Mythbuntu setup!

Street

Street

Street

Soldato
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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
 
Any system with a tv card in must have the backend components installed, though it can save programs directly to the master backend I think. Bear in mind if your master has no tv card in then both comps would have to be on 24/7 unless you want to get into wake-on-lan etc.
The only tv card i can recommend is the pci version of the hauppage nova T 500 which I use and works well.
If you want to stream audio and downloaded video I would recommend a complimentary xbmc/boxee installation with a menu item in myth to launch it, as they are much better interfaces (if skinned properly) than mythmusic and mythvideo.

Finally, everything should work in a vm, but i've never tried it before.
 
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!
 
you have to mirror the music on the local filesystem of the frontend for mythmusic - I use nfs - it isn't a centralised system for god only knows what reason (ie mount an nfs share of the music and link it to /var/lib/myth/blahblah on the frontend). Easier is to put all music in a samba share and use xbmc to play it (get a nice skin though - you can get xbmc for mythbuntu from the launchpad ppa). Oh, by the way, the latest xbmc has some issues with full 1080p on some accelerated chipsets, but the stable ppa doesnt have this issue. The daily ppa is better at ac3 or dts audio passthrough but 1080p jerks for no reason.
 
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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..
 
So you have a 2k8 server (doing what?) and also on that server you have set up Vmware? and are running a mythtv backend in a virtualised environment?

Then You have a front end - spec? Running mythtv front and backend and has a TV card for recording the TV. Does this machine boot over the network or does it have a harddisk in there as well?

What benefit do you get having an additional back end on the server?

Serious questions, I used to use mythtv a lot and am going to be setting it up again shortly and was going to go for a backend server only install and just use web interface for scheduling, and popcorn for viewing back, perhaps with a FUSE layer or some kind of linkning to present the recordings in a nicer way.

Reason being that the unit in the living room has to be silent. I can't have a PC whirring away.
 
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. :)
 
Street said:
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..
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not that I know of, but that seems to be the last piece of the puzzle so it might be worth asking over at the xbmc forum.
You might find you can move the xbmc databases and artwork to the server and mount them on all the frontends in the appropriate places.
 
OK I had another think about this and came to a new conclusion which I think might work better..


FRONT END contains the DVB cards (1x DVB-S2 TT3200, 1x DVB-C TT1501, 1x DVB-C TT 2100 FF card)

I'm thinking of plugging all that into a PIII 1Ghz abit ST6,. Couple of 5V 120mm fans and some PSU quieting should be OK. This allows to use the remote of the cards, and also the Full featured card should handle mpeg decoding and SPDIF out. Not sure how that handles with mythtv though.

This will net boot against my server so no whinning hard disk.


The back end will be a virtualised system probably using VMware server. This means I can run the back end on windows/linux/change systems/upgrade etc with no issues.. Also having the dvb cards out of the server means no messing about with having VMS talking to real hardware...
 
whitecrook said:
Also having the dvb cards out of the server means no messing about with having VMS talking to real hardware...
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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.
 
I was reading some mythtv docs and if you want capture cards in your 'frontend' then you must have a backend installed as well... So my setup would be frontend running both back and front, with NFS storage (no local drives).. then a backend in a VM on the server - but hold on - if there is a backend on the front end anyway is the other back end required? I'll probably transcode some stuff into xvid (from the mpeg2 stream) but other than that I'm struggling to think why and what benefit an additional back end give, if it doen't have any capture hardware in it, and you are mounting disks over the network anyway...
 
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! :)
 
Street said:
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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I suppose if you have more than one client it makes sense, but if the hard drives will be in the back room anyway, what's t he benefit of running a mythtv back end, rather than just mounting the network drives directly into the front end?
 
just mount those babies. It's amazing what you can achieve on a network with the way linux allows folders to be mounted.
 
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