Was wondering if anyone out there is watching recordings on a laptop or tablet/phone when away from home? I am going to start playing with the android app "Mythtv player" and am interested if anyone has had success with any solution.
Thanks for any input.

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LINHES 8.6.1 BE/FE - MSI K9N6SGM-V with AMD A64 X2 4600+, 4GB Ram. 1.5TB WD. HDHR Prime. Nvidia GT210. MCE remote.
FrontEnd - Dell Vostro 400 3.0GHz Core2Duo NVidia GeForce210. MCE Remote

i tried the mythtv app but my backend wasnt fast enough to transcode in real time.

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My System

I have been using Plex Media Server. It is currently only in the testing repo but I will probably be pushing it to release in the next few days. I made a few changes to the script that creates the /myth/recordings links so that the Plex scanner works better. When you create your library in Plex just name it something with "myth", like "MythTV Recordings" and the script will refresh the Plex library after it runs hourly.

I have never tried plex but from some quick reading this morning, it looks like a great option. When do you think it moves out of beta? Do you know if you can watch recordings offline?

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LINHES 8.6.1 BE/FE - MSI K9N6SGM-V with AMD A64 X2 4600+, 4GB Ram. 1.5TB WD. HDHR Prime. Nvidia GT210. MCE remote.
FrontEnd - Dell Vostro 400 3.0GHz Core2Duo NVidia GeForce210. MCE Remote

I believe that some of the plex home theaters apps have the ability to watch offline but I have never tried it.

Plex turned out to be a great solution but I was a bit nervous about messing with my Myth boxes right before my big trip so I set up a windows machine with access to the myth directory and ran the plex server from there. Have to say it is a great experience. It did cost me $5 per month but I was able to watch streaming HD on my phone and tablet. I was also able to download recordings for offline viewing.

My goal is now to move my plex server from the windows box (so that I can shut that box down) and put it on the myth box. My current setup has a BE/FE which is a little underpowered and a FE that is a bit better off. I would prefer to put the plex server on the FE. Is that possible? Can I just use Mythvantage to set it up on the FE?

If anyone has experience using Plex on their Myth box, I would be interensted in hearing their stories.

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LINHES 8.6.1 BE/FE - MSI K9N6SGM-V with AMD A64 X2 4600+, 4GB Ram. 1.5TB WD. HDHR Prime. Nvidia GT210. MCE remote.
FrontEnd - Dell Vostro 400 3.0GHz Core2Duo NVidia GeForce210. MCE Remote

What cost $5 per month?

Running PMS on the FE would work but when you set up the library you need to point it at the files you want to serve which would be on your BE. On the windows box I am guessing you pointed it at the BE's myth/recordings directory over samba. You would need to do the same thing on the FE. One issue I have seen with this is that sometimes some of the file names get mangled over samba. Using NFS to the BE's myth/recordings directory won't work as NFS doesn't follow symlinks.

The $5/month is what Plex charges you for their Plex Pass. With a Plex Pass subscription, you can sync recordings to your phone for offline watching. Otherwise you can only stream from the server. Since I wanted to be able to bring the recordings with me on flights, I had to pay the $5.

The windows box was using Samba as you deduced. Is there any trick to allowing the FE to see the recordings through Samba? Is it as easy as putting in the UNC for the library directory? Or do I need to have some service running on the frontend?

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LINHES 8.6.1 BE/FE - MSI K9N6SGM-V with AMD A64 X2 4600+, 4GB Ram. 1.5TB WD. HDHR Prime. Nvidia GT210. MCE remote.
FrontEnd - Dell Vostro 400 3.0GHz Core2Duo NVidia GeForce210. MCE Remote

I had in my mind that offline sync was available for free. But I see it is part of Pass.

I think all you need is smbclient or cifs-utils and I am pretty sure they are installed by default on FE systems. If not they are in the repo. Then it is just a matter of deciding where you want it mounted (I put all my network mounts in /data/storage/network) and adding the share to /etc/fstab.

So I was able to get a samba share working manual with:
. It asks me for a password but an empty reply brings the mount up.
After that, doing a dir of the /PlexMedia directory shows me all the recordings although with strange titles.
I setup the server with a directory pointed at the directory and it is working well.

I tried to put the mount in fstab but it does not seem to take. I used the following form:

Is that correct?

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LINHES 8.6.1 BE/FE - MSI K9N6SGM-V with AMD A64 X2 4600+, 4GB Ram. 1.5TB WD. HDHR Prime. Nvidia GT210. MCE remote.
FrontEnd - Dell Vostro 400 3.0GHz Core2Duo NVidia GeForce210. MCE Remote

That looks right. Just make sure your moutpoint already exists. And if you used the default samba settings on the BE you can use mythtv as the user and password.

Still something I am doing wrong. The mount point exists because doing the mount command manually works fine and the directory is populated but after a reboot, the directory is empty.

Any ideas?

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LINHES 8.6.1 BE/FE - MSI K9N6SGM-V with AMD A64 X2 4600+, 4GB Ram. 1.5TB WD. HDHR Prime. Nvidia GT210. MCE remote.
FrontEnd - Dell Vostro 400 3.0GHz Core2Duo NVidia GeForce210. MCE Remote

Did you try using mythtv as the user and password?

When troubleshooting you don't need to reboot. Just use df to see if it is mounted. Unmount your manual successful mounts with sudo umount. And to test the fstab use sudo mount -a and if it isn't able to mount it will give you some error.

Some good news and some bad.

I got the fstab worked out. Not sure what is going on but running the mount -a gave me nfs connection time out errors. I moved the plex mount up higher in the order and it did load without a username or password.

The problem is now when I run plex, it processes all the recordings in the PlexMedia directory but when I try to play a recording, it gives me an error "There was a problem playing this item". The samba share file seem available.

I tried copying one of the recordings to a local directory on the FE to see if it was a Samba issue. I made a new Plex library for that and got the same result (couldn't play).

Any thoughts?

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LINHES 8.6.1 BE/FE - MSI K9N6SGM-V with AMD A64 X2 4600+, 4GB Ram. 1.5TB WD. HDHR Prime. Nvidia GT210. MCE remote.
FrontEnd - Dell Vostro 400 3.0GHz Core2Duo NVidia GeForce210. MCE Remote

Maybe a permissions thing? Try playing one of the videos with mplayer.