Kodi Community Forum

Hey guys, was wanting to run a design solution by you can get some recommendations. I've been playing with XBMC for a couple weeks now and have everything working. My 'get to know it' setup is currently an ATV2 running XBMC and an Ubuntu box running mythtv for live video. I've had some pausing/buffering problems with the live hdtv content from the MythTV backend but the ATV2/XBMC box plays ripped dvds fine over the wire and the mythtv plays the HD content fine on the Ubuntu box. Anyway, I've been testing and hosed up the MythTV install so I need to start fresh anyway.

So I am just getting back into the game and want to replace my old (15 year old) component setup. I would really like to eliminate everything down to the receiver and drive my amps directly with the HTPC but that's an effort for another time.

For now, I'm hoping to get some advice or recommendations for the content side of things. Currently, the house is wired with two cat6 drops and an rg11 drop at every place I would have a TV. Everything is terminated in a 'comm closet' and running on a Cisco 2950 (100mb) switch. I will be upgrading to a gig switch in the near future. What I have in mind is using ATV2s for sites like the bedrooms and building an HTPC (use my xb360 in the interim) to drive content into whatever the theater room solution ends up being. I was thinking a content server (ubuntu/fedora/whatever?) providing backend services like NAS, capture card streaming, etc.

I'm curious about others thoughts on a more client/server architecture like this?
Is MythTV the recommended architecture for handling OTA live tv?
What recommendations would any one make about this or future trends one might want to be aware of?

Of course, I'm not looking for anyone to hand build the network over the internet for me. If the tools are there, I will figure them out. I'm kind of hoping for the 100k foot view as there are sooooo many options for interwoven systems, much with duplicate capability. More along the lines of those of you have had the trial by fire, what do you think of the solution and what would you bundle together (XBMC with MythTV, etc). Again, thanks to everyone who made it through this.

Lots of us use a client server setup. I have a server running Windows Server 2008R2, but others use servers running Linux, FreeNAS or even just a NAS like a QNAP or Synology.

Networks are so cheap and easy these days that no great attention to detail is required. Just choose the server OS that you know best. I use Windows because I know it best and I my server runs various Windows apps (like Exchange :-) that I need. SATA disks are so cheap these days that it's easy to provide multi-terabytes of storage.

I'm surprised you'd use a Cisco switch on such a small network. I use a 5 port Belkin unmanaged GHz switch and this works just fine: in fact it's far faster than XBMC really needs unless you have lots of clients.

JR

I use a client server approch, Ubuntu as the SMB Web Mysql server and various mixed clients Laptops, Wii, XB360 and of course XBMC on anything that will run it including ATV2.

I did try to throw mythtv i there too but i got buffering and stuttering on anything which had to be descrambed, free to air stuff was fine. So mythtv went on the back burner.

Now do i miss it? no with Sabnzbd, sickbeard, couchpotato and headphones i really dont, infact watching live tv at friends and families almost gets on my nerves and i feel like im just watching adverts.

Ive just set up another system for my sister she does not have the luxary of many clients and a server so it all just runs off her standard windows 7 desktop and she has a couple of laptops and games consoles as clients. Works just as well allbeit with no Mysql libary support.