On 17/01/06, Mike Richardson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I've managed to find a bit of info about mythtv and the dbox2 but I was just
wondering if anyone has a summary of how the dbox integrates with mythtv and
general funcationality comparisions with a PC running mythfrontend and an
MVP box?
I'm considering getting one but would like to know a bit more first.
My main desire is to be able to record Sky One (and some other cable
channels) to a central mythtv server (already set up and working) and be
able to watch the recording back in multiple rooms (got an MVP box in the
bedroom already).
I'm not keen on messing around with our existing cable boxes, encoding
analogue signals and IR channel changers - I'd like to leave those boxes
alone and have the mythtv stuff as a separate entity.
Ideally would like to be able to use the full mythfrontend software
functionality for scheduling and recording of programs.
Not too fussed about watching live TV through these devices - mostly just
need sources for recording of programs.
Mike
--
The basic idea is this:
DBOX2 operates on your network as a 'source' for video to record. There's code in SVN to talk to the box, get a list of channels & populate the programme guide (but you have to add the channels yourself). At recording time, mythtv takes an MPEG2-TS stream from the DBOX2's network connection via a TCP stream. An alternative method using UDP is being developed, so I hear...
Anyway - in that configuration not many people have had success or a great deal of reliability, but this is probably caused by the http daemon on the dbox being overwhelmed (or that fact it only has 10-base ethernet).
A very workable solution is to use the dbox as-is, but rather than enabled it as a video source for mythtv directly, connect a PVR tuner card to its audio & video outputs. You don't need an IR blaster to change channels on the box because the dbox has a web interface... all you need is a script (see the ML archive from a few days ago for my scripts to do this very job).
Either way, your mileage may vary, and getting the damned thing to work in the first place can be tricky -thankfully there are lots of forums for help on that.
Some people are under the misapprehension the dbox can be 'converted' into a frontend for mythtv. This might be possible, but I'm not aware of anybody having tried it. The dbox software _can_ play back MPEG2 files from network shares though, so maybe it wouldn't be too much work to bolt a better GUI around it & a bit of mysql.
I hope this answers some questions for you.
Regards....
_______________________________________________ mythtv-users mailing list [email protected] http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
