[ale] Using MythTV in a networked DVR farm setting

[Chris Farris]

On Mon, 2006-02-20 at 10:04 -0500, Daniel Howard wrote:
> Fellow Linux enthusiasts,
> 
> We're considering a centralized vs. non-centralized digital video 
> recorder (DVR) architecture based on OSS (MythTV) in Brandon Elementary 
> and I was wondering if any ALEs have experience or thoughts about the 
> following in MythTV:
> 
> 1. How well the program guide and network interface work.  Can teachers 
> easily program a recording from school or home PC via web interface?  Do 
> we need a fixed IP address for each DVR, or does MythTV have a single 
> web site you can log into and program your local DVR (like Snapstream, e.g.)
I think each MythTV Backend would need its own static IP address. I'd
set it up that way just to keep down the debugging headaches. The one
server acting as the Master Backend would need a static IP because that
is the host you would be running mythweb on. 

As for ease of use of the web interface - I find it pretty easy, but you
may find a problem with the luddites working in most government schools.
I'd seriously consider Mike's advice of having someone else do it.

> 2. If you had a bank of MythTV Linux DVRs in a centralized location, how 
> could you set it up so that teachers could set up a recording and the 
> interface would to select the next available DVR in the bank to make the 
> recording?

Myth will automagically figure that out. You will need recorders for the
number of shows the teachers plan to simultaneously record. Are you
recording off the air or from cable/satellite? If the latter you will
need one cable box per recorder. 

> 3. How does this relate to the upcoming ALE meeting on using Tivo boxes 
> themselves?
No idea. I'm still in the dark age of Tivo with a limping along series
1. 

> 4. Can you set MythTV to automatically recompress the digital video for 
> streaming at a lower bit rate so older clients can stream it from the 
> LTSP servers?
You can configure "user jobs" to run on the backend servers after they
have recorded a program. I use it to chop out the ads for export -
something you won't find on a Tivo.

> Has anyone tried any of this?  Any advice?  Alternative is to put a 
> Linux box in each classroom dedicated to DVR and connected to the 
> classroom cable feed and then teachers record/store programs with their 
> own box, but that's 42 boxes instead of a handful, and one benefit of 
> centralized DVR is that we can backup/maintain the DVR boxes more easily.

The advantage of this is that you don't need a special client in the
class room. The latest version of Myth 0.19 records in a format that
windows media player understands. As long as the PC is connected to an
over head of some sort, the teacher can browse to the web interface and
play the movie that way. 

Or - you can buy cheap thin clients with TV-Out and install MythFrontend
on them. Was that what you wanted to do with the LTSP servers?

Chris