[mythtv-users] How hard is it to build an HD MythTV?

[Brad DerManouelian]

stefan_jones at comcast.net wrote:
> Related question:
> 
> If you have a frontend / backend system, with a front end servicing a HD, you are obviously going to need a relatively stout processor in the front end. Or a middling processor and card with good MPEG2 offload capabilities. 
> 
> But what about the back end? It will be doing HD capture, which I understand isn't all that CPU intensive. But where does the commercial flagging / transcoding get done?

Backend HD capture is about the same amount of CPU as copying a file 
from one place to another since essentially that's what it's doing. Very 
low CPU cycles for this.

Commflagging/transcoding is done on the backend system. Will you be 
transcoding? I don't do that any more. Storage is cheap. I have 2TB and 
never transcode anything.

Commflagging is fast. You don't need a beefy CPU to do this in any sort 
of reasonable amount of time.

Playing back HD is the most processor intense thing MythTV will ever do. 
This is where you need to spend the money. However, the benefit is that 
if you are already spending the money on a big beefy processor for HD 
playback, you might as well double up the machine as a backend as well. 
This will also save you headaches if you run into network bandwidth 
issues (commflagging and watching HD at the same time combined with any 
other network traffic might cause pauses) as well as configuration 
issues (making sure mysql can connect from your frontend, making sure 
your network doesn't drop connection for any number of reasons).

> 
> This is relevant to me because I'm trying to decide whether to go for a new combined system, or to retire my current box to be back end only, and make a new HD-capable frontend in a trim little box.

A combined system is much easier to set up and maintain. When you 
upgrade, you upgrade the box. You don't have to worry about upgrading 
two boxes and making sure they both run the exact same version of 
mythtv, making sure your security updates are good on both machine, etc, 
etc.

I started with a combined frontend/backend. Moved to 3 backends, now I'm 
back to a combined system again. The only remote files are 
music/videos/photos on another file server in my basement. All the 
recordings, processing and playing back happens locally next to the TV. 
I have to say I like it much better this way.

-Brad