Okay, reading through posts about frontend has confused me. So instead of asking if a particular hardware setup will work for a frontend, I'll tell you all what I want to do and see if it is feasible and what I need to do in order to achieve what I want.

Current setup: 1 master backend/frontend system.

wanted:
I have a tv in another room and I want to be able to view recorded tv shows, and videos that are on my backend. Music would also be nice. I would prefer if the videos stayed organized and kept the thumbnail images I have assigned to them.

added plus:
be able to pause/rew live tv and view tv listing info.

Okay, now to the questions:
1. Can I get away with the "wanted" items w/ an Xbox frontend?
2. If I go w/ a frontend with a tuner can my backend use this tuner to record shows?
3. Would I be better of going for a slave backend w/ frontend?
4. If I can't go w/ an xbox, can I do this with a frontend w/out a harddrive? (wanted only, the added plus would of course need a HD for storing paused content, right?)

I'm sure I'll have more questions once I get some answers. Thanks in advance. (and prior to any flaming, please realize that I did search for answers to these questions and came up either empty handed, or confused) If the answers to my questions have been posted before, please provide a link to the post instead of just telling me it's been covered before.

I don't care about the Xbox, so take my answer with a grain of salt. Yes, from what I know about Myth on the Xbox, you should be able to do what you want. There is no such things as a frontend with a tuner. This is a slave backend. Yes, you can use the tuner in a slave backend to record show onto the master backend. LinHES, almost all you need to know.

_________________
cesman

When the source is open, the possibilities are endless!

All the info you should need to get started with MythTV on your XBox will either be in this post or linked within.

http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=5248

Enjoy,
Gonz

I read that forum as well as the nice tutorial at http://www.controlaltdeleted.com/xbox/x ... _xbox.html

However, I currently don't own an Xbox, and before I bought one and modded it I would like to confirm that it is going to do what I need. All I've seen explicitly mentioned is that you can view recorded tv shows. I also want to be able to view my video collection (ripped dvd's, downloaded content, etc). Also, I would like those videos to have the same metadata and images associated with them as my backend (I saw some posts mentioning that was an issue...) Can anyone using an Xbox as a frontend quell my concerns?
thx.

Okay, I guess that forum thread has been updated since I last looked at it... I guess it does cover viewing video files, but he mentions something about an NFS export. I'm not sure what that means and I posted my question over in that thread.