[mythtv-users] Record with two tuners, play to two clients

[David Shay]

> David Levine wrote:
>
> > Can one server do this?  Record two streams and play two streams at
> > once?  Is hard drive speed a factor?  Would an XBox be an acceptable
> > client machine?
> >

If you want a *REALLY* cheap front-end, get a Hauppauge MediaMVP, ditch the
standard software that comes with it and use http://mvpmc.sourceforge.net
instead.  It allows you to have what is basically a view-only Myth frontend.
For $87 ( http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=10355985&loc=101&sp=1 )
, it's pretty hard to beat.  Note that this only works with MPEG-1/2
streams, so you would have to use a PVR-250 or equivalent on the back-end
for this to work.  It also lets you play your music and picture collection
as well.  For this, it doesn't have a myth-frontend but basically browses an
NFS filesystem -- you can mount your myth directories and play any MP3, JPG,
or MPG files.  The only real limitation with this as a front end is an
inability to schedule or delete programs from there.  I may work with the
author to help implement some of these features, though, if I get a chance.
Nice benefit is that it is *completely* silent.

>
> >
> > Also, if I set up a 802.11g network (right now I'm using "b"), would
> > it have enough bandwidth to not actually need to physically wire the
> > clients to the server?
> >
>
> This tends to be problematic and results in a stutter quite often. The
> available bandwidth seems to be an ever changing thing and will *always*
> be out performed by a wired connection. If it is not too much trouble,
> run an Ethernet cable to where you want to use the front end.
>

I am successfully running my Myth network over 802.11g.  What I have done is
to purchase a set of Linksys WRT54G boxes, which you can pretty much get for
about $60 each these days.  Once again, ditch the standard firmware, and
replace it with that at http://www.sveasoft.com.  Link however many units
you have together using WDS.  To get the latest firmware (alchemy 5.2.3) ,
you do have to pay $20, but this also entitles you to support, which is very
responsive and accurate. The previous publicly available firmware (Satori
4.0) works OK for all kinds of TCP traffic, but has really lousy UDP
performance.  To get the Hauppauge MediaMVP to work effectively (it has its
own WRT54G unit), I needed to use alchemy 5.2.3, which has improved wireless
drivers which fix the UDP performance problem.

My 1-hr recorded shows are typically about 1.7GB.  I can actually FTP or
rsync a file from machine-to-machine in about 20 minutes getting actual
throughput of about 1 megabyte per second, about 3 times the rate I need to
just stream the video.

Running a wire wasn't a real good option for me, so I did manage to get this
to work.  Besides, I got to experiment with more hacked firmware...  Anyone
who wants more details on this, let me know.