[mythtv-users] mythtv over network

[Stephen Worthington]

On Tue, 6 May 2014 17:36:06 -0600, you wrote:

>Does anyone shares mythtv over internet ? Say I have cable at home and then
>when I go to my cabin or my relatives I would like to watch mythtv. is it
>possible to have mythtv access my backend from anywhere ?

I use OpenVPN to make a very secure connection from my laptop to my
home network when I am away.  That allows me to run Mythfrontend
connected to my home MythTV box.  But I have never had enough
bandwidth available to actually play programs - you need a 100 Mbit/s
connection really to make that possible and that speed of Internet
connection is only possible here with fibre to the home or maybe VDSL.
Since fibre to the home is being rolled out in New Zealand at the
moment, in a year or two I may be able to play programs too, but then
the next problem would be paying for the downloads.  The 100 Mbit/s
FTH connections we are getting allow up to 1000 Gbytes per month at
reasonable prices, but a single HD program is 4.5-5.5 Gibytes here, so
it would not take long to start running out of monthly quota even with
that seemingly huge limit.

So for TV when I am away, I have my laptop (MSI GT70) partitioned with
dual boot for Windows and Mythbuntu.  I plug in a USB 3 external dual
drive mount and two hard drives which have a selection of recordings
stored on them - I use mythexport to copy them over from my main
MythTV box.  Then when they have been watched and deleted, I log in to
my home network via the Internet, and use Mythfrontend connected to
the home box to delete the recording from there too.

The laptop has USB tuners so I can record when I am away if there is a
suitable aerial, and one of the tuners (a Hauppauge HVR-900r2) has an
excellent remote control to use with MythTV.  The laptop has VGA and
HDMI outputs and can be connected to whatever TV I have available
where I am staying, but I usually do not bother with doing that as it
has a 17 inch screen that allows up to three people to sit around it
and watch TV quite well.  I chose the laptop specifically for its
ability to play TV and run Mythbuntu.  The downside is that any 17"
laptop is inevitably rather heavy and adding two standard size hard
drives increases the weight significantly.  Mine falls into the
luggable rather than portable category, but I am happy with that
tradeoff.