[mythtv-users] HDTV recording and multiple tvs

[Tony Brummett]

I'm sure you'll be getting lots of useful replies; hopefully I'm not being
completely redundant...

On 10/3/07, Jeff Meeks <jmeeks at permacrete.com> wrote:
>
> Can MythTV record as many as 4 shows one of which may be HD.?
>
> What about playback or recording and watching the same show?
>
The short answer is yes, MythTV can do it.  It can record as many programs
as you have tuners, disk space and I/O bandwidth to store.  HD is currently
a problem for many people.  There aren't any easy solutions for recording HD
except from over-the-air broadcasts.  Some people have success with HD cable
boxes with firewire ports, but it depends on the cable company - some
companies turn off firewire access for some or all their channels.  There is
a grey-market product sold by www.169time.com that purports to allow
firewire recording from DirecTV boxes, but MythTV has no official
integration with it.

Do I need a frontend for each TV, or could we have one big backend with
> multiple tuners that could be controlled with remotes?
>

Um... yes.  The usual way MythTV is deployed is to have a frontend computer
directly connected to each television, and they all talk to the master
backend machine (where all the tuners are located) over the network.  The
backend process can run on one of the frontend machines, but dosen't have
to, and you can have multiple backends if your disk space or I/O needs
require it.

For example, I have 4 different computers running the frontend program (2
connected to TVs, a laptop and a desktop computer), and a single computer
running the backend with 3 tuners and lots of disk space in a closet in the
basement.  It's all connected with 100meg ethernet.

Let me know if you have any other questions about it.

-- Tony  brummett at gmail.com
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