I know I am a newbie here in the myth world... so I did search but couldn't find complete answers so here I am...

Back story:

I have three series 2 tivo's in place at differnt rooms in my house which allows for quick show transfer to any room with a tivo... two of the tivo's have failing hard drives and I really want to stop paying tivo for service.



Questions:

1) If I use the KnoppMyth install CD which I just burned is it a complete setup including remote control - control using the remote that comes with the PVR-150?

2) I have built maybe 15-20 windows boxes over the years for friends and family so I "know" hardware but never used linux how "easy" is this package?

3) I just use basic analog cable -- if I build three simple myth boxes can I easly transfer shows between them; by easy I mean tivo easy?



Anything I am missing?????


I was planning on buying a couple of those Pandit Asus barebone kits from new egg???


By all means thank you in advance....

John

1) Yes
2) Very
3) If you set it up right (advanced configuration) it's seamless with all the recordings available from the same list. With a naive setup it's rather clunky.

Thanks for the quick follow-up


do you know where I can see some screen shots on the configs for setting up the multi-unit transfer? Or some instructions?

Also is the PVR-500 supported with remote control using the above package? Or should I just stick with the 250?


again thanks

http://www.mysettopbox.tv/linhes.html

The PVR-500 doesn't have a remote of it's own. The bundles which include a remote use a USB based MCE remote, which is supported by KnoppMyth as far as I know.

Actually there is no need to "transfer" the recordings like you have to do with your tivos. With MythTV all the frontend units connect to a master backend unit over the network (the backendc ould be run on the same machine as one of your frontends) . Any frontend can play any recording that the backend has, over the network, instantly, at anytime.

Check out this for instrucions on how to connect a frontend to a backend.

Thank you -- do you "have" to do that in order for it to work? seems to complex for my first deployment

Nope, as Ryan said the backend and the frontend can be on the same machine, so it basically connects to itself.

Mephi

cool -- so if I install the "packaged disk" on three computers and each is in a differnt room... I can watch a tv show recorded on the bedroom unit in the den?

with out doing any addational steps?

Disclaimer: I haven't done it yet.

You can do what you describe above, but not vice-versa (easily). The above works if your backend server is in the bedroom, and the den is a front-end to the bedroom server. This probably isn't what you had in mind.


(edit - the above paragraph can be ignored - it turns out you CAN do it)

The easiest configuration for you would be to decide which one is going to be the back-end (it can also be a front-end too).
If you want to be able to record 3 shows at once, just give that machine 3 cards, and lots of disk.
The other "front-end" boxes won't have tuners, and won't attach to the cableTV. They'll fetch shows from the back-end.

In my case, I've got a big front/back server in the living room. I will build two more machines with small disks, big CPUs, and nVidia cards. They'll just be front-ends, accessing shows from the server in the livingroom.

Not quite plug and play. There needs to be one database (stored on one computer) that all the computers use. The computer with the one database can be called the "master backend". Basically you have to tell the master backend to allow connections from other computers (by default it will ignore them). Then tell the other computers where the master backend is (by ip address).

MythTV is very flexable. A backend is any mythTV machine with a tuner card in it. A frontend is a mythTV machine where you playback recordings. You need atleast one of each, and they can both run on the same computer. But you can have any number more then the minimum one.

Forinstance, you could run a single backend with multiple tuner cards in it and several frontend-only machines that connect to the backend. Or, you could have several hybrid machines (frontend & backend on each) all networked together. Or any combination of these. The only hard requirment is that one backend is configured as the master and all others are set to communicate with it.

Ah, so he CAN do what I told him he can't do! I'll edit my post...