[mythtv-users] Cheap frontend for christmas

Tue Dec 23 10:38:50 UTC 2014

Thought I would report back on getting MythTv Integration with Plex up on
the little Liva.

I do not like that Plex gives access to the whole drive on the server in
which it runs. The only security is by Linux user, so any files set to
world readable are at risk from anyone that gets to the local web page or
to the webpage at plex.tv , I do not like the idea of any software reaching
back to my main server in the house from outside my network. But we wanted
to be able to play some of our movies remotely from time to time, and I
also wanted to have some way to view our collection on some TV's that do
not have full front ends on them.

The plan was to try to install Plex on one of these little boxes and mount
my large collection of videos mostly avi and mp4 files read only to the
Liva so Plex could serve them up to our tablets and phones, and a few
little used TV's. I also installed the Myth Recordings extension to Plex
 from https://github.com/tschaumburg/MythRecordings.bundle .

The Plex install was straight forward, and I added my large video
collection to it no problem. The little Liva has no problem serving up 3 or
4 sessions out to the web and or tablets of my movies.  There are a few
artifacts to the web page viewer, but I did not notice it on the tables or
on the Amazon FireStick. The recordings plug in also installed fine, but
the little Liva has issues re-encoding my HD over the air Myth Recordings
which are in mpg2. With one stream playing CPU resources are exhausted, my
CPU idle time goes to about 2, and the quality of the video is not very
good, but the audio is fine.  The Plex channels seem to work fine, at least
the ones that I have checked.

So this is a partial success, The main goal was to have access to our movie
collection on our tablets and the cheap Amazon Fire Sticks which this
solved. This will allow me to use the Fire Sticks or Amazon Fire TV's on a
few little used TV's in the house and not have to have two devices to view
our Myth Collections, and Netflix / Amazon. So far it satisfies the wife in
that she would like to have a small TV in the kitchen, and be able to use
Netflix and Watch our Myth Collection. If TV recordings become an issue I
will probably just move Plex to a VM on the big server so I have more CPU
resources available, without the security concerns, but for now this is
working and was fun to see what I could get out of the little Liva and 5
watts of power.

Dale

On Fri, Dec 19, 2014 at 2:06 PM, digid myth <digidmyth at gmail.com> wrote:

> I have tested mine and all the HD stuff that I have, and have found
> nothing that will not play. I do not have any Blu Ray  ripps to test with.
>
> I installed the Intel video drivers used the open GL painter and set it up
> to VAAPI for video.
> Sound over HDMI all I had to do was select it to get it to work.
>
> My install was with the latest mythbuntu running .27
>
> The big issue that I had was that if it was powered up with the TV off, or
> you turned the TV off it would not come back up on HDMi. Spent a lot of
> time running this down and it turned out that the xfsettingsd background
> process was causing the issue. I killed it and all works well now. I also
> disabled it in the "Session and Startup" -> "Application Autostart" to keep
> it from starting when the box boots. I have noticed no issues with this not
> running in the background.
>
> I am also using a generic USB remote with no issues.
> It is powered from the USB port in the back with the brick that shipped
> with it.
> I run all my front ends wired, so have not tried the wireless
> There is a small issue on boot that Myth comes up before the box gets its
> DHCP address. I need to modify the script for it to wait for an IP but that
> is really the only issue that I have at this time. I also want to make some
> changes to the OS for things like NOATIME etc the stuff that I would do
> normally on a SSD box.
>
> I have not tried to power it down and up from the remote, but with a
> standby of 5 watts. I like to try to keep power as low as I can, and once I
> get all my other rebuilds done I will revisit this later.
>
> I am planning on upgrading all my nvidia atom boxes with these and have
> more on the way.
>
> At this point the only thing I would like to add is to get some kind of
> bluetooth working. There are no reports of the internal bluetooth working
> under ubuntu, and I have not had a chance to look at that yet. The big
> reason that I want to get this working is so that I can remove the mouse
> and keyboard from them, but use my ipad and as a mouse and keyboard if
> needed, and to allow our iphones to act as remotes. I will report back on
> that when I get more time to play with it.
>
> Dale
>
> On another note I am going to try to get plex server up on one of these
> also. I do not want to run plex on my big server (Backend) due to security
> issues, or lack there of  that I am not happy with in Plex, but will just
> mount my server shares read only to it. I think there is enough CPU power
> to at least do 1 or 2 realtime transcode on videos and recordings from myth
> on this thing.
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, Dec 18, 2014 at 4:06 PM, Josu Lazkano <josu.lazkano at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> I am looking for a cheap fontend to buy to my father.
>>
>> He actually has a Nvidia ION based frontend in the living room and I
>> want to add other little frontend in the bedroom.
>>
>> The requirements:
>>
>>    - Power on/off the system from remote, preferably from a sapphire
>> remote/receiver. The TV has CEC support from HDMI.
>>    - HD content, most of the media are FTA 1080i recordingd, but he
>> use to watch some 1080p MKV movies.
>>    - Cheap device, I don't want to spend too much money with this
>> present. Maybe a NUC, Android, Nvidia ION device?
>>
>> I will appreciate any recommendations.
>>
>> Thanks for your help.
>>
>> Kind regards.
>>
>> --
>> Josu Lazkano
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>
>
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