[mythtv-users] Synchronising frontends

[tortise]

On 16/11/2010 10:04 a.m., Brian J. Murrell wrote:
> On Mon, 2010-11-15 at 14:55 -0600, Greg Oliver wrote:
>> I remember this exact topic last year about this time  :)
>>
>> Since then, someone posted a nice link to multicat thought:
>>
>> http://ivoire.dinauz.org/blog/index.php?post/2010/09/02/Multicat
>
> Interesting, especially in the context of multicast, because that's what
> is really needed to make this work.  While it will guarantee that both
> (or as many as you have) frontends will receive the stream at the same
> identical time, I guess it doesn't really guarantee that all frontends
> will be synchronized in their processing of the streams and thus have
> their audio all exactly in sync.
>

Is exact sync required?  Approximate sync would be fine for me until 
exact sync came along.

VLC can also multicast a stream it pulls, e.g. using .asx from mythweb. 
  I've tested it and it worked.  The disadvantage was it did not use the 
mythtv interface, and was messy to setup, although no doubt things can 
be done to semi automate.

The sound sync everyone says will be a problem was not for me however I 
agree there are multiple reasons for sync issues as already mentioned 
and also because sound travelling thru air is slower than by wire, so 
even if we have electronic sound sync, there will still be air sound 
delays / echos, presuming (worst case) the distant sound is louder than 
the local sound.  That means different physical places will have a 
different timing delay, which means optimisation cannot occur for all 
places(!) However keeping sound transfer between rooms low minimises 
this theoretical problem.

While I was encouraging similar discussions in the past I realised that 
bookmarking and resuming from a different FE was a kludge that achieves 
similar as a poor second best.  The OP for this thread described a use I 
would also employ if it were available.

I look forward to what Greg comes up with, sounds interesting.