[mythtv-users] Architecture Idea - Raspberry Pi, VM, XBMC

[Mike Perkins]

On 14/01/13 19:48, Matt Emmott wrote:
> On Sat, Jan 5, 2013 at 7:42 AM, Mark Gardner <Mark at thegardners.me.uk> wrote:
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> Apologies if this topic has come up before, perhaps in its component
>> parts, but I would appreciate the thoughts of the group on the following
>> architecture idea for a new Myth implementation.
>>
>> - DVB-S2 USB tuner on a Raspberry Pi running a MythTV Slave backend
>> - DVB-T2 USB tuner on a (second) Raspberry Pi running a MythTV Slave
>> backend
>> - MythTV Master backend (with no tuners of its own) running in a VM
>> - Data storage to be on a NAS
>> - XBMC Frodo PVR as MythTV Front End running on dedicated hardware
>>
>> Both tuners would be dual tuners ideally, but I've not seen any suitable
>> yet.
>>
>> - Is Pi man enough to run a backend?
>> - Is a master backend (no tuners) in a VM a viable option?
>>
>> Any comments / thoughts / suggestions would be appreciated.
>>
>> Thanks!
>>
>>
>>
> My master BE is a tuner-less VM running on ESXi 5.0. It was originally a
> dual Opteron server that I virtualized a couple years ago. My tuner is an
> HDHomeRun Prime (Charter Cable in the US). Since the host is pretty beefy
> (Poweredge 2950 with 2 4-core Xeons and 16GB RAM), I have had few issues.
> The one sticking point is that my Poweredge is a gen 2 which does not have
> the necessary magic to 'pin' USB ports to VMs that a gen 3 has. This means
> I can't use my HD-PVR with the BE. Overall I'm happy with my setup.
>
Have you thought of trying USB over IP? http://usbip.sourceforge.net/

That should work independent of whatever virtual host/guest system you are 
using. I'm using it with a xen system for other purposes and it seems to work 
fine, once you figure out how to set up the configuration scripts - mostly a 
case of udev rules.

-- 

Mike Perkins