[mythtv-users] Anybody running an HD-PVR on a VM?

[Alan Young]

Jarod Wilson wrote:
> On Dec 16, 2009, at 1:09 PM, Alan Young wrote:
> 
>> Brian Wood wrote:
>>> Since several of the virtualization solutions now support USB, I was wondering if anybody is successfully running an HD-PVR in a virtual machine.
>>> I mean running a complete Myth backend, with an HD-PVR and an HDHR, under VMware or VirtualBox.
>> I have been considering trying to schedule HD-PVR recordings in a VM with another operating system and application to see if those recordings work better.   I hadn't thought about running the entire backend in the VM.  I wasn't sure it would.  Or maybe it was just frontend that doesn't?  I need to go back and review the wiki again...  In any case, it's interesting prospect.   I'm not sure if VMware or Virtualbox would be better.
> 
> You can run both the frontend and the backend in a virtual machine. The frontend just won't perform very well for video playback in a virtual machine.

Good to know.  Both products are supposed to provide OpenGL hardware 
acceleration.  Has anyone tried OpenGL playback in a VM?

>> As I understand it, Virtualbox is a paravirtualization solution and might be faster than VMware.
> 
> You understand wrong. There's very little difference between how the two do virtualization. Both support both full hardware virtualization and para-virt.

Yeah, that was poorly worded.

Alan