[mythtv-users] Superserver

[Brian Wood]

On Wednesday, August 25, 2010 07:04:01 am MacNean Tyrrell wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 24, 2010 at 6:03 PM, Brian Wood <beww at beww.org> wrote:
> >  On Tuesday, August 24, 2010 03:43:02 pm Travis Tabbal wrote:
> > > On Tue, Aug 24, 2010 at 3:30 PM, Brian Wood <beww at beww.org> wrote:
> > > > Most of what I can get from Hulu and others of its ilk I can get from
> > > > Netflix Watch Instantly with DVD quality and
> > > > excellent reliability, and of course no commercials at all.
> > > 
> > > How are you doing that? I did a quick google, but mostly found older
> > 
> > posts
> > 
> > > that didn't really have a solution. Ideally it would work with Myth,
> > > but
> > 
> > I
> > 
> > > guess I could use the PS3 for that.
> > 
> > I use the PlayON server, which can get Netflix and export it as Mpeg2PS.
> > The problem is PLayON is only available for
> > Windows, I run it in a virtual XP machine under VirtualBox on a Debian
> > server, not on my Myth machine.
> > 
> > PlayON will work will with a PS3, or any other UPnP/DLNA player/renderer.
> > I use a Myka, which can also access NFS and
> > Samba shares from my main server.
> > 
> > I'd like to set up a virtual capture device of some sort for Myth of
> > course, but for now at least I can watch it.
> 
> Is there a guide out there to setting this up?  I have never heard of this,
> and would love to stream netflix to my mythbox.  I do have 1 windows box in
> my house (runs our skype phone in/out, couldn't get the usb to phone
> attapter to work with good sound quality in linux, so used one of my
> laptop's windows licenses for it) so I could run this PlayON thing on that
> right?  Does the PlayOn take a lot of processing power?  Is it free?  Do I
> have to set up something specific in myth to watch this stream (I have a
> revo 1600 for 1 frotnend, a AppleTV for mysecond (can't wait for CrystalHD
> since no VDPAU))?  And do I have to control the stream through like xvnc on
> my laptop, or will the remote be able to send commands to the PlayON
> server?


PlayOn does take a fair amount of CPU power (remember it's transcoding in real time), and it's not free (in either sense), 
though I consider the price very reasonable. You can learn more here:

http://www.playon.tv/playon

It's designed for use with a UPnP/DLNA control point/renderer, most game consoles work, as well as most UPnP-enabled media 
players. Myth won't handle it out of the box, though I can think of several ways you could integrate it into the Myth menu 
system, perhaps by launching VLC.

As far as accessing internet TV, I think it's the best investment I ever made, except for my Myth system of course.