I was thinking about the client-server architecture of MythTV and the fact that it is quite easy to setup a frontend (runs off MythTV CD) compared to setting up a backend (TV card required, setup not always so easy, frequent upgrades of XMLTV grabber, etc.).

I don't know much about the architecture of MythTV but I assume that some streaming of video data over TCP/IP is involved so, with high bandwidth internet access becoming cheap, why not give access to a MythTV backend to other people online ?

Is this theoretically feasible ?
Has anyone ever heard of such an experiment or tried it herself ?
If so, are there any MythTV backends available online ?
If not, what would be the technical problems to overcome ?
- architecture/protocol not well adapted
- backend can only serve one frontend at a time
- not enough bandwidth available to stream (is it possible to stream between backend and frontend in a more compressed video format than MJPEG ?)
Does this make any sense ?

I have currently very little resources to dedicate to setting up a true standalone MythTV box and thought sticking to MythTV frontend would be so much easier for me

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Duron 850MHz - ABIT KT7A mb (Via KT133A chipset) - 128MB PC100 ram
Hauppauge WinTV Primio - ATI Radeon 7000 - FM801 PCI audio
IBM Desktar 30GB 7200rpm - BeWan ADSL PCIst
KnoppMyth R4V5

there are none that I know of. It would I suppose be technically possible, but the problem is that each video stream requires about 2.5Mbps (faster than most dsl and pushing even the best dsl and cable modem speeds) so once two or three people got on you would have saturated your pipe even if you are using a very high speed (still ultra expensive for anything aproaching 10Mbps) pipe. Then there's the whole latency issue, as mythtv does not really "stream" the video. So it would be possibe, though not practical, and wouldn't work very well unless both sides had something like a oc3 and hope there's a good path between.

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Have a question search the forum and have a look at the KnoppMythWiki.

Xsecrets

A friend and I were discussing this the other day. It would be technically infeasible to have a frontend/backend setup over the Internet.

So we have been working out a little different plan. He has his backend/frontend and I have mine. What we are playing around with is a way to have our boxes in effect "sync" with each other for recordings. It can be done silently and while it would take a bit... an hour of programming for me is about 1.9GB, it could be allowed to transcode before allowing the sync. So in essence if he had recorded something I didn't but would like to watch now I could just have it import it over night from his box and vice versa.

Being that neither of us have premium channels, just basic/expanded, to me it's simply fair use.

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...you pervy Windows™ fancier!

Thanks for the feedback.
So the bottleneck is currently the dsl uplink: it cannot handle uploading smoothly a MJPEG video of 2.5Mbps. Now, if I understand correctly, MJPEG is the current intermediate video format used between the backend and the frontend. What if we were using MPEG4, divx, xvid, whatever ? These formats can give acceptable SD video quality around 700kbps, I think. This would allow maybe one or two users to connect to a single backend over the internet.
Now, we have an even bigger problem: additional CPU power needed for real-time MPEG4 coding/decoding AND random frame access (fast forward, pause, etc) made very complicated as these formats, by nature, tend to not use key frames very often...

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Duron 850MHz - ABIT KT7A mb (Via KT133A chipset) - 128MB PC100 ram
Hauppauge WinTV Primio - ATI Radeon 7000 - FM801 PCI audio
IBM Desktar 30GB 7200rpm - BeWan ADSL PCIst
KnoppMyth R4V5

even 700k is steep when talking about real time watching of video. Realistic on current highspeed offerings (avg) you'd be shooting for 200'ish... which is going to look like crap on a TV no matter what format you use.

What exactly are you looking to do with it? MythStreamTv does a good job of allowing one to watch TV over the internet at another location combined with MythWeb... if that's what you are looking to do.

If your deadset on a backend/frontend over the Internet... I just don't see this being possible until we see fiber to the home... LOL

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...you pervy Windows™ fancier!

As I said, I was looking for a way to access a full-featured MythTV box, without having to buy the necessary hardware and spend time setting up a mythtv backend (sharing a mythtv backend between a couple of friends, over the internet, typically)... but as you and a few others said, this is not possible, mainly for bandwith cost reasons.

I'll have a look at MythStreamTV. I understand it transcodes and streams MythTV recordings over IP. This is actually not far from what I was looking for. Any publically available MythStreamTV servers out there ?

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Duron 850MHz - ABIT KT7A mb (Via KT133A chipset) - 128MB PC100 ram
Hauppauge WinTV Primio - ATI Radeon 7000 - FM801 PCI audio
IBM Desktar 30GB 7200rpm - BeWan ADSL PCIst
KnoppMyth R4V5

You're not gonna find a public Myth server... streamTV or otherwise. just not gonna happen for various reasons I won't even get into.

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...you pervy Windows™ fancier!

well if you look real hard you might find them. I have heard of a few people opening up their mythweb interface without any password protection.

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Have a question search the forum and have a look at the KnoppMythWiki.

Xsecrets

LMAO

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...you pervy Windows™ fancier!

could be a social experiment just put it out there and see what gets recorded.

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Have a question search the forum and have a look at the KnoppMythWiki.

Xsecrets

I actually found one a few months ago while googling for one of the error messages I was getting from one of the PHP scripts.

Couldn't find an email address to let the guy know. It was closed up a few days later.

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Biostar TF720 A2+, AMD Athlon X2 6000 (3.1g Dual Core), (2) Hauppauge 1800, 2 GB RAM, 500GB PATA Maxtor HD
LinHES 6.0.3

I do not own, nor ever had a TiVo, but doen't TiVo have some share feature with the new version. Maybe they had it planned but it got nixed, I don't remember. What about a system like that. Obviously maybe this is not needed with all the TV torrent sights. I know where I go when I miss a recording or something goes wrong with my box.

What if when you set a recording schedule, another option was to "Share this recording" Then another plugin that browsed through known servers or a tracker that linked to the available shares. The sharing system would have QoS, number of connections, and bandwidth setting configurable. Even passwords so that only people you give access to can access your shared recordings. The advantage then could be once the recording is downloaded to your backend, it is added to the database and myth sees it as a regular recording. Maybe even adding the recording schedule to your own for future episodes.

I liked the recommendation system that was floating around here a few months back. I would love to see this implemented with a sharing system too. This is not quite a shared back-end, but may be a solution for some.

As for a true shared back-end. This could work in a dorm, (the original purpose for VLC anyone) or a neighborhood. If your "friends" are geographically close enough for a wireless grid the this may be possible. A group of three or four split the cost of a killer back-end with 6 pvr-250 and some serious HD space. Everyone chips in $450 + a front end xbox or some cheap PC for their own use. Wire it all up, and have a little community back-end. Umm. To bad I spend all my time with stuff like this to get out and know my neighbors more.

wififun, I like the idea of the "community" backend, I too live too much in my own world, but I have had the opporunity to meet my neighbours and there not the sharing type.

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Girkers