I've been setting up a new pvr with the latest km to replace my old pvr, but I'm going to wipe and install the latest km on the old box too. I'd figured it was going to be easier since I wanted to add more tuners, more drive space, and upgrade to the latest version.

I've been searching on the myth docs, and assumed that where it said



it meant that any frontend/backend machine could play recordings or media from any other frontend/backend machine on the home network.

Searching here, all I can find is info on making one machine a master backend and a second machine a slave backend.

Is that the extent of it's distributed architecture? I was hoping that one machine could recognize another local machine and access it's database and programs.

Or am I just not finding the right documentation? I went through the entire mythtv 2.0 docs on http://www.mythtv.org/modules.php?name=MythInstall as far as I know.

I'm not sure I follow - You want multiple boxes running multiple databases on your network? You can do that, but then they are all independent of each other. If, OTOH, you are looking for a single database that multiple computers can access, then you are looking for the separate Backend (usually referred to as the Master Backend, or MBE) and multiple frontends (FE), or Slave Backends (frontends with tuner cards in them), or a combination. Each machine will be running it's own "programs", however.

Perhaps if you describe what you are attempting to do someone can explain with greater detail.

Basically what I'm looking to do is have box A upstairs, recording it's own shows and box B downstairs used by another person to record it's own shows. I would like either of these to be able to play shows from the other machines though.

For example, the person from downstairs most often watches the shows up here, but she watches a few of her own downstairs sometimes too. I'd like her to be able to come upstairs and watch it on the upstairs tv occassionally.

I don't really want either box to be a slave to the other, but being able to share programs between them would be nice. I understand tivo can do that.

The primary reason I don't want anything to be slaved is in case the mbe machine happens to be down. But it would also be good to be able to add another box without having to worry about reconfiguring it.

One thing I'd like to be able to do, potentially, is to take a box off the network and bring it to a relative's house to show them the system, without reconfiguring it to take it there or configuring it again on bringing it back. On bringing it home, I'd want to be able to watch the other machines' recordings from it.

This would require a central database, as recording information is stored in the database and you can't watch the recording without that information. You could implement this with a master backend and slave backend(s) (a slave backend has it's own tuner(s)).

The master backend being down is an issue, as that is where the database is stored. Adding frontends, however, is trivial and requires little to no configuration on the MBE (depending on the configuration)

As far as I know, this would have to be a standalone system (combined backend/frontend). This could be your backend system, but then you would miss recordings when you take it out of your network.

The biggest hurdle you face, and I'm afraid I don't know of a way around it, is the database. If your systems don't share a single database then neither knows what the others have recorded. Someone here will correct me if I am wrong, or may have some ideas on how to get the setup you are looking for to work.

You could possibly do this by adding a Linux uPnP client somewhere in each frontend's menus, and configuring it to search for the other backend to view its programs. But that is a lot of hassle.

In the future, last year's Google Summer of Code changes may be rolled in. One of those projects was meant to implement user accounts. This may do most of what you want using one or two standard frontends.

_________________
| Nigel Pearson, nigel.pearson.au@gmail.com
| "Things you own end up owning you" - Tyler, Fight Club

Thanks guys.

Yeah, I was hoping the front end piece was capable of being more p2p, and recognizing more than one backend system.

Since the FE is pretty much independent from the BE, it could potentially have an option to use any of the backends with just a menu click.

Obviously the FE would need some way to recognize all the BEs, but once it knew about them, I wouldn't think that switching to one would be that difficult.

I just assumed there was a way to do this already without slaving machines.

I really don't want to slave a machine. I guess I will just leave it alone for now. If we want to watch something upstairs that was recorded downstairs, I'll just copy it to the upstairs box. Keeps it in the vcr theme, since that's what we're using downstairs right now.

You will also need some way of putting it in the recorded table of the upstairs machine's database. Maybe a User Job that does the copy and the SQL statements?

Another way might be for the two machines to network share their recording disk, and you could use MythVideo to locate and play "not recorded on this box" files. Or regularly run myth.rebuilddatabase.pl on both machines to make sure the recording list is synchronised to the set of recoeding files on that machine.

_________________
| Nigel Pearson, nigel.pearson.au@gmail.com
| "Things you own end up owning you" - Tyler, Fight Club

I just figured on dumping them into the video directory and using the video player like one can do with ripped dvds or other kinds of avi files.