Sorry for the confusion on my original questions. Let me ask them a different way:

How many frontends are you running at your house?

Are you using MythTV to watch live TV, recorded programs, or both?

Robolo

Three computers:
* The Main Frontend/Backend that is in our lounge room and attached to both a small widescreen LCD, and a Projector. It has two tuner cards and is (just) HD capable.
* A second "slave" backend in a cupboard upstairs, that I only turn on when there are three things I need to record
* My Mac OSX laptops, that I sometimes run a frontend on to edit recordings. Usually used on the lounge, but occasionally (when I am sick) upstairs in bed, wirelessly.

Your terminology is a but confused. Frontends are the computers that you watch recordings on, but they don't need to have any tuner cards in them.

Backends are the ones that have tuner cards. There has to be at least one Master Backend, which has the MySQL database, connects to the InterNet to grab guide information et c.

By default, KnoppMyth installs a combined Frontend/Backend machine.

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

OK, I'll kick it off. I currently have 1 Master backend and 2 frontends (frontend only), and will be adding a 3rd frontend in a month or so.

Not in my case. All my tuners are in the backend at this point, a PVR-150, PVR-350, and Fusion HDTV Lite. All the slots on that motherboard are full, so if I need to add another tuner it will have to go into one of the frontends. The backend resides in the basement; We do not use it as a frontend.

I'm not sure what this means. We don't usually watch TV through MythTV, except on one frontend that is connected to an HDTV-ready widescreen, so I need the Fusion HDTV Lite to provide the HD signal. Otherwise regular TV watching is done straight off the CATV (no MythTV involved). We are using the KM frontends to schedule and watch recordings, watch DVDs and videos, and listen to music. My 12 year old son found out about Mythgame, so it looks like my next project will be making that function.

Up untill a week or so ago (in process of moving) , I had 1 MBE , and 3 FE and a dual boot laptop. And ran streaming video to the next doors's

I am running:

A Backend/Frontend combo that has an Athlon 3000+ and two PVR 150 cards in it. One card is running regular analog cable while the other is connected to a Digital Cable Box and is using a serial IR blaster to control channels. The Frontend on this unit is rarely used, pretty much only for editing cut points before burning.

A Frontend only running on an Athlon 2400+ in a Shuttle XPC enclosure. This unit is used pretty much exclusively for watching recorded shows/movies/sports.

2 Xboxen running XBMC again used simply for watching recorded TV/Movies.

We don't do any live television via MythTV. Only recorded material. 2 out of 4 people in this house watch pretty much exclusively recorded (or ocassionaly downloaded) material and really don't bother with live TV at all. The other 2 people are slowly becoming accustomed to the wonders of MythTV and are slowly watching less live TV and more MythTV.

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Currently Running:
Too lazy to update this with my current hardware, I'll redo it during my next install =)

A Backend/Frontend combo that has an Celeron 2.0ghz and PVR 150 connected to SD TV.
Frontend only PIII 500mhz in bedroom
Tapeworm (type of frontend running on desktop OS for watching recorded shows)

In process of adding HDhomerun tuner(s) for QAM/HD cable.

It sounds like slowtolearn and I have a very similar setup.

I have 1 master backend with about 1TB of storage space and 3 tuner cards. A PVR150, PVR350, and PCHDTV5500.

One frontend in the living room connected to our HDTV (no tuner cards).

One frontend in the master bedroom connected to a SDTV (no tuner cards).

We pretty much never watch TV without first turning on a frontend. So, whether it's to watch live TV with the capability of pausing and rewinding, or to watch a show we've recorded or downloaded, about 99% of our TV viewing is done via MythTV.

- Master Backend: PIII 650 PVR-500: Link
- Tapeworm Frontend on Laptop: Pentium M 1.7ghz

I am in the process of creating a combined frontend / backend system (Migrating my current Master Backend to that machine). It will be connected via S-Video to a SDTV: Link

I have a Masterbackend/Frontend in the Bedroom closet AMD64-3400+, 300Gb of TV space with 1 pvr-150 connected to Dish Net STB.

1 Frontend/Slave Backend in the Living room Athlon XP2200+, no TV space with 1 pvr-150 connected to another Dish Net STB.

I have had 3 separate Windoze boxes and a Knoppix box that can watch anything stored on the MBE via network all at the same time. Doesn't seem very demanding on the network or the box.. My son watches about 2 hrs of Anime I captured for him on the nights he doesn't have school work. When I just had one MBE/FE on the Athlon 2200 I teneded to see backplane b/w issues when capturing, viewing and a remote stream to him.

Streaming via the web interface is a little rough at this point but once started it works well.

Network is broken into two segments due to work requirements. but I can view and stream into either segment.

We watch all "TV" through the myth Front ends on SDTV's at this point. We like the pause Live TV features. There is not a OTA signal available in the forseeable future.

It all works good and I have occasionally ran CD booted frontends on two machines and that also works well.

Biggest problem I have these days is Rotten Power really seems to work over the db when that happens. gotta get a couple more UPS's.

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KnoppMyth R5.5
MBE: AMD64 3400+, K8N Neo4 Plat., 1Gig, Asus Extreme N6200, 320G pata, 2x320Gsata, 750Gsata, PVR-150 Retail w/Blaster
SBE: AMD XP2000, GA 7ZMMH, 1 Gig, XFX 256M 6200, 20 Gig, PVR-150 Retail w/Blaster
SBE: AMD Dur1800, 512M, PVR500

My Backend is in my rack in the basement with 4 pvr-x50 cards. All frontends are XBMC and 99% of the time are only used for viewing recorded material.

DrGonzo, does your commercial skipping in XMBC work properly? What version of KnoppMyth are you using? What version of the XBMC myth scripts?

I'm very happy with the XBMC scripts and the interface they offer, the only catch is that my commercial skipping is not working.

_________________
Currently Running:
Too lazy to update this with my current hardware, I'll redo it during my next install =)

Nope, no commercial skipping. It worked great in r4, but hasn't worked since r5. I check the forums once and awhile on sourceforge and they say it's supposed to work? Dunno. Anyway, I've just been using lossless transcoding to cut the commercials out. It's not as easy but it's nice and clean to watch when your done.

Gonz

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Athlon 64 3400+ / 2G / 250G
3 x PVR250
1 x PVR150

Yeah, I suppose lossless is a decent solution.... it does free up a bit of space at the same time which is nice too. I only just upgraded to E50 last weekend, so up until recently the lossless was broken on my system. I've been fussing with my xboxes trying to get skipping to work..... If i get something figured out I'll try to remember to post the details here for you (I'll start a new thread).

[/hijack]

_________________
Currently Running:
Too lazy to update this with my current hardware, I'll redo it during my next install =)

It works great for me. It was broken for a while, but they fixed it a few weeks back. I grabbed it from CVS, I don't know if they made the working version available in the download section yet.