[mythtv-users] Architecture Idea - Raspberry Pi, VM, XBMC

[jedi]

On Sat, Jan 05, 2013 at 01:17:45PM +0000, Fred Watt wrote:
> On 05/01/13 12:42, Mark Gardner wrote:
> >Hello,
> >
> >Apologies if this topic has come up before, perhaps in its component
> >parts, but I would appreciate the thoughts of the group on the following
> >architecture idea for a new Myth implementation.
> >
> >- DVB-S2 USB tuner on a Raspberry Pi running a MythTV Slave backend
> >- DVB-T2 USB tuner on a (second) Raspberry Pi running a MythTV Slave
> >backend
> >- MythTV Master backend (with no tuners of its own) running in a VM
> >- Data storage to be on a NAS
> >- XBMC Frodo PVR as MythTV Front End running on dedicated hardware
> >
> >Both tuners would be dual tuners ideally, but I've not seen any suitable
> >yet.
> >
> >- Is Pi man enough to run a backend?
> >- Is a master backend (no tuners) in a VM a viable option?
> >
> >Any comments / thoughts / suggestions would be appreciated.
> >
> >Thanks!
> >
[deletia]
> Personally I can't see why people are so interested in the PI as a
> solution but do remember you need arm drivers for the S2 usb cards.
> Do they exist?  I don't understand why you have a VM environment

   The old bttv drives worked on Alpha apparently.

   So the idea if using a PI as a slave backend is not as strange as it 
may seem. As ARM hardware gets more commonplace, I would expect that
stuff to get sorted out. It may even work already. 

   Someone just has to give it a go. Build V4L on a PI and see how it goes.

> which must run on a powerful'ish computer, then want an underpowered
> computer for a slave.   I personally am interested in arm... and
> therefore looking at the cotton candy or samsung arndale.
> 
> Personally I use local disks (on a slave) for recordings.  You can
> store on a nas - but do think about performance if you have a few
> nas clients around the house.  You could end up stuttering during
> play back of HD. I have RAID devices in my linux server for data I

    I've done this and found the problem to be ultimately about 
transcoding and commflagging jobs. Throwing HD around the network
is not a show stopper. A good wired network should be able to 
handle the recording and playback side of things.

[deletia]

    When my current crop of slave backends die, I would love to be
able to replace them with something cheap and quiet. They don't need
to have much more than a 10 year old CPU, a USB port, and a GigE port.
Even a USB 100mbit NIC would work. One of my slave frontends already
uses one of those.