[mythtv-users] Myth LiveTV over a network

Dewey Smolka dsmolka at gmail.com
Thu Jan 25 16:54:21 UTC 2007


On 1/25/07, Firejack <firejack at bigfoot.com> wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> Recently I've started a project using MythTV for the first time. The 3 aims
> I had are;
>
> 1) Centralized Media Server Using MythTV
>
> 2) Ability to watch Live TV on any computer on my home network
>
> 3) High Definition feed to my Sony 32'' HD LCD TV
>
> So far I have managed to complete 1 & 3 successfully and the results are
> amazing!
>
> 2 is causing me a headache though. I'm unable to work out how I go about
> pushing MythTV out onto my home network so any computer can watch LiveTV. My
> network consists of 1 OpenSuse 10.2 Linux machine (now running MythTV) and 3
> more Windows XP Pro SP2 machines (could convert one to Linux as its mostly
> used for watching DVD's/browsing the Internet anyway). I installed the
> MythWeb plugin but that doesn't Stream LiveTV only recordings and this isn't
> what I wanted.
>

I think you might be a little confused about how Myth works. For one
thing it doesn't really do live TV -- Live TV in Myth involves
initiating a recording and beginning playback at the same time.

Also, Myth doesn't push content to remote FEs, but allows the remote
machines to pull content from it.

Any frontend can 'Watch Live TV' but only if there are enough capture
cards to support it. If you only have one FE (and aren't recording
anything) then this works fine with a single card. But if you have
multiple FEs and a single card, then only one will be able to watch a
'Live' feed. (The others can watch the same feed, but from the 'Watch
Recordings' menu -- same content, but they will not have the ability
to change channels.) If you have only one card and are recording
something, then there is no Live TV on any machine.

As for dealing with MS Windows machines, I know there was a project to
port the FE to Windows but I haven't heard anything about it for ages.
Streaming works via mythweb for recordings, as you've noticed. You
could also use mythrename.pl (to give your recordings more
human-readable names) and share them with Samba, but I suspect that's
not really what you're looking for.

But as for Live TV, just keep in mind that as far as MythTV is
concerned, there's very little difference between 'Live' and Recorded.
And the whole point of a PVR is to do away with Live TV.


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