[mythtv-users] one frontend to multiple TVs, changing audio

[Stephen Worthington]

On Fri, 20 Dec 2013 23:19:05 -0800, you wrote:

>
>  I'm open to any suggestions on how to do this - I looked in archives and 
>elsewhere, but did not find anything that seemed like a suitable solution.
>
>What I have is something like this:
>
>mythfrontend -> audio receiver  -> hdmi splitter -> 3 different TV sets
>
>What I want to do is that if I am using TV set 1, have full digital audio 
>output, 5.1 speaker setup, etc, as I will always be using the audio receiver.
>
>If I am going to the other 2 TV sets, I will not be using the audio receiver, so 
>simple stereo sound is what I need (they only have 2 speakers, and do not 
>support the full set of audio formats that the receiver does)
>
>  I can get what I want by going into the audio setup each time I'm using a 
>different device, but that doesn't work very well.
>
>  I tried using a separate output for digital (mythfrontend does have a SPDIF 
>port to use in addition to HDMI).  However, I don't see a way in mythfrontend to 
>note different speaker layout, and even with that, the problem is that if there 
>is digital audio, it does not output any audio over hdmi (I need an option which 
>says always send data over hdmi, even if digital).
>
>  I was thinking that I could have multiple frontends running on the PC, going 
>out different HDMI/DVI outputs (the receiver has spare ports), but that seems 
>like overkill and creates a new set of headaches of mapping the correct remote 
>to the correct frontend, since I'm just using mceusb remotes.  It also seems 
>that frontend properties are per machine, so having 2 frontends on the same 
>machine would likely clobber each other settings.
>
>  I'm think that using the system event to launch external programs could work 
>to update the database the says what the audio settings are (I already have some 
>events set up to switch the resolution, since one of the TV's does not support 
>1080p).  But I'm not sure if it is documented where these settings are, and 
>whether there is a way to get mythfronted to re-read these audio settings 
>without restarting the process.
>
>  Any suggestions/solutions to this?

In theory, you can set up ALSA to output to multiple devices at once,
and get mythfrontend to send to the right ALSA output so that ALSA
sends it on to all the devices.  Personally, I have found in my
encounters with ALSA that you need the help of an expert if you want
any hope of getting it to do what you want.

I think it may be possible to run several frontends on the same PC,
but you need to have them using different config.xml files.  The
config.xml file for mythfrontend is found in ~/.mythtv, so if you run
each frontend from a different user, they will get different
config.xml files.  I have used this to run a mythfrontend that plays
from my mother's MythTV box on my laptop, by logging in as a different
user, but I have never tried to run two copies of mythfrontend at the
same time.  There does not seem to be any option on the mythfrontend
command line to specify a different config.xml file.