Ok .. Let me get this straight ..

[cas2]

I've been looking at building a multituner pvr with several clients for quite a while, and if this software can do what i think it can, it's the coolest thing I've ever seen. There's a donation as soon as i get it up running .. Here are my questions:

Are there any limitations in using an MVP versus working directly with the application, ie. can I watch live tv, schedule recordings, use the EGP etc. from the MVP??

Can I add as many MVP clients as i like?

If I we're to build a gb-pvr server with say 4-5 PVR-250 tuners and 3-4 MVP clients would the solution be stable?

I would like to be able to schedule recordings using the browser in my 3G phone, is the epg included in the web interface?


This piece of software looks really amazing. Thanks you in advance for anyone able to answer my questions.

[sub]

Quote[/b] ]Are there any limitations in using an MVP versus working directly with the application, ie. can I watch live tv, schedule recordings, use the EGP etc. from the MVP??

Yes, all these work from the MVP.

Quote[/b] ]Can I add as many MVP clients as i like?

I think the limit is eight, but I think your computer I/O would probably become the bottleneck before that many clients were added.

Quote[/b] ]If I we're to build a gb-pvr server with say 4-5 PVR-250 tuners and 3-4 MVP clients would the solution be stable?

I'd hope so. Its getting better with each release. Its not perfect, but its pretty good. Remember, this is a project I'm doing in my spare time.

Quote[/b] ]I would like to be able to schedule recordings using the browser in my 3G phone, is the epg included in the web interface?

There is a web interface with EPG for remotely scheduling recordings. Unless your phone is really huge, its probably going to look pretty bad. That said, all the source code for web site, including retrieving the recording schedule and listings, is included in the GB-PVR distribution so if anyone wants to write a WAP interface or possibly a small HTML version - it should be pretty easy.

[colin]

I haven't heard of anyone who has been in the forunate position to have a setup like this but GBPVR is designed to cope with this (would be nice to see someone try it), but designing your server will be the challenge.

Apart from have 4 or 5 tuners in a box, what will be your disk layout, how many NICs would you use?

You have potentially 5 tuners doing a lot of disk I/O are the same time, not to mention the possibility of 3 or 4 MVP's reading from your disks at the same time.

If you go ahead with this, keep the forum posted on how it goes - it will be very interesting to see if in action

Colin.

[cas2]

This sounds really excellent. I currently have a dual MP 2800+ that could be used as the server when it retires. I already have a 66 MHz gigabit ethernet card and a gigabit swith so the networking part should be no problem. I don't think 4-5 playback/recording sessions is ever going to happen. I live in a big apertment with my girlfriend, my sister and her boyfriend. Our cable tv connection is very bad except in one plug near the signal entrance. So the server is going to be placed here and the system will probably be used a lot for livetv viewing.I figured an mvp in the kitchen, living room, bedroom, and the office would be nice(this is the only place my girlfriend allows me to smoke). Certainly the system will need to be able to handle 2-3 I/O session at once. Since the content of the storage system is not going to be dead important I don't think I will bother with a raid array. I figure if I put 4 200 GB 8 MB cache Maxtors in JBOD the individual recordings/processes are probably going to hit different disks most of the time. But maybe I need to reconsider this solution. Anyway, Im not going shopping crazy right now. I'm currently doing my masters thesis and I have a job waiting for me when I'm done in about 2 months. I think a project like this will be a good way to spend my first paycheck! I'll certainly keep you posted once I start ... Thank you very much for the fullfilling and fast replies ..

[cas2]

I thought some more about the storage system, the requirements depends offcourse a lot on how the code works. Since I haven't tried the application yet I have no idea. Is there any clever buffering and queing going on in software, or is it just a rapid series of random request going to the controller?

There must be a lot of 2 tuner boxes out there. What are the requirements for running such as system in a worse case scenario, ie. 2xrecording, 2xplayback?

[jquinlan]

I have an AMD 2200+ CPU with 512 DDR 2100 Ram
A Single Maxtor 250Gig IDE 8 meg cache for recordings, the OS is on its own 20 Gig drive if that makes a difference.
A 100 Mbs Network card on Server and a 10/100 Switch for the house. I think the MVP uses a 10 Mbs connections.
I have 2 PVR-250's and 2 MVP's. I do not run the UI on the server PC, I only use MVP's.
I have seen two records going on the server while I was watching a previously recorded show and did not have any snags.

[cas2]

That sounds great! Inspired by your info I tried simulating the situation of 3 simultanous recording and playback sessions, ie. 6 I/O sessions at once. I have a RAID 0 array with 2x36 GB raptors, and one with 2x120 GB WD 8 MB cache drives in the my dual MP 2800. I logged in to the XP IIS ftp server with 6 clients locally on the server, and uploaded and downloaded 3 files to the ftp dir. The ftp dir was located on the WD array and the upload source files and download dir was on the raptor array. In this way one should get a clear picture of the WD array performance, since the raptors should never be a limiting factor. My ftp client provides the momentanous transfer rate. Using files of ~1 GB and redoing the experiment several times I never saw a read rate of less than 1 MB/S. The writes we're generally around 3 MB/s. I figure a 4 Mbit MPEG-2 file will be good enough for most peoples taste, this will require a min. of 0.5 MB/s sustained.
As I'm writing this I'm doing another experiment on the WD array. I have a plain tuner card in the machine. I'm timeshifting JMPEG 4 MB/s, watching a 4 Mbit MPEG-2 file and a 3 Mbit wmv file. 3 read session and 1 write and no hickups during 20 mins of testing...
Based on these simple experiments I conclude that the storage system requirements of even a crazy system with many tuners, won't be that high after all ....

[jquinlan]

Keep us updated as you build your system. Its sounds like yours may be a benchmark setup for systems this large. I don't know if my system will ever be that big, but I would like to know how it works out.

Thanks and good luck.