephen Tait]

>
>  1. Is it possible to set up a MythTV "client" machine?  This machine
>     would be a regular Linux PC -- no special video input device, etc --
>     and would be able to play back recorded programs from the main
>     MythTV unit.  Even better, it could drive the main unit, and could
>     let me watch live TV over the Ethernet LAN.  Can MythTV do this?
>     Would it just run in a window on my X desktop in this case?

Correct, Myth has a X-style client/server topology thing. There's alot of 
people here who throw all their TV cards and hard drives down in the cellar 
and pipe the MPEG/whatever streams up to a discless frontend, thin client, 
whatever.


>  3. Does MythTV support the hardware MPEG *decoder* on the PVR-350?

Yup, but performance is only good for MPEG2 (again, most people use a 250 
and a cheap GFX card if their requirements span beyond MPEG2). If you use 
the right files, it's also very stable. I personally use a PVR-250 and a 
cheap nVidia FX - CPU usage is virtually zero (unless I turn deinterlacing 
on) during playback.


>  4. The PVR-350 can generate an encoded MPEG-2 stream in the specific
>     format used on DVDs.  MythTV, of course, can record that stream to a
>     hard disk.  I would like to be able to burn recorded programs to a
>     DVD that can be played in a standard player, and I want to do it
>     without having to recode the data.  How can I do that with MythTV?
>     I can't seem to find any info on getting DVD-recordable data out of
>     it.  There are several places that talk about encoding MythTV data
>     to MPEG-2 DVD format, or even re-encoding MPEG-2 data, but I want to
>     do this without having to re-encode anything.  Suggestions?

There's a semi-recent thread in the list about an emerging Myth plugin for 
this, but it isn't in the release tree yet AFAIK. I'm not sure about the 
DVD-a-bility of the MPEG2 streams; I would hope they're standards 
compliant, but have never had reason to check - I personally use mencoder 
and/or transcode.

>  6. Does MythTV support playing audio CDs in a DVD drive?  What module
>     would I use to accomplish this?

Actually, I've never tried this. But I think using the MythMusic plugin, 
you can add the CD drive to the current playlist, as well as your vorbis, 
FLAC and MP3's.


>  7. Regarding the NES/SNES/whatever emulation (which sounds *very
>     cool*!)...  what input device would one use?  A standard IR remote
>     would probably not be very suitable for gaming.

I'm personally going to add a crummy old gameport joypad for this once I 
can summon the enthusiasm; but documentation for MythGame is quite sparse, 
and gaming isn't one of my major uses for Myth anyway