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VMWare and MythTV

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news at timandnoelle

Feb 6, 2006, 12:39 PM

Post #1 of 35 (22712 views)
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VMWare and MythTV

would it be possible to run mythtv through vmware? if so, you could
potentially be running mythtv on your windows box. am i thinking about this
right? has anyone ever tried this? anyway, vmware is offering their vmware
server and player software free.

http://www.vmware.com/products/server/

i guess colinux is similar.

http://www.colinux.org/

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mercury.morris at gmail

Feb 6, 2006, 12:51 PM

Post #2 of 35 (22280 views)
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Re: VMWare and MythTV [In reply to]

On 2/6/06, Tim <news [at] timandnoelle> wrote:
>
> would it be possible to run mythtv through vmware? if so, you could
> potentially be running mythtv on your windows box. am i thinking about
> this
> right? has anyone ever tried this? anyway, vmware is offering their
> vmware
> server and player software free.
>
> http://www.vmware.com/products/server/
>
> i guess colinux is similar.
>
> http://www.colinux.org/
>
>
"would it be possible...", Well Yes, but probably No. If there is a way to
allow the virtual machine running MythTV to gain access to the Capture Card,
then that's one high hurdle jumped. It is quite doubtful that the VMware
team will ever write code to give control of resources such as a Capture
Card to the virtual machine.

But who knows? I may be completely wrong. Anyone else see it differently?

--
MM

david.whyte at gmail

Feb 6, 2006, 12:53 PM

Post #3 of 35 (22268 views)
Permalink

Re: VMWare and MythTV [In reply to]

On 2/7/06, Tim <news [at] timandnoelle> wrote:
> would it be possible to run mythtv through vmware? if so, you could
> potentially be running mythtv on your windows box. am i thinking about this
> right? has anyone ever tried this? anyway, vmware is offering their vmware
> server and player software free.

I have a VMware box which is pretty much a mirror or my backend,
without the capture cards of course. I managed to run video fine on
it, but I was running over WiFi and it was jumpy. I wasn't sure if
that was the WiFi to blame or the slow processing due to the
virtualisation. I have never gotten around to plugging my network
cable in and trying again and since I installed Ubuntu on my backend,
I seem to use it most of the time as my main machine and haven't
booted up the Windows laptop.

Whytey

--
--

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fox.michael at gmail

Feb 6, 2006, 1:20 PM

Post #4 of 35 (22247 views)
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Re: VMWare and MythTV [In reply to]

On 2/7/06, Mercury Morris <mercury.morris [at] gmail> wrote:
> "would it be possible...", Well Yes, but probably No. If there is a way to
> allow the virtual machine running MythTV to gain access to the Capture Card,
> then that's one high hurdle jumped. It is quite doubtful that the VMware
> team will ever write code to give control of resources such as a Capture
> Card to the virtual machine.

I wouldn't count this out in time to come, look in the early days of
v1 and v2 of vmware workstation. Your virtual machines couldn't use
the cd/dvd burner on the host machine, it just treated the real drive
as a cdrom only however with now v5.5.1 of workstation I can use my
host DVD burner from within the virtual machine as if the virtual
machine has the drive itself. Works great.

You can also use the serial ports in the virtual machine and usb
devices, so I reckon its only a matter of time before someone
implements the use of PCI cards to the virtual machine.

I'd certainly like to see it happen, as I wouldnt mind attempt to run
a virtual linux box that is doing all the recording from the capture
cards in the host OS machine.
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ted-dated-1139694657.00cc31 at rathkopf

Feb 6, 2006, 1:50 PM

Post #5 of 35 (22241 views)
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Re: VMWare and MythTV [In reply to]

Arrr, Mercury Morris <mercury.morris [at] gmail>
What ye be sayin'?

> On 2/6/06, Tim <news [at] timandnoelle> wrote:
>>
>> would it be possible to run mythtv through vmware? if so, you could
>> potentially be running mythtv on your windows box. am i thinking about
>> this
>> right? has anyone ever tried this? anyway, vmware is offering their
>> vmware
>> server and player software free.
>>
>> http://www.vmware.com/products/server/
>>
>> i guess colinux is similar.
>>
>> http://www.colinux.org/
>>
>>
> "would it be possible...", Well Yes, but probably No. If there is a way to
> allow the virtual machine running MythTV to gain access to the Capture Card,
> then that's one high hurdle jumped. It is quite doubtful that the VMware
> team will ever write code to give control of resources such as a Capture
> Card to the virtual machine.
>
> But who knows? I may be completely wrong. Anyone else see it differently?

As a backend, you'd probably run into some difficulties, but I would
think vmware would be an excellent way to run a full featured frontend
on your desktop.

--
Ted Rathkopf
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jc at dastrup

Feb 6, 2006, 2:04 PM

Post #6 of 35 (22221 views)
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Re: VMWare and MythTV [In reply to]

On Monday 06 February 2006 2:50 pm, Ted Rathkopf wrote:
> Arrr, Mercury Morris <mercury.morris [at] gmail>
> What ye be sayin'?
>
> > On 2/6/06, Tim <news [at] timandnoelle> wrote:
> >> would it be possible to run mythtv through vmware? if so, you
> >> could potentially be running mythtv on your windows box. am i
> >> thinking about this
> >> right? has anyone ever tried this? anyway, vmware is offering
> >> their vmware
> >> server and player software free.
> >>
> >> http://www.vmware.com/products/server/
> >>
> >> i guess colinux is similar.
> >>
> >> http://www.colinux.org/
> >
> > "would it be possible...", Well Yes, but probably No. If there
> > is a way to allow the virtual machine running MythTV to gain
> > access to the Capture Card, then that's one high hurdle jumped.
> > It is quite doubtful that the VMware team will ever write code to
> > give control of resources such as a Capture Card to the virtual
> > machine.
> >
> > But who knows? I may be completely wrong. Anyone else see it
> > differently?
>
> As a backend, you'd probably run into some difficulties, but I
> would think vmware would be an excellent way to run a full featured
> frontend on your desktop.

I would doubt the VMware video drivers are capable of displaying a
good quality video. Maybe SD would work, but I can't imagine it
playing HD at all. I have several VMware sessions running; if I get a
chance I'll try it soon and let y'all know.
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Francesco at FamPeeters

Feb 6, 2006, 2:19 PM

Post #7 of 35 (22215 views)
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Re: VMWare and MythTV [In reply to]

On Mon, February 6, 2006 23:04, James Dastrup said:
> On Monday 06 February 2006 2:50 pm, Ted Rathkopf wrote:
>> Arrr, Mercury Morris <mercury.morris [at] gmail>
>> What ye be sayin'?
>>
>> > On 2/6/06, Tim <news [at] timandnoelle> wrote:
>> >> would it be possible to run mythtv through vmware? if so, you
>> >> could potentially be running mythtv on your windows box. am i
>> >> thinking about this
>> >> right? has anyone ever tried this? anyway, vmware is offering
>> >> their vmware
>> >> server and player software free.
>> >>
>> >> http://www.vmware.com/products/server/
>> >>
>> >> i guess colinux is similar.
>> >>
>> >> http://www.colinux.org/
>> >
>> > "would it be possible...", Well Yes, but probably No. If there
>> > is a way to allow the virtual machine running MythTV to gain
>> > access to the Capture Card, then that's one high hurdle jumped.
>> > It is quite doubtful that the VMware team will ever write code to
>> > give control of resources such as a Capture Card to the virtual
>> > machine.
>> >
>> > But who knows? I may be completely wrong. Anyone else see it
>> > differently?
>>
>> As a backend, you'd probably run into some difficulties, but I
>> would think vmware would be an excellent way to run a full featured
>> frontend on your desktop.
>
> I would doubt the VMware video drivers are capable of displaying a
> good quality video. Maybe SD would work, but I can't imagine it
> playing HD at all. I have several VMware sessions running; if I get a
> chance I'll try it soon and let y'all know.

Isn't this what winmyth is intended to address?... ;-)

--
Francesco Peeters
----
GPG Key = AA69 E7C6 1D8A F148 160C D5C4 9943 6E38 D5E3 7704
If your program doesn't recognize my signature, please visit
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jc at dastrup

Feb 6, 2006, 2:41 PM

Post #8 of 35 (22199 views)
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Re: VMWare and MythTV [In reply to]

On Monday 06 February 2006 3:19 pm, Francesco Peeters wrote:
> On Mon, February 6, 2006 23:04, James Dastrup said:
> > On Monday 06 February 2006 2:50 pm, Ted Rathkopf wrote:
> >> Arrr, Mercury Morris <mercury.morris [at] gmail>
> >> What ye be sayin'?
> >>
> >> > On 2/6/06, Tim <news [at] timandnoelle> wrote:
> >> >> would it be possible to run mythtv through vmware? if so,
> >> >> you could potentially be running mythtv on your windows box.
> >> >> am i thinking about this
> >> >> right? has anyone ever tried this? anyway, vmware is
> >> >> offering their vmware
> >> >> server and player software free.
> >> >>
> >> >> http://www.vmware.com/products/server/
> >> >>
> >> >> i guess colinux is similar.
> >> >>
> >> >> http://www.colinux.org/
> >> >
> >> > "would it be possible...", Well Yes, but probably No. If
> >> > there is a way to allow the virtual machine running MythTV to
> >> > gain access to the Capture Card, then that's one high hurdle
> >> > jumped. It is quite doubtful that the VMware team will ever
> >> > write code to give control of resources such as a Capture Card
> >> > to the virtual machine.
> >> >
> >> > But who knows? I may be completely wrong. Anyone else see it
> >> > differently?
> >>
> >> As a backend, you'd probably run into some difficulties, but I
> >> would think vmware would be an excellent way to run a full
> >> featured frontend on your desktop.
> >
> > I would doubt the VMware video drivers are capable of displaying
> > a good quality video. Maybe SD would work, but I can't imagine it
> > playing HD at all. I have several VMware sessions running; if I
> > get a chance I'll try it soon and let y'all know.
>
> Isn't this what winmyth is intended to address?... ;-)

Possibly, but it's in no way a full-featured frontend, and my
experience with it is it's way underdeveloped, and therefore full of
bugs and lacks features. I wish it did work, because I do have
several windows machines still around.

BTW, if you haven't heard, VMware is now offering it's GSX version for
free, starting today.
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jaybright at gmail

Feb 6, 2006, 3:17 PM

Post #9 of 35 (22168 views)
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Re: VMWare and MythTV [In reply to]

On 2/7/06, James Dastrup <jc [at] dastrup> wrote:
>
>
> BTW, if you haven't heard, VMware is now offering it's GSX version for
> free, starting today.

Free or not, it isn't going to work well enough for Myth so it's a
pointless discussion.

The reason winMyth exists is because there was no GPL version of Qt
available for Win32. Trolltech has changed their policy for QT4. When
Issac finally decides to make the change to QT4 i expect you'll see a proper
mythfrontend for windows follow shortly (as has recently happened for OSX).

j

greg at phaze

Feb 6, 2006, 3:26 PM

Post #10 of 35 (22172 views)
Permalink

Re: VMWare and MythTV [In reply to]

> potentially be running mythtv on your windows box. am i thinking about this
> right? has anyone ever tried this? anyway, vmware is offering their vmware

I do this now for dev stuff, and for the odd time I want to run myth on my
laptop. It works fairly well.

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steve.p.daniels at googlemail

Feb 6, 2006, 4:03 PM

Post #11 of 35 (22165 views)
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Re: VMWare and MythTV [In reply to]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Tim" <news [at] timandnoelle>
To: "Discussion about mythtv" <mythtv-users [at] mythtv>
Sent: Monday, February 06, 2006 8:39 PM
Subject: [mythtv-users] VMWare and MythTV

would it be possible to run mythtv through vmware? if so, you could
potentially be running mythtv on your windows box. am i thinking about this
right? has anyone ever tried this? anyway, vmware is offering their vmware
server and player software free.

http://www.vmware.com/products/server/

i guess colinux is similar.

http://www.colinux.org/

_______________________________________________

It works absolutely perfect as a frontend machine!!!

Just ignore all the people that say it wouldn't be able to ;-)

As for the backend, just wait for virtual PCI slots to come along hehehe

Steve Daniels

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mario.mailing at gmail

Feb 6, 2006, 4:12 PM

Post #12 of 35 (22161 views)
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Re: VMWare and MythTV [In reply to]

On Tue, 2006-02-07 at 08:20 +1100, Michael Fox wrote:

On the note of allowing USB devices.....

Has anyone attempted the usage of any USB2 tuners with a backend running
in VMWare?

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jc at dastrup

Feb 6, 2006, 4:13 PM

Post #13 of 35 (22161 views)
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Re: VMWare and MythTV [In reply to]

On Monday 06 February 2006 5:03 pm, Steve Daniels wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Tim" <news [at] timandnoelle>
> To: "Discussion about mythtv" <mythtv-users [at] mythtv>
> Sent: Monday, February 06, 2006 8:39 PM
> Subject: [mythtv-users] VMWare and MythTV
>
>
> would it be possible to run mythtv through vmware? if so, you
> could potentially be running mythtv on your windows box. am i
> thinking about this right? has anyone ever tried this? anyway,
> vmware is offering their vmware server and player software free.
>
> http://www.vmware.com/products/server/
>
> i guess colinux is similar.
>
> http://www.colinux.org/
>
> _______________________________________________
>
> It works absolutely perfect as a frontend machine!!!
>
> Just ignore all the people that say it wouldn't be able to ;-)
>

"absoultely perfect"? Even HDTV playback?
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steve.p.daniels at googlemail

Feb 6, 2006, 11:55 PM

Post #14 of 35 (22156 views)
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Re: VMWare and MythTV [In reply to]

----- Original Message -----
From: "James Dastrup" <jc [at] dastrup>
To: "Discussion about mythtv" <mythtv-users [at] mythtv>
Sent: Tuesday, February 07, 2006 12:13 AM
Subject: Re: [mythtv-users] VMWare and MythTV

On Monday 06 February 2006 5:03 pm, Steve Daniels wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Tim" <news [at] timandnoelle>
> To: "Discussion about mythtv" <mythtv-users [at] mythtv>
> Sent: Monday, February 06, 2006 8:39 PM
> Subject: [mythtv-users] VMWare and MythTV
>
>
> would it be possible to run mythtv through vmware? if so, you
> could potentially be running mythtv on your windows box. am i
> thinking about this right? has anyone ever tried this? anyway,
> vmware is offering their vmware server and player software free.
>
> http://www.vmware.com/products/server/
>
> i guess colinux is similar.
>
> http://www.colinux.org/
>
> _______________________________________________
>
> It works absolutely perfect as a frontend machine!!!
>
> Just ignore all the people that say it wouldn't be able to ;-)
>

"absoultely perfect"? Even HDTV playback?
_______________________________________________

If I had an HD content to throw at it, I'd be more welcome to try, but since
it probably takes less than half an hour to set up a VMWare mythfrontend,
you'd think more people would bother to try it.

Step 1. Install VMWare
Step 2. Creat a new Virtual Machine
Step 3. Attach a knoppmyth iso to the virtual cdrom on the machine.
Step 4. Press power on.
Step 5. Have fun.

Anyone with HD like to give it ago?

Or tell me how to "simulate" HD?

Thanks

Steve

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news at timandnoelle

Feb 7, 2006, 5:32 AM

Post #15 of 35 (22137 views)
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Re: VMWare and MythTV [In reply to]

thanks for all the info, guys. my curiosity is satisfied. don't have a
need for it now, but someday...

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adman at adman

Feb 7, 2006, 7:27 PM

Post #16 of 35 (22133 views)
Permalink

Re: VMWare and MythTV [In reply to]

On 2/7/06, Steve Daniels <steve.p.daniels [at] googlemail> wrote:

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "James Dastrup" <jc [at] dastrup>
> To: "Discussion about mythtv" <mythtv-users [at] mythtv>
> Sent: Tuesday, February 07, 2006 12:13 AM
> Subject: Re: [mythtv-users] VMWare and MythTV
>
>
> On Monday 06 February 2006 5:03 pm, Steve Daniels wrote:
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Tim" <news [at] timandnoelle>
> > To: "Discussion about mythtv" <mythtv-users [at] mythtv>
> > Sent: Monday, February 06, 2006 8:39 PM
> > Subject: [mythtv-users] VMWare and MythTV
> >
> >
> > would it be possible to run mythtv through vmware? if so, you
> > could potentially be running mythtv on your windows box. am i
> > thinking about this right? has anyone ever tried this? anyway,
> > vmware is offering their vmware server and player software free.
> >
> > http://www.vmware.com/products/server/
> >
> > i guess colinux is similar.
> >
> > http://www.colinux.org/
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> >
> > It works absolutely perfect as a frontend machine!!!
> >
> > Just ignore all the people that say it wouldn't be able to ;-)
> >
>
> "absoultely perfect"? Even HDTV playback?
> _______________________________________________
>
> If I had an HD content to throw at it, I'd be more welcome to try, but
> since
> it probably takes less than half an hour to set up a VMWare mythfrontend,
> you'd think more people would bother to try it.
>
> Step 1. Install VMWare
> Step 2. Creat a new Virtual Machine
> Step 3. Attach a knoppmyth iso to the virtual cdrom on the machine.
> Step 4. Press power on.
> Step 5. Have fun.
>
> Anyone with HD like to give it ago?
>
> Or tell me how to "simulate" HD?
>
> Thanks
>
> Steve
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> mythtv-users mailing list
> mythtv-users [at] mythtv
> http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
>

Are there any tricks to making this work? I installed VMware server on my
notebook (Pentium M 1.8Ghz with 1GB RAM) this afternoon and loaded up FC4
and MythTV in a virtual machine. I got everything working but the video was
*VERY* choppy. I thought it might have been the 802.11g at first, but even
hardwiring didn't fix it. I installed the VMware tools to get the correct
video driver, but still no improvement. All suggestions are appreciated.

Thanks,
Adam

myth at borntreger

Feb 7, 2006, 7:40 PM

Post #17 of 35 (22117 views)
Permalink

Re: VMWare and MythTV [In reply to]

On Tue, 2006-02-07 at 21:27 -0600, Adam Blomfield wrote:

> Are there any tricks to making this work? I installed VMware server on
> my notebook (Pentium M 1.8Ghz with 1GB RAM) this afternoon and loaded
> up FC4 and MythTV in a virtual machine. I got everything working but
> the video was *VERY* choppy. I thought it might have been the 802.11g
> at first, but even hardwiring didn't fix it. I installed the VMware
> tools to get the correct video driver, but still no improvement. All
> suggestions are appreciated.

My dual Athlon 1700+ with 1.5G RAM doesn't even have the horsepower to
run just the frontend smoothly in VMware (I made sure that all other
processes - MySQL, apache, mythbackend, etc. were not running). VMware
just takes a lot of horsepower to run.

Lonnie Borntreger

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ffrr at tpg

Feb 8, 2006, 12:21 AM

Post #18 of 35 (22108 views)
Permalink

Re: VMWare and MythTV [In reply to]

Lonnie Borntreger wrote:

>
>
>My dual Athlon 1700+ with 1.5G RAM doesn't even have the horsepower to
>run just the frontend smoothly in VMware (I made sure that all other
>processes - MySQL, apache, mythbackend, etc. were not running). VMware
>just takes a lot of horsepower to run.
>
>Lonnie Borntreger
>
>
>
Maybe, but it's much faster than Microsoft's Virtual PC
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steve.p.daniels at googlemail

Feb 8, 2006, 12:52 AM

Post #19 of 35 (22107 views)
Permalink

Re: VMWare and MythTV [In reply to]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Lonnie Borntreger" <myth [at] borntreger>
To: "Discussion about mythtv" <mythtv-users [at] mythtv>
Sent: Wednesday, February 08, 2006 3:40 AM
Subject: Re: [mythtv-users] VMWare and MythTV

On Tue, 2006-02-07 at 21:27 -0600, Adam Blomfield wrote:

> Are there any tricks to making this work? I installed VMware server on
> my notebook (Pentium M 1.8Ghz with 1GB RAM) this afternoon and loaded
> up FC4 and MythTV in a virtual machine. I got everything working but
> the video was *VERY* choppy. I thought it might have been the 802.11g
> at first, but even hardwiring didn't fix it. I installed the VMware
> tools to get the correct video driver, but still no improvement. All
> suggestions are appreciated.

My dual Athlon 1700+ with 1.5G RAM doesn't even have the horsepower to
run just the frontend smoothly in VMware (I made sure that all other
processes - MySQL, apache, mythbackend, etc. were not running). VMware
just takes a lot of horsepower to run.

Lonnie Borntreger
_______________________________________________

I've simply got an Athlon 3000+ with 512MB RAM. Just created a virtual
machine, attached a KnoppMyth ISO as a Virtual CD Drive, and it worked..
That's over a wireless connection too.

I'll try again later tonight maybe.

Steve

P.S. Someone asked me if I could provide them with a copy of an installed
KnoppMyth Virtual Machine so they could play it in the player. If I had the
upload space, I'd be happy to oblige.

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ffrr at tpg

Feb 8, 2006, 1:01 AM

Post #20 of 35 (22107 views)
Permalink

Re: VMWare and MythTV [In reply to]

Steve Daniels wrote:

>
>P.S. Someone asked me if I could provide them with a copy of an installed
>KnoppMyth Virtual Machine so they could play it in the player. If I had the
>upload space, I'd be happy to oblige.
>
>

Even with the free player, can't you just put the Knoppmyth CD in the
drive and start up ANY VM, and install it over the top of whatever was
there?
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anaerin at gmail

Feb 8, 2006, 1:25 AM

Post #21 of 35 (22111 views)
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Re: VMWare and MythTV [In reply to]

On 2/8/06, ffrr <ffrr [at] tpg> wrote:
> Steve Daniels wrote:
>
> >
> >P.S. Someone asked me if I could provide them with a copy of an installed
> >KnoppMyth Virtual Machine so they could play it in the player. If I had the
> >upload space, I'd be happy to oblige.
> >
> >
>
> Even with the free player, can't you just put the Knoppmyth CD in the
> drive and start up ANY VM, and install it over the top of whatever was
> there?

You don't even need to do that. Grab one of the images from the VMWare
site (One of the smaller ones), and edit the .vmx file. You can make
as many, customizable, copies as you like, too.

Alternatively, you could just grab the VMWare Server Beta, which is
also free (Though registration for a "Licence key" is required) and
has all the tools needed to create new Virtual Machines.
--
Robert "Anaerin" Johnston
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greg at phaze

Feb 8, 2006, 4:07 AM

Post #22 of 35 (22096 views)
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Re: VMWare and MythTV [In reply to]

> hardwiring didn't fix it. I installed the VMware tools to get the correct
> video driver, but still no improvement. All suggestions are appreciated.

I assume you not only installed the driver but configured X to use it?

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ross.campbell at gmail

Feb 8, 2006, 10:48 AM

Post #23 of 35 (22089 views)
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Re: VMWare and MythTV [In reply to]

> I have a VMware box which is pretty much a mirror or my backend,
> without the capture cards of course. I managed to run video fine on
> it, but I was running over WiFi and it was jumpy. I wasn't sure if
> that was the WiFi to blame or the slow processing due to the
> virtualisation.

The number of people who have reported great success with mythfrontend over
Wireless is small, so I'd blame wirelss, not VMWare.

Here is advice I offer to people trying to run wireless frontends who
*refuse* to run an ethernet cable to said machine:
- don't waste your time with anything slower than 802.11g
- make sure your wireless driver is *WELL SUPPORTED*
- make sure your signal strength is *EXCELLENT*
- reduce your recording quality settings *WAY DOWN* so that recordings and
livetv use less than 1gb/hour
- adjust time stretch down until stuttering stops to help you figure out how
much more you need to reduce recording quality for regular playback (or get
used to watching recordings veerryy sllooww)
- transcode your recordings to lower quality and bitrate before you attempt
to watch them over wireless
- use MythStreamTV to stream low(er) quality bitrate streams to a wireless
machine and just use any old media player
- after much frustration... give up and run an ethernet cable.

Other than that... vmware for mythtv *frontends* should work just fine (and
potentially would work for backend and capture cards, but the place where I
could see doing that would be using VMWare ESX and some array of servers to
provide myth*backend* server fault tolerance, but that's probably a
discussion for another thread, and wouldn't be low cost).

Using vmware to boot a knoppix frontend (or ubuntu, or whatever) on a laptop
or other PC seems like a good idea for an impromptu frontend that won't
require shutting down and rebooting, nor forcing a family member to ween
themselves from Windows prematurely.

-Ross

jcaputo1 at comcast

Feb 8, 2006, 10:58 AM

Post #24 of 35 (22080 views)
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Re: VMWare and MythTV [In reply to]

On Wednesday 08 February 2006 13:48, Ross Campbell wrote:
> > I have a VMware box which is pretty much a mirror or my backend,
> > without the capture cards of course. I managed to run video fine
> > on it, but I was running over WiFi and it was jumpy. I wasn't sure
> > if that was the WiFi to blame or the slow processing due to the
> > virtualisation.
>
> The number of people who have reported great success with
> mythfrontend over Wireless is small, so I'd blame wirelss, not
> VMWare.
>
> Here is advice I offer to people trying to run wireless frontends who
> *refuse* to run an ethernet cable to said machine:
> - don't waste your time with anything slower than 802.11g
> - make sure your wireless driver is *WELL SUPPORTED*
> - make sure your signal strength is *EXCELLENT*
> - reduce your recording quality settings *WAY DOWN* so that
> recordings and livetv use less than 1gb/hour
> - adjust time stretch down until stuttering stops to help you figure
> out how much more you need to reduce recording quality for regular
> playback (or get used to watching recordings veerryy sllooww)
> - transcode your recordings to lower quality and bitrate before you
> attempt to watch them over wireless
> - use MythStreamTV to stream low(er) quality bitrate streams to a
> wireless machine and just use any old media player
> - after much frustration... give up and run an ethernet cable.

One more tip: try using an NFS mount for your Myth recordings instead
of relying on the backend to stream them. There have been reports that
the backend streaming has significantly increased overhead compared to
the frontend playing directly from a file over NFS.

-JAC
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greg at gregandeva

Feb 8, 2006, 11:30 AM

Post #25 of 35 (22096 views)
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Re: VMWare and MythTV [In reply to]

On Wed, 2006-02-08 at 13:58 -0500, Joseph A. Caputo wrote:

> > The number of people who have reported great success with
> > mythfrontend over Wireless is small

Let me add one more then. I have a Sony Vaio laptop running FC4, and
mythfrontend over wireless works fine.

> > *refuse* to run an ethernet cable to said machine:

Running that cable out into the back yard seems a little impractical :-)

> > - don't waste your time with anything slower than 802.11g
> > - make sure your wireless driver is *WELL SUPPORTED*

Agreed. My laptop has an Atheros built-in chip supported by the madwifi
drivers. I do have an 802.11g access point. Be aware that, even if your
access point supports g, if you have any clients at all that are not
g-compatible, everyone gets the slower speed, so if you're counting on
the faster speed for something like mythfrontend, you can't have ANY
non-g clients.

> > - reduce your recording quality settings *WAY DOWN* so that
> > recordings and livetv use less than 1gb/hour

I haven't found it necessary to do this.

> > - adjust time stretch down until stuttering stops to help you figure
> > out how much more you need to reduce recording quality for regular
> > playback (or get used to watching recordings veerryy sllooww)

I haven't found it necessary to do this either. In fact, I use
speeded-up time stretch to watch football and baseball games and it
works fine (don't try it with hockey though or you'll get dizzy :-)

> > - transcode your recordings to lower quality and bitrate before you
> > attempt to watch them over wireless
> > - use MythStreamTV to stream low(er) quality bitrate streams to a
> > wireless machine and just use any old media player
> > - after much frustration... give up and run an ethernet cable.

I haven't found it necessary to do any of these things either, and
running that cable out to the back yard hammock remains a difficult
option :-)

> One more tip: try using an NFS mount for your Myth recordings instead
> of relying on the backend to stream them.

Perhaps this is the magic bullet, as this is what I have done from the
get go, even on my wired frontend system.

I'd guess the conclusion here is that your mileage may vary.

--Greg

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