[mythtv-users] My whole house setup

[Jeffery Swan]

 It really is not too uncommon for 6 or more seperate video feeds to be
running at once while another 4 are recording (plus the security cams).
Depending on the time of year I have up to 9 people living in the house
at once (this includes kids home from college, foriegn exchange
student(s), etc.). The major traffic is at "bed time" when everyone wants
to watch something different. It is also quite common that, while
watching the TV, several people are online chatting, streaming content,
downloading files, etc. Last, but certainly not leaset, are the MP3
streams and vehicle uploads. The kid's cars have laptops that connect via
802.11 and upload/download songs and playlists throughout the night as
they have setup.

As for having multiple backends.. I am cheap. Most MoBo CPUs are 2 Gig or
less so I did not want to put in more than two capture cards per box
(security has four though). Also by putting only two cards per box, I
reduce network bandwidth as the switch can connect the requesting front
end to the appropriate back end... However, this has changed (and I have
yet to update my Topo) and there are now 3 capture cards in the two
satelite boxes as I was running out of "live TV" channels while programs
were recording (the kids set up a lot of recordings - everything from
SpongeBob to MTV to CNN Sports - God help me).

You are quite correct in stating that I have a lot of extra network power
here but when I upgraded from several linksys 8 port switches to the
current switch (and subsequently gigabit ethernet cards in the computers)
I didn't want to have to replace equipment in the future so I went big.
Just think, only a few years ago a 1 gig HD, more than 1 meg of RAM, and
ethernet faster than 10Mbits was basically unheard of... now theye are
all commonplace.

At the heaviest traffic loads, I see about 35% - 40% network utilization.

I have a lot of ideas for expanding and adding to my network and I want
to be sure it can handle the job as the need arises. Is it currently
overkill? Yes...maybe. Will it be in the future? I do not think so.

Oh yeah, and as a certified Geek, it has a really cool wow factor ;-)

  ----- Original Message -----
  From: "Josh White"
  To: "Discussion about mythtv"
  Subject: Re: [mythtv-users] My whole house setup
  Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 15:11:33 -0400

  While that looks really impressive, why do you need all that to watch
  6 videos at once?  I've done that myself on my SD system with a $99,
  100mbit netgear wireless router and a $25 linksys switch, serving 3
  desktop -ish machines, and 3 wirelss laptops acting as the rest of
  the front ends.  This all coming from 1 backend (a 2.8ghz, 400mhz fsb
  P4 and 512mb/ram).  It was displaying live tv on 3 of the front ends
  (from the three tuners in the only backend server), and the other
  three were watching recorded tv shows.  It wasn't transcoding, but it
  was commercial flagging the three live tv shows, and I guess this
  wasn't going on while I was monitoring 8 security cameras, but still.

  Maybe some of you awe inspired people can fill me in on the
  difficulty here.  As far as my understanding goes, if this system is
  dealing with HD content, the backends are really just copying the
  data to a hard drive, and passing it on, and it's the front ends that
  do all the work.  I guess it just appears to me that you built a
  network thats 100x stronger than you'll ever need, and it's just
  going to idle along.  It's like the 60 year old greasy Italian guy I
  saw stalling his '07 Corvette ZO6, only to put off at 25mph in a
  55mph zone last weekend. 

  On 10/23/07, Gary Dawes <gary.dawes at gmail.com> wrote:

    we are not worthy! I can only dream.... Obviously your wife is a
    lot more "tuned in" than most of our's!

    On 23/10/2007, Jeffery Swan < scientist at engineer.com> wrote:

      This is just a quick post for anyone interested in my (quite
      large) MythTV setup and extras. I have had many people ask me
      for details so I set up a Blog at:

      http://ultimatemythtv.wordpress.com/

      The Blog is pretty new but I will add content as time allows.
      I also have a spot where I talk about future upgrades and
      modules I would like to add. So,
      If you are interested in a nearly 10 TB system, check it out.

      As always comments and suggestions are welcome and encouraged
      (to my personal email not this group as it would be off
      topic).

      -Jeff


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