Help with a complex MythTV project

[puppyfat]

I'm still in the nooblet stage of Mythtv, i've done some reading and I think it can do what I want but I still am not sure if I should be using MCE or MythTV for what I want to do.

This is the basic setup and I was hoping to find someone who might be interested in setting it all up for me for a fee.

I want to have a central server with plenty of grunt and disk space. It will need to have 6 tv tuners for digital and 2 for fox. (Note, I understand MCE will not do this currently. The solution would be to have fox boxes in two rooms that have MCE boxes and switch between the local box and the current box, assuming that is an option? Otherwise I use the same setup, but can't record from fox).

All data would be stored on this server. There will be 6 clients around the house, preferrable without hard drives (i've seen that this can be done) which will be used to display music, tv, fox, videos, dvd's, and weather/extras like that.

There will be other windows boxes in the house, but all these will need is internet access which will be through the linux server.

Everything will have a local static ip address unless something thinks thats not the way to go.

The thing I am unclear on is this: Are the 6(8) tuners transparent? I understand that if 6 tuners are being used, no more can be used, but how does it all work. Does it give a list of free tuners and you select one? If two people are watching the same channel in different rooms, does this take up 1 or 2 tuners?

I'd really appreciate some help, and i'd like to speak to a professional installer who'd be willing to install the boxes for a fee. I can build them no problems, i'm just a MythTv noob and since it's going into my parents house I want the PAF high.

[arkay]

Originally Posted by puppyfat

The thing I am unclear on is this: Are the 6(8) tuners transparent? I understand that if 6 tuners are being used, no more can be used, but how does it all work. Does it give a list of free tuners and you select one? If two people are watching the same channel in different rooms, does this take up 1 or 2 tuners?

I'd really appreciate some help, and i'd like to speak to a professional installer who'd be willing to install the boxes for a fee. I can build them no problems, i'm just a MythTv noob and since it's going into my parents house I want the PAF high.

With the tuners Myth will decide which tuner need to be used based on the content needing to be recorded/played. If for instance someone in one room is watching channel 7 and someone in another room wants to watch channel 7 only one tuner is used. Similarly the tuners for fox would only be used for fox viewing. You'd max out on tuners if you had 4 people watching separate FTA channels and another 2 using 2 independant STB's watching different cable channels.

I like where you're heading with this but I have to say that what you are asking is a big ask in terms of a professional installer. This is no small installation and there are many many things to consider. Choice of hardware, tuner cards etc etc would be paramount in an installation of this size. Setup and configuration would also be fairly complex.

I haven't even progressed to this stage at home as yet and I' a Linux Admin by trade.

My personal thought on this is that you need to start of small. Build the server first (it works well for serving to MCE anyhow), introduce the storage and the networking (for internet access), then move onto Myth backend on the server with a single tuner. Then introduce more. Once all that is working as expected adding the front end machines is relatively simple. Getting everything right on the server is a big job and I fear that for the work involved to set it up there just wouldn't be enough $$$$ in it for the time it would take (i.e. It would cost BIG $$$$ in labour).

I'd be more inclined to look at is as a short to medium term project and break it down into smaller parts.

Cheers,

Arkay.