[mythtv-users] Run multiple Myth apps on single box?

Joseph A. Caputo jcaputo1 at comcast.net
Tue Sep 14 11:36:58 EDT 2004


On Tuesday 14 September 2004 10:39, Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 14, 2004 at 09:24:33AM -0400, Joseph A. Caputo wrote:
> > From: "Joseph A. Caputo" <jcaputo1 at comcast.net>
> >
> > On Tuesday 14 September 2004 01:07, Chris Lynch wrote:
> > > I just got MythTV up and running, and I'm excited as I'm a
> > > complete Linux newbie and it's working (fingers crossed).  One
> > > question I had is whether or not it's possible to do "multiple"
> > > front end things at one time.  As an example:
> > >
> > > -  Browse a photo slideshow in the gallery while playing music
> > > -  Rip a DVD while watching Live TV or a playing a song
> > >
> > > That kind of an idea - today, when I hit ESC on my keyboard or
> > > Back/Exit on my remote it seems to stop the current process.  Is
> > > there a more elegant binding to use to "move" around.  A quick
> > > search didn't really give me answer on the archives, but I may
> > > have missed it.  Also, if this is possible, what's the config to
> > > enable it?
> >
> > This is a much-requested feature, but the short answer is a
> > qualified "no".  I'll explain.
>
> Well, perhaps it's not quite that bad.
>
> You can in fact have multiple mythfrontend's running, my sister does
> it all the time.  The only constraint is that Bad Things Will Happen
> if more than one of them tries to sieze a) audio or b) Xv -- which
> means that as long as you don't try to *play media* from more than
> one at the same time, you're OK.  I was hoping for a commandline
> option to specify the theme -- in this situation, having them
> visually distinguishable is handy ("oh: I manage files on the grey
> one, but I play them on the blue one").
>
> Given that restriction (and others you might find along the way),
> yeah, you can run more than one frontend at the same time.
>
> If you've wrapped yours in a script, as we have, to point the log
> output somewhere useful, note that they'll probably interleave, which
> might be messy...

The subject line is misleading... I believe the OP's point was that he 
would like to be able to access multiple features/plugins within a 
single instance of mythfrontend without having to terminate any 
currently playing media.  Running multiple concurrent instances of 
mythfrontend on the same display/audio hardware is not the recommended 
solution, even though, as you've pointed out, it's technically feasible 
for certain limited uses.

-JAC


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