Mythbuntu setup!

Street

Street

Street

Soldato
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Liverpool
Well I've just bought myself a new house and am planning on setting up a proper media system in there when I move in. I'm going to cable the house with CAT6 and I currently have a gigabit switch and file server. I've been reading around and quite like the sound of playing with a Mythbuntu system and have got a few questions.

My file server is running Server2k8 with about 2TB of storage. Its a decent enough spec PC (dual core AMD, 4GB RAM etc) and currently holds all my MP3s etc. Would the best way to set up the Mythbuntu be to install the backend server as a virtual machine on this server and then connect a small HTPC to it using the front end? Would the backend be able to access all the data stored on the server properly or would it be better just to wipe the server and stick the backend on not as a vm?

With the front end, I plan on using it as a freeview viewer and for streaming media onto my main TV. What dual tv cards are there that will work with Ubuntu? Also, will it be able to record and save directly to the server instead of locally? Will I be able to stream off of this and watch it on other viewers or will the tv card need to be in the server?

I think thats about it for now..
Thanks for any help!
Andy
 
So I could run a primary backend with all the storage and then a small secondary front/backend HTPC. The server would be on all the time anyway and its not a big deal for me to leave the HTPC on when I want to stream TV.

Thanks for the recommendation on the TV card, I'll check it out! Gonna set up a few test VMs while I'm bored in work and see if I can get it all working properly!

Edit: Thinking about it, I might as well just stick the TV card in the server and run the aerial cable to it.. Shouldn't take much effort! :)
 
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Been having a few problems with it so far.. I've set up the backend as a VM and have mounted a Windows share to it and made a sym link from /var/lib/mythtv/music to the mount. I can browse through it OK and the files show up, however in the front end VM, it connects to the backend OK but then won't show any music up in the player!

Any ideas? I also see what you mean about the mythmusic interfaces.. But I'll try and get them working before I try anything else!
 
Ahh thanks for your reply! I assumed that the file store on the Myth backend would be picked up by the front ends.. Seems a bit silly.. :s

I'll try it the other way tomorrow, managed to hose one of the VMs anyway resizing it so need to start from scratch anyway! :)
 
Got it all working with my VMs and have got XBMC running on the front end.. Got a few test libraries set up and the details coming in from IMDB/TV.com etc. It looks pretty fancy and just what I want. However, is there any way of centralising the libraries for it as I plan on having a couple HTPCs and don't want to have to set each copy of XBMC up separately, I would rather just have them mirror the same libraries..
 
I haven't moved into my new house yet so its all still VM based for testing purposes. However, what I plan on doing is having the backend which runs 2k8 with lots of storage for files (had a spare licence from work so set it up at home for testing purposes). This will have the TV card in and will be placed under the stairs as it will be big and noisy! I've played with the VMs in work and Myth seems to work fine under VMWare, however I don't know how well it will handle tv capture yet..

I've just bought the parts for the front end.. Its going to be an energy efficient 2.8GHz AMD dual core, Asus motherboard with 8300 graphics on and 2GB of RAM, I've also got a spare laptop harddrive for me to use in it so will be small, low powered and quiet which is the main thing as it is going in my living room. This will just be a front end and will connect to the backend for media and TV.

In the future I plan to build another front end, maybe for my bedroom so I can watch things up there too. :)
 
whitecrook said:
Also having the dvb cards out of the server means no messing about with having VMS talking to real hardware...
Click to expand...

That was the main worry I was having with mine.. Any audio/video playback through a VM doesn't seem to play at proper speed for me anyway so god knows how video encoding will work! Haven't got the card to test it yet either. Might just stick it in the front end and have it save the data over the network to the server.
 
Im sticking with a separate backend myself because I've got a lot of videos/music stored and don't want to have masses of harddrives spinning in my living room making noise! :)
 
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