[dinkyrdj]

First time poster, long time browser (hence I have a noob question).

I'm wondering if I could use xbmc on a couple year old laptop (w/ Ubuntu) running the backend and access it via a raspberry pi on the frontend? Specifically, I would like to setup the laptop with the MythTV plug-in to record live TV and to store dvd/blu-ray rips. I don't need to watch live TV through this setup, just record it for later viewing.

The laptop is a couple year old Thinkpad with Duo Core 2, 4GB RAM, and NVIDIA graphics card. I plan to have everything connected via Ethernet.

Any information would be greatly appreciated! If I left out pertinent information please let me know. Thanks!

[teeedubb]

Mythtv has a nice web interface so you don't need to run xbmc on the laptop to schedule recordings. Laptop should be fine for a mythtv back end, not much grunt is needed for that. Your biggest problem will probably playing back recorded TV on the RPI, I've read that they struggle with it.

[dinkyrdj]

Mythtv has a nice web interface so you don't need to run xbmc on the laptop to schedule recordings. Laptop should be fine for a mythtv back end, not much grunt is needed for that. Your biggest problem will probably playing back recorded TV on the RPI, I've read that they struggle with it.

Thanks for the information. Any chance you can provide some additional information regarding the RPi struggling with recorded TV playback?

[teeedubb]

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=164346

https://github.com/OpenELEC/OpenELEC.tv/...t-10692248

[dinkyrdj]

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=164346

https://github.com/OpenELEC/OpenELEC.tv/...t-10692248

Again, thanks for the information! These threads seem describe an issue with watching live TV, correct? Does this also apply to watching recorded TV? I'm never able to watch anything when it is originally aired, so I have no need to watch anything live or delayed. Thanks again!

[nokdim]

I use MythTV on an old desktop to record stuff and use the webgui to schedule stuff.
I have had this setup for a couple years and it just runs but I did setup some conversion stuff.

As far as I can remember MythTV records in Mpeg2 which requires a license key on the pi in order to playback.
This might be dependent on the input card I use an HDHomeRun and that seems to be how my recordings come out (Mpeg2)
http://www.raspberrypi.com/mpeg-2-license-key/

it is also very large files (4 Gig per Hour) so I setup some jobs in MythTV to convert any recordings to Xvid and moves them to a shared drive and renames it to a more scene standard name i.e. "Show Name - S0XE0X - Description.avi" so that XBMC can scan that media and add it to my library, they end up being about 700M for 1 hour.
You can get the x264 stuff loaded and convert to x264 instead of Xvid but I never got around to that and am satisfied with the quality of Xvid.
Most stuff I record is from PBS for my kids so quality is not a big deal for me.
I also use external programs to detect and mark commercials with edl files so that XBMC will auto skip commercials from stuff I record.

I rarely watch LiveTV so I cant really speak to that piece at all but that is what I do with my recorded stuff.

[dinkyrdj]

I use MythTV on an old desktop to record stuff and use the webgui to schedule stuff.
I have had this setup for a couple years and it just runs but I did setup some conversion stuff.

As far as I can remember MythTV records in Mpeg2 which requires a license key on the pi in order to playback.
This might be dependent on the input card I use an HDHomeRun and that seems to be how my recordings come out (Mpeg2)
http://www.raspberrypi.com/mpeg-2-license-key/

I rarely watch LiveTV so I cant really speak to that piece at all but that is what I do with my recorded stuff.

Sounds very similar to my future setup. I'm planning on using the HDHomeRun as well. Are you using a RPi as a frontend device?

[nokdim]

I have lots of front end devices, ATV1, RPi,iPad, NeurosLink all share the same library with MySQL on an unRaid NAS.