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Thursday, February 18. 2010
Posted by Mark Montgomery II
in Tech Stuff
Comment (1) Trackbacks (0) Last modified on 2010-02-22 19:52   
The VidMaster
The VidMaster
I have been wanting to get a Mythtv system running for several years, and in the last couple months finally got all the needed parts together. The main system specs are:
The system is running a multiseat X configuration. On boot, two separate X sessions are launched as separate users and each launches an independent Mythfrontend session. The HDHomeRun's tuners and the PVR-500's tuners are used by MythTV. Since both of these cards are feeding mpeg streams, recording puts very little load on the box. Analog Tuner 3 is used by Zoneminder most of the time, and is also used for recording VHS tapes, playing with other video input devices, etc. The system is working nicely overall. I don't have the cat6 lines run yet, so for now I just drag them and the extender from my room to the tv across the floor when I want to use it. The remote works nicely. It will pick up through most of the living room and parts of the dining room and kitchen. The box says it works up to 30 feet. I will briefly cover the main system setup and how it was accomplished. First, here is the basic information for each session: X session 1 is tied to the primary video card and the workbench KVM for controlling the system and for using it with a local monitor when it is not connected to the TV. The video card and audio card are connected to a DVI + SPDIF to HDMI converter box. This is in turn connected to an HDMI over Ethernet extender set. Two cat6 lines connect the input end in my room to the output end in the living room, which is then connected to the family TV. X session 2 is tied to the secondary video card and a 2 port USB KVM connected to the 19" LCD that is used for that X session and for my laptop when connected. Glitches I've noticed and other notes: The session on the tv seems to be losing the very top of the screen. I don't know if this is universal or only in certain places. It is noticeable when browsing the video library. The settings for mythgame are NOT per frontend. They are apparently saved as backend settings, since changing the setting on one of my frontends changed it for the other. I don't know if this applies to frontends on different physical machines. Gallery does not support storage groups yet like videos does. This would be nice so you wouldn't have to configure them per-frontend. Here is how I set everything up: First the main system configuration: Run an X session as a user and use mythtv-setup to configure the backend as normal and ensure the basic functions are working. I setup storage groups for the video stuff since mythvideo has support for them now to avoid having to manually configure it in each frontend. Run mythfrontend and ensure that all normal functions are working. Once everything is working in a standard setup, you can move on to configuring multiple frontends as multiple users. Next the multiple Mythfrontend setup: Run an X session as each dedicated session user and configure mythfrontend to use a custom name for each of them rather than the machine name and configure each user's mythfrontend appropriately. One way to start this process quickly is to copy the .mythtv directory from the configured user's home to each of the dedicated users' home directories and chowning it to that user. Then you can edit the .mythtv/mysql.txt and enable the LocalHostName directive and set it to define the custom name for that user. Alternately you can do this in the mythfrontend configuration. Configure each dedicated user's mythfrontend session to use the appropriate audio device, lirc device, etc. My session 1 is set to use the primary audio card and the Firefly remote. My session 2 is set to use the secondary audio card. Once you have each user's session configured, launch an X session for each and ensure that the independent frontends are working properly when both are running simultaneously. When you know that everything is working, you can move on to setting up the multiseat configuration. Now we have the multiseat X Configuration: /etc/X11/xorg.conf
/etc/inittab added in the Terminals section
/home/<user>/.bash_profile user tv (session 1, video card 1)
user tv1 (session 2, video card 2)
Any questions? Feel free to drop me a line or post a comment and I'll try to answer. Mark II Trackbacks
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