[mythtvnz] TiVo replacement

[Criggie]

Yep thats pretty much what I had planned too, except running under
xenserver.  I'm fortunate enough to have two xenservers in a pool so
there's redundancy.  Plus noone uses the servers as desktops like you
would a windows box, so even more reliable.  (No spontaneous windows
updates! )

Downside is that disk space is not cheap because it has to be in the ISCSI
san, or in a non-redundant NAS.  On the other side, its TV and its not the
end of the world to dump your recordings.

I use an acer revo as a main front end, and it works well enough.
The linux desktops can run mythtv-frontend if they want, but they're
general purpose devices.

I still wish there was a decent workable windows frontend or even an
android one :-\



Craig Blaikie wrote:
> Just thought I would add my 10c worth about the setup and use of MythTV.
>
> I have run a combined MythTV on frontend/backend for many years, but about
> one year ago, started playing around with the RaspberryPI 3 Model B.  I
> have been running the XBain version of the Kodi media player, with the
> MythTV plugin.  This RaspberryPI/Kodi box is now the fulltime frontend for
> my system, contacts the backend, works beautifully.
>
> About one month ago, the big upgrade started.  I virtualised the MythTV
> frontend/backend so that it is now running as a virtual machine, on my
> windows 10 PC, Skylake i7 - 16GB Ram.
> The virtual machine image is running on Hyper-V service on windows, this
> service anyone with 64bit Windows 8, 8.1 or 10 (Pro version) should be
> able to install through add/remove programs, it would also be possible to
> run this virtual machine under VMWare Workstation or Player.  The MythTV
> frontend/backend runs in the virtual machine, and I can record and watch
> programs there (testing the system), but there is no sound card drivers
> setup in Hyper-V by default, so there is no sound.  The recorded file does
> have the sound and works great on the Kodi frontend.
>
> The install is Mythbuntu 16.04.1, and the virtual machine is set to use
> 4GB ram and I have given it 2 virtual CPUs, it runs at about 2-5%, load
> The tuner is a HD Homerun, which has 2 hardware tuners, MythTV is
> configured for 5 virtual tuners per physical tuner, so these virtual
> tuners allow MythTV to record up to 5 programs from each of the 2 hardware
> tuners.
> Storage is 8TB HDD, mounted in windows, but shared to the Virtual machine
> over a NFS share.
> Scheduling/recording setup is done mainly through MythWeb, although
> programs can be scheduled in Kodi also.
> Live TV is available via Kodi, but hardly ever use it.
>
> Program guide is via EIT download, nothing to install and configure, just
> enabled in setup/MythWeb, previously I had used the tv_grab_nz-py on the
> old MythTV server
>
> This design allows for multiple low power frontends (Kodi), and only one
> PC running full time in the office.
>
> Future enhancement will be possible more storage and an additional tuner,
> either another HD Homerun or a VBox 4 channel tuner (2 HD/2 Satellite)
>
> The new server/image was a fresh install and have retired the backend (it
> turned off during the last power cut...) and I will need to move the
> recordings from it sometime in the next few weeks, planning to use myth
> archive to move the recordings over.


-- 
Criggie

http://criggie.org.nz/