Mailing List Archive: Record on den machine; play on other machines.

Record on den machine; play on other machines.

kedlm at knology

Nov 27, 2002, 8:15 AM

Post #1 of 9 (1631 views)

Is there already a set of instructions to allow recording to happen on
one machine and playback to work on N others? Even a "live" show?

The wife is always wanting to watch "something" in the living room.
I tend to record things in the den (using Show Shifter for windows for now)
and then watch them on my laptop under Linux.

I'd sure love to replace the SS machine with MythTV!
But how can I view the shows remotely without the remote DB copied over?
And can I view the "live" recording the same way you can "on the machine"?

This would be sweet; and maybe its already there; if so, how do I do it?? :-)

If this is one of those features "not ready yet" maybe I can work on it.

Just muttering to myself:
- the laptop actually has a tuner, so I need to switch between "local" myth
and "remote" myth
- the den machine should be straight myth as it is now, since I want to
watch tv down there occasionally
- probably have to redirect DB access to/from the remote machine; maybe have
a button on the frontend that does this?
- eventually would want to switch to/from music/games/videos as well
- is the frontend going to have to restart to switch modes?
- probably want to be able to change channels on the remote machine too;
thats probably not a DB command; have to make it listen for channel requests
too? hmmmmm ; maybe a tcp socket? and then the "local" machine has to send
commands to that socket instead of locally.... guess that could be via the
"external command" command as it works now; again just switch out of "local"
tuner mode.... hmmmmm

Thanks,
Mike

Re: Record on den machine; play on other machines. [ In reply to ]

Nov 27, 2002, 10:58 AM

Post #2 of 9 (1606 views)

On Wednesday 27 November 2002 10:15 am, Michael Kedl wrote:
> Is there already a set of instructions to allow recording to happen on
> one machine and playback to work on N others? Even a "live" show?

I'm working on this -- my local tree is completely broken right now because of
it =). You'll designate one box as the master, and everything will connect
to that on startup (even the frontend running on the same machine).

Isaac

Re: Record on den machine; play on other machines. [ In reply to ]

cedarmckay at mac

Nov 27, 2002, 11:15 AM

Post #3 of 9 (1640 views)

isaac, will the frontend be available as a separately compiled and or
installed package? In other words is there going to be a "complete" and
"front end only" package. It may be that people will want to
compile/install on machines that don't have the prerequisites such as
xmltv, mysql, etc that the complete mythtv requires. I for one am
interested in having the frontend running on a Mac OS X machine. I
never brought up OS X before because I figured since mythtv is so
dependent on devices and particular linux drivers that it would never
work. But since most linux apps compile and run fine os OS X I don't
see why a "frontend" package couldn't either (running on x windows of
course, rather than aqua).

best,

cedar

On Wednesday, November 27, 2002, at 09:58 AM, Isaac Richards wrote:

> On Wednesday 27 November 2002 10:15 am, Michael Kedl wrote:
>> Is there already a set of instructions to allow recording to happen on
>> one machine and playback to work on N others? Even a "live" show?
>
> I'm working on this -- my local tree is completely broken right now
> because of
> it =). You'll designate one box as the master, and everything will
> connect
> to that on startup (even the frontend running on the same machine).
>
> Isaac
> _______________________________________________
> mythtv-dev mailing list
> mythtv-dev@snowman.net
> http://www.snowman.net/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-dev

Re: Record on den machine; play on other machines. [ In reply to ]

Nov 27, 2002, 12:02 PM

Post #4 of 9 (1648 views)

On Wednesday 27 November 2002 01:15 pm, Cedar McKay wrote:
> isaac, will the frontend be available as a separately compiled and or
> installed package? In other words is there going to be a "complete" and
> "front end only" package. It may be that people will want to
> compile/install on machines that don't have the prerequisites such as
> xmltv, mysql, etc that the complete mythtv requires. I for one am
> interested in having the frontend running on a Mac OS X machine. I
> never brought up OS X before because I figured since mythtv is so
> dependent on devices and particular linux drivers that it would never
> work. But since most linux apps compile and run fine os OS X I don't
> see why a "frontend" package couldn't either (running on x windows of
> course, rather than aqua).

Haven't thought that far ahead, really =) But, yeah, logically, a playback
only box wouldn't need xmltv, or a mysql server, though it would need the
mysql client libs.

Isaac

Re: Record on den machine; play on other machines. [ In reply to ]

kedlm at knology

Nov 27, 2002, 12:31 PM

Post #5 of 9 (1648 views)

I'm assuming you either compile in the nupple video (sp?) decode stuff
or you really really just want the GUI? And all the other features:
music/ripping/dvd/etc are either going to call MAC versions or you mean it
will play out of the other box and you are basically just using myth as a
stripped down VNC? (I use VNC to control my remote machines around work and
the house) The advantage I see of using the remote myth for
recording/getting EPG data/holding music/etc. is still limited by the fact I
expect to mount my media over the network. (an expected limitation on my
part) I expect that the mysql connection will be using odbc or a direct
mysql socket....

Mike

On Wed, 27 Nov 2002 14:02:56 -0500, Isaac Richards <ijr@po.cwru.edu> wrote :

> On Wednesday 27 November 2002 01:15 pm, Cedar McKay wrote:
> > isaac, will the frontend be available as a separately compiled and or
> > installed package? In other words is there going to be a "complete" and
> > "front end only" package. It may be that people will want to
> > compile/install on machines that don't have the prerequisites such as
> > xmltv, mysql, etc that the complete mythtv requires. I for one am
> > interested in having the frontend running on a Mac OS X machine. I
> > never brought up OS X before because I figured since mythtv is so
> > dependent on devices and particular linux drivers that it would never
> > work. But since most linux apps compile and run fine os OS X I don't
> > see why a "frontend" package couldn't either (running on x windows of
> > course, rather than aqua).
>
> Haven't thought that far ahead, really =) But, yeah, logically, a playback
> only box wouldn't need xmltv, or a mysql server, though it would need the
> mysql client libs.
>
> Isaac
> _______________________________________________
> mythtv-dev mailing list
> mythtv-dev@snowman.net
> http://www.snowman.net/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-dev
>
>
>

Re: Record on den machine; play on other machines. [ In reply to ]

Nov 27, 2002, 10:14 PM

Post #6 of 9 (1641 views)

Isaac Richards wrote:
> On Wednesday 27 November 2002 10:15 am, Michael Kedl wrote:
>
>>Is there already a set of instructions to allow recording to happen on
>>one machine and playback to work on N others? Even a "live" show?
>
>
> I'm working on this -- my local tree is completely broken right now because of
> it =). You'll designate one box as the master, and everything will connect
> to that on startup (even the frontend running on the same machine).

Isaac, I'm thrilled to hear that you're already working on
this. The configuration I'm anticipating is to have a box
in my living room, one on the TV in my bedroom and two
computers in my computer room. All have or will soon have
tuner cards and use 100Mb ethernet. I'd like to have one
database and scheduler for all of the tuners and be able to
watch any recording at any location. This is the absolute
top of my wishlist. I was thinking I'd hack at this myself
but I'd rather pass on my thoughts to you if you are already
working on this.

Since you support two tuners on one machine, it shouldn't
be too hard to support tuners on multiple systems. Conflict
resolution doesn't seem to be any more complex since it's
just a matter of choosing the two or three preferred shows
rather than just one (given enough tuners, there would never
be any conflicts to resolve ;-). If the hostname is included
in the 'capturecard' table, it should be easy for each myth
instance to record the shows scheduled for the tuner(s) on
it's own machine. I assume writing to a local disk would
work best and that the 'recorded' table could have a field
for the hostname where the recording resides. Is this
generally what you'll be doing?

Remote playback could be as simple as NFS mounts but periods
of latency could make the playback choppy and rewind would
cause the same data to be resent. I've always thought that
it might work better if requesting a remote file triggered a
copy to a local disk (either the same file name in the local
RecordFilePrefix dir or a tmp file) then the player opens the
local file. This way all the data crosses the network once
ASAP unaffected by the viewer pausing or rewinding.

Judging by the way everything works thus far on MythTV, I
trust that however you go about it, you will do everything
in a reasonable way.

-- bjm

Re: Record on den machine; play on other machines. [ In reply to ]

Nov 28, 2002, 5:32 AM

Post #7 of 9 (1608 views)

> Van: Bruce Markey <bjm@lvcm.com>
> Isaac Richards wrote:
>
> Since you support two tuners on one machine, it shouldn't
> be too hard to support tuners on multiple systems. Conflict
> resolution doesn't seem to be any more complex since it's
> just a matter of choosing the two or three preferred shows
> rather than just one (given enough tuners, there would never
> be any conflicts to resolve ;-).

Now only to find a mobo with 40 PCI slots, and HD/RAID that supports the
bandwith of raw encoding. Or did you think about compressed encoding? Poor
CPU...

Henk Poley <><

Re: Record on den machine; play on other machines. [ In reply to ]

Nov 28, 2002, 11:45 AM

Post #8 of 9 (1612 views)

On 28 Nov 2002 at 13:32, Henk Poley wrote:

> Now only to find a mobo with 40 PCI slots, and HD/RAID that supports the
Heh, I'd be happy to find one with more that 6 pci slots and some more irq's
;-(

> bandwith of raw encoding. Or did you think about compressed encoding? Poor
> CPU...
A couple of modern ATA133 7200rpm drives raided should be all right

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Re: Record on den machine; play on other machines. [ In reply to ]

Nov 29, 2002, 10:53 PM

Post #9 of 9 (1647 views)

Henk Poley wrote:
>>Van: Bruce Markey <bjm@lvcm.com>
>>Isaac Richards wrote:
>>
>>Since you support two tuners on one machine, it shouldn't
>>be too hard to support tuners on multiple systems. Conflict
>>resolution doesn't seem to be any more complex since it's
>>just a matter of choosing the two or three preferred shows
>>rather than just one (given enough tuners, there would never
>>be any conflicts to resolve ;-).
>
>
> Now only to find a mobo with 40 PCI slots, and HD/RAID that supports the
> bandwith of raw encoding. Or did you think about compressed encoding? Poor
> CPU...

Currently, I'm most interested in just one tuner per machine
so the performance needs would be similar to a standalone
mythtv system with a single tuner. The feature request is to
have the scheduler assign recordings to tuners on other
systems (donno yet if this is included in whatever Isaac has
been working on this week ;-).

I think putting several 'dumb' capture cards in one system is
not only a problem for CPU and disk IO but also the PCI bus.
However, if we ever get Linux drivers for cards with on-board
MPEG compression, I can envision having a headless server
with up to four tuners and up to four big disks.

-- bjm