[mythtv-users] MythTV server with 4 DVB-S cards ?

[Janne Grunau]

On Thursday 16 October 2008 19:53:19 Linuxguy123 wrote:
> I'm an FTA guy.  We have several receivers fed from 2 satellite
> dishes with 5LNBs.
>
> I'm a Linux guy.  We have several PCs and laptops, all running Linux.
> My house is networked both wired and wireless.
>
> I'm tired of running coax everywhere I want to put a satellite
> receiver. Some of my receivers do PVR, but to a USB drive.  I'm tired
> of moving that drive around and sometimes hooking up a laptop to
> watch a show on a certain TV.
>
> All my photos are digital.  I want to be able to access (view) them
> on any TV.

I'm not sure how good mythgallery works on multiple frontends 
simultaneously. The files have to be exported via a network filesystem 
to the frontends.

> I think I want to marry my computer system to my FTA system by
> building a mythTV server and putting a simple htpc at every TV.
>
> Is it practical to build a mythTV server that operates 4 DVB-S cards
> ? Would said server be able to stream video to 4 different receivers
> simultaneously ?  Or is that too much to ask ?

No that should be perfaetly fine. A single backend (on a modern pc) can 
take easily more than 10 DVB recordings simultaneously. The database 
and the storage for recordings should be on different harddisks though.

> How much bandwidth does streaming take ?  2 or more of the feeds
> would be HDTV.

Depends on the streams, DVB SD streams are in the range 2-8 MBit/s, HDTV 
in the range 8-18MBit/s

> Unfortunately, the location of those TVs is such that 
> their HTPC would use a wireless connection.  Would that work ?

Probably not for more than one per wlan channel if at all.

Janne