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

[Matt Emmott]

On Sat, Jan 5, 2013 at 7:42 AM, Mark Gardner <Mark at thegardners.me.uk> 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!
>
>
>
My master BE is a tuner-less VM running on ESXi 5.0. It was originally a
dual Opteron server that I virtualized a couple years ago. My tuner is an
HDHomeRun Prime (Charter Cable in the US). Since the host is pretty beefy
(Poweredge 2950 with 2 4-core Xeons and 16GB RAM), I have had few issues.
The one sticking point is that my Poweredge is a gen 2 which does not have
the necessary magic to 'pin' USB ports to VMs that a gen 3 has. This means
I can't use my HD-PVR with the BE. Overall I'm happy with my setup.

My Pi is on backorder till February but I can say that I have been using a
hacked version of Mythlink.pl + symlinks + Plex and it is almost awesome.
I'd say in another six months I'll have all the bugs worked out and can
present it as a viable alternative to a Myth FE for mobile and offsite
devices.
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