MythTV backend with transcoding, Pi 3 or VM?
#1
Hello, I am getting ready to upgrade my main pc to Windows 10. It being an i7 3770, 32gb ram. Once I do, I don't really want to jump through hoops to get WMC on it, since Im really not very happy with many aspects of WMC. So I was considering going to MythTV. I have 2 HdHomeruns, one that does the on the fly transcoding and the other does not. I would like to be able to use all 4 tuners, The exception being that I want to Transcode the mpeg2 stream from my older hdhomerun into a smaller more manageable size, Probably down to SD quality. Could I do this off a Pi 3 or am I better off running MythTV in a VM? Or is it a case where I am missing something and I need to setup a dedicated machine? I'm thinking maybe even at the 1.2ghz the pi3 wouldn't be powerful enough to transcode to streams while providing say live tv and managing schedules and such, however I could be wrong, so I figured I post my question here for you knowledgeable folks.

If it makes a difference, I am talking about just an OTA antenna with about 28 channels. And everything will be dumped over a Gigabit network onto a NAS drive.
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#2
So ended up going with a VM. Seems to be running alright, not using as much cpu/memory as I though it would. Pi 3 very well may have worked, but I am happy thus far with the VM setup.
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#3
Sorry, just seeing this, been busy the last few weeks working out the kinks in my new setup. I went Pi 3 running the front end, and mythbuntu on an old i3 box dealing with the backend. I couldn't be happier. (never realized how much noise the old "quiet" htpc made in the livingroom until I replaced it with the pi and relegated the backend box to another room.
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#4
Right now, I run Mythbuntu for backend on VM, I really want to crack at running it off a pi 3. after seeing that it has a much lighter than I thought, I think that possibly it could run pretty well. but my looking into looks like the setup may be a bit more complicated. I think it would be really cool though if we could run it off a something with foot print and power consumption of the pi.
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#5
If you're running your backend on a Pi, I'd have to assume that your storage is most likely USB or on a NAS. The problem with a Pi is that the ethernet is only 100Mb, and it's on a shared bus with the USB; that a bottleneck I wouldn't want to introduce into a networked home theater streaming solution.

100Mbs (or even WiFi) may be acceptable for a client, but I would definitely want more bandwidth for a backend that's streaming to multiple clients.

(Also, while the RPi3 may have a 64-bit armv8 processor, it only runs 32-bit code. A firmware update is needed to fully enable the RPi3's processor, but not timetable has been announced when this might be. If you're looking for a small singleboard arm system that's 64-bit to run your backend, you're better off going with something else that also has GbE—preferably on a separate bus from USB—such as the Odroid C2 or something else similar if Mali or AMLogic is not to your liking.)
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#6
rpcameron, Nothing like an injection of reality to dash my hopes. Big Grin LOL
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#7
(2016-04-07, 05:05)Traker1001 Wrote: rpcameron, Nothing like an injection of reality to dash my hopes. Big Grin LOL
I nearly made a similar mistake when getting my system laid out ... Hopefully this'll help someone else from going through it.
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#8
So, I figured out a solution that was just about as good. I purchased a Dell Inspiron I3050 on ebay. I am running Myth Backend on it with transcoding. 4 tuners, 2 being transcoded and everything being dumped on a NAS, total of 30 channels all OTA. Everything seems to be running amazingly well, almost scary so and the footprint is not much larger than a Pi.
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MythTV backend with transcoding, Pi 3 or VM?0