Kodi Community Forum

Has anyone tried setting up a Chromebox as MythTV backend?

Funny you mention this, I'm just about to try it out.

I have been testing one out as a frontend (both mythfrontend and kodi) and I have finally got it working well. It was a bit more of a struggle to get mythfrontend working as kodi has a bigger userbase and well documented configuration.

I am buying an external hard drive tonight and will set it up as a backend over the weekend and post back here with progress.

Ben

Guys you really want a decent server with room for lots of hard drives and tuners.

It will of course work like any other x86 computer with an itel processor and an external HD, but lack of PCI or PCI-E really does limit your tuner choice,

My current backend is a Dell SC430 Pentium D, with HVR2200 + Sony PlayTV, about 1.8 TB over 3 hard drives and an Nvidia 8600GT. I hardly ever record more than 2 streams at a time (just use the TV's tuner for live tv), so should be OK with just the PlayTV and if I need more I'll get another one.

I'm trying to reduce power consumption, noise, heat etc. and our usage is not great. I realise that this will be pushing the limits of the Chromebox, but I think it will be OK for me.

I will keep the SC430 around for ripping blurays/dvds and as a backup for some of the data as I suspect the life of the external 2.5 hard drive won't be as long as the internal 3.5's.

My bedroom frontend is a raspberry pi model b.

Ben

(2015-02-06, 02:52)nickr Wrote: [ -> ]Guys you really want a decent server with room for lots of hard drives and tuners.

It will of course work like any other x86 computer with an itel processor and an external HD, but lack of PCI or PCI-E really does limit your tuner choice,

I have no experience with MythTV which was the reason for my post as it may have different requirements but there is no reason that a Chromebox can't act as a backend/frontend which has already been done with TVheadend/Kodi and a network tuner. Recordings can go to a USB or network drive.

Sure that is so, but you guys need to get more ambitious LOL.

Having done the whole backend server thing I would submit to you that using a single small device functioning as backend/frontend is an attractive option. Using a big tower server with multiple drives is old school. Any recordings can be saved to NAS. The only question is whether MythTV is too "heavy" for Chromebox.

Hell no, myth works on almost anything.

(2015-02-06, 06:02)nickr Wrote: [ -> ]Hell no, myth works on almost anything.

Only if you're a rocket scientist.

The wikis is so far outdated it is pitiful.

(2015-02-06, 02:33)BenH Wrote: [ -> ]I am buying an external hard drive tonight and will set it up as a backend over the weekend and post back here with progress.

Well I got the hard drive, but also got a few sets of shelves and set them up in the garage, so no work on mythtv on the weekend. I've also realised I need to iron out a small mythfrontend playback issue before moving on to the backend.

I'll run some tests and post some logs on the mythtv forums and try to fix the playback issues first.

FYI, these issues (little "micro stutters?" every now and then on 576i mpeg2 recordings with CPU well below 100%) are only on mythfrontend, the playback on the Kodi mythtv addon is perfect.

Ben

mythtv users mailing list is far more likely to get a response than their forum.

576i - sounds like a PAL format. What framerate are you playing back at?

Yes there does appear to be more activity on the mailing list, so I will probably reach out there when I'm ready. I just don't really like mailing lists.

I'm in Australia and playback is set to Auto for framerate and seems to be switching correctly.

Micro stutters might not be the right term. It's not regular, just every now and then at random times the picture will not move 100% smooth for half a second or less.

I made some more adjustments to the playback profile, so will see how it goes for a couple of days.

I've also made some adjustments to the mce remote config that makes things behave a little more mythtv like, which I will post back here in case anyone is interested.

Ben

I think I have finally got the video playing smoothly now.

I was using the "TearFree" option in xorg to fix tearing in mythtv, but it turns out that this was causing the slight stuttering. I think it has something to do with GPU memory but the amount can't be increased on the Chromebox, so the only thing I could do would be to try dual channel memory so I'll keep an eye out for memory specials.

I have removed TearFree and installed compton composite manager and start it like this:
compton --backend glx --paint-on-overlay --vsync opengl-swc

So far (in one evenings testing), this has produced no tearing or stuttering.

I'll keep testing playback for a few more days then if I have time will re-install with a backend on the weekend.

Ben

I have a MythTV backend running on my Chromebox. Right now I just have a flash drive as storage as I am having trouble getting the folders to mount to my NAS (mounts, but live TV can't seem to access and fails) but I am working on it slowly. I am using a HDHomeRun tuner.

As far as performance, I haven't noticed any major issues and am just making tweaks here and there to resolve the small things. The only one I have left is record start/end time without having to start a minute early.

Edit: I found a hardware limitation, running 2 recordings and Kodi results in 90-100% CPU usage on both cores. Running 1 recording is OK.