Headless box with PVR-250 - ideas needed

[Juergen Lock]

In article <20110420192340.3cdc0136 at zeus.saul.homeunix.org> you write:
>On Thu, 21 Apr 2011 01:44:50 +0200
>Torfinn Ingolfsen <torfinn.ingolfsen at broadpark.no> wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 20 Apr 2011 14:04:38 -0500
>> Saul A Peebsen <jaglover at gmail.com> wrote:

> [...]

>> Other options:
>> vdr is in ports (I have just tried it briefly, to me it looks as
>> difficult to get working as MythTV was initially). YMMV
>
>Hmmm, VDR can be viewed over the network?
> 
Yes it can (via xineliboutput or streamdev plugins, see

	http://wiki.freebsd.org/VDR

), but natively it only knows about dvb/atsc tuners using the Linux
/dev/dvb/adapterX api as e.g. provided by the webcamd port for usb
tuners, so for you card you'd either have to port the pvrinput
plugin,

	http://www.linuxtv.org/vdrwiki/index.php/Pvrinput-plugin

(I'm not sure but the Linux ivtv drivers for your card,

	http://www.ivtvdriver.org/index.php/Main_Page

probably use the V4L2 (/dev/videoX) api which thus differs from the
one used by the FreeBSD pvrxxx driver so there'd be some more hacking
involved), or maybe as a stopgap solution hack together some input
scripts and channels.conf entries for the iptv plugin,

	http://www.saunalahti.fi/~rahrenbe/vdr/iptv/

in:

	/usr/local/etc/vdr/plugins/iptv

Some sample channels.conf entries for web streams are in

	/usr/local/share/examples/vdr-plugin-iptv/channels.conf.iptv

and

	/usr/ports/multimedia/vdr-plugin-iptv/files/channels.conf.iptv .

>> You could run another os on your backend (Linux?) and just run the
>> mythfrontend on your (FreeBSD) desktop.
>> Note: you *must* use the same version of MythTV (actually, the same
>> version of the MythTV protocol) on the frontend as you do on the
>> backend, or ity won't work.
>
>Well, the situation is a little more complicated. I have home network,
>my PC, wifes, one media center and one laptop. All of these have
>one single OS installed and it is Gentoo. My desktop has MythTV backend
>running with pcHDTV 5500. The trouble starts when something is
>recording or Wife wants to watch while I'm watching or I shut down my
>box. So I thought adding one master backend would solve these problems.
>The only box suitable for this job is my home server, which is running
>FreeBSD ... It is not very powerful, thus I got an MPEG encoder
>card ... PVR-250.
>
>> So yes, there are options, none of them perfect.
>
>Well, currently I log into server over SSH, do cat /dev/cxm0 > file.mpg
>where file is created on an NFS shared volume and use mplayer to watch
>it on my desktop, works fine.
>I wonder if there is a way to access /dev/cxm0 over LAN (some magic
>with netcat perhaps?), without logging in over SSH, so Wife could watch
>it from her desktop. SSH login is a little too much for her ...

 If you just want to watch (or record) whatever is coming in on
/dev/cxm0 (i.e. you already select the channel some other way) then
maybe this as /usr/local/etc/vdr/plugins/iptv/vlcinput/cxm0.conf :

	URL="/dev/cxm0"

and one line in /usr/local/etc/vdr/channels.conf would be enough:
(you can keep the other iptv examples for testing)

	cxm0;IPTV:5000:S=0|P=0|F=EXT|U=vlc2iptv|A=5000:I:0:5=2:6=eng at 3:0:0:1:0:0:0

 If you want the iptv plugin to handle tuning too you'd need one
channels.conf line per channel and would have to extend the
/usr/local/etc/vdr/plugins/iptv/vlc2iptv script to parse the channel
name (the cxm0 above) or number (the two 5000s - both numbers have
to be the same per line) to tune the card, and if that works I guess
you could also try removing the transoding in the final vlc invocation
- maybe the mpeg stream generated by the card is already compatible
enough with what vdr expects.  (basically an mpeg2 transport
stream...)

 Good luck! :)
	Juergen