[mythtv-users] Ever use VNC? I find it really useful.

Ross Campbell ross.campbell at gmail.com
Mon Feb 20 17:07:12 UTC 2006


On 2/20/06, Raphael Pooser <rpooser at gmail.com> wrote:
> Actually I'd be interested to know if you could actually
> use VNC to watch the video itself.

In short, yes - but you won't want to... vnc isn't a way to get a
second front end out of a single machine. Your framerate will suck,
and if you're playing any sound on you frontend machine, vnc will not
have access to your sound device, so you won't get any sound.

I'm sure lots of people here use vnc for remote admin, hacking. I
start vncserver on :1 at boot time with a lightweight windowmanager
and then connect via my laptop to a fullscreen vnc session on mythtv,
sit on the couch and happily hack away.

One nice benefit of using a fullscreen vnc session for hacking from a
laptop is that you get great battery life - hard drive rarely needs to
spin up, system stays cool(er) so fan doesn't need to run (as much),
and I can go for many hours between recharges.

vnc sessions don't support XV or GL, and unless you're using jack for
your sound mixer, you can't play multiple sound events at the same
time. Lack of xv/GL xfree/xorg extensions in vnc means that you can't
get accelerated video and some apps will refuse to run.  VNC client is
just a screenscraper - it's not intended nor ideal for streaming video
- you can run mythfrontend in it, but unless you have a gigabit wired
network, I wouldn't expect any decent effective framerates.  Xine
works pretty well for "testing" videos within vnc sessions and will
degrade automatically if XV or GL isn't available.

If anyone knows how to get a vnc session that supports GL extensions
or one that can take advantage of or fake xv, please do tell.

-Ross


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