Streaming over LAN

Hello Guys.

I am newbie on XBMC. I installed and found it very interesant and very beautiful.
I must build a system on our LAN for streaming and VOD mainly purposes.
Scenario is like below:
Dreambox [7025+ (streams some channels)]---> server [broadcast or multicast streaming server, will handle video (movies) and music also]--->LAN (with about 50 Windows XP clients)

May I use XBMC as server (for broadcast or multicast streaming server) and also for clientpurposes, or I must use Windows Media Center for Server and XBMC for client.

Please, I will really appreciate any other scenario that you think is more suitable.
Thank you in advance for helping me.

50 clients streaming from one server box? How many do you expect to be streaming at a time? What source bitrate is the video?

Problems with your setup... say you're only streaming h.264 DVD rips at an average bitrate of 2mbps. 50 clients * 2mbps (average) = 100mbps required bandwidth on the network from the server. 100mbps ethernet gives actually 80~mbps under optimal conditions. So you'd already need gigabit at least from the server to the switch. If you're talking 720p at around 5mbps that's well into the gigabit range... 1080p blu-ray is 5-10x that.

That much data with up to 50 different files would probably not be possible from a standard hard drive (you'll likely need a good RAID 5 type setup that can read from multiple drives at the same time for different files). That type of setup requires a pretty serious file server. Not something you can just use an XBMC client to do.

That's a lot of data...

firstly, thank you for reply.

I just want to stream only live mpeg2 TV channels. For 50 clients max 50 channels streamed, 20-30 average.

So 8 channels streamed from Dreambox to encoding server, than broadcast/multicast to max 50 clients.

I read something arount combining Xbmc with UPnP MythTV server.
Is that a good idea or you have other scenario for helping me?

Thank you again.

BR

MPEG2 broadcast HD (ATSC)? Most of that material I have is in the 10-20mbps range (you might want to sample some of yours). That'll easily require gigabit for 30 clients and likely a good RAID setup. You're talking 300-600mbps sustained (plus more from the stream box).

I don't like to be the bearer of bad news, but that kind of bandwidth and sustained throughput on a server requires some serious hardware. You can probably get a nice server class machine from Dell for a couple of grand (plus hard drives). You'll also need, at a minimum, a switch with a gigabit for the server connection (you could get away with 100mbit to the clients as long as the server has a gig). You might even need dual gigabit to sustain 600mbps if your content is 20mbps or higher.

HD content is massive. You can probably do about 3-5 concurrent clients max on a standard 100mbit network with a standard PC with one hard drive.

No I dont want to stream HD channels, only SD ones. I have a Dell PE840 server, quad core proccessor (gigabit connection to cisco 2960 switch) running couple of virtual machines. Actualy I hane only 1 SAS (15krpm) & 2 SATA with no RAID

For streaming SD channels to 30 clients, are that hardware enough?
How much % proccessor do them takes from xeon 2.4quadcore?
How biger HDDs needs for that purpose, and how HDDs may I put on RAID5?

Thank you again for helping me dan1son.

If you are streaming live tv then you need no harddisk space and minimal cpu requirements - i'm working on the assumption that all your clients are on your network?

SD mpeg2 content is typically in the region of 4-8mbs, so for 8 channels you will be looking at streaming about 65mbps. Look at using something like vlc or similar to multicast out the channels onto your network. Then setup a playlist for xbmc to join the channels.

Pls, what about using MythTV as multicast server and Xbmc as client. In this way I think EPG feauter will work.
Is it correct?

mythtv (backend) + xbmc (frontend) could be a valid option. But be aware that mythtv will save it to disk even its doing live tv streaming.

Assume that the average bit rate is 0.7MB/s, then the continuous disk throughput should be at least 35MB for read + 35MB write at the same time. You will also need 4 dvb (at least in UK) cards to cover the full spectrum.

Mythtv generally is quite gentle on the resources. At home by using pentium III I can stream to at least 2-3 users at the same time. If it's not powerful enough you can always have load balancer and more hardware to increase the capacity.

Firstly thankyou for helping me.

Quote:You will also need 4 dvb (at least in UK) cards to cover the full spectrum

When you say "full spectrum", pls, what do you mean, all satellites?
Bthw, do you recomend me a good DVB-S2 PCI (to act like Dreambox boxes, with almost of them feauters). I want to use it with Sky Italia and with Digitalb cards.

thank you again.

Claudio_ Wrote:Firstly thankyou for helping me.




When you say "full spectrum", pls, what do you mean, all satellites?
Bthw, do you recomend me a good DVB-S2 PCI (to act like Dreambox boxes, with almost of them feauters). I want to use it with Sky Italia and with Digitalb cards.

thank you again.

full spectrum : all the channels. For Freeview (DVB-T in UK) you need 4 cards to be able to view all the channels at the same time (30 users watching 30 different channels etc). DVB-S is very similar, you need to do a bit search on that. You can start with one card and add additional cards later on (you will need LBN for sure and compatible dish, loads of example on web).

I would recommend of getting a DVB-S2 PCI/PCIE card, which you can stream HD video later on if you want. But be aware of the disk/network capacity required. Have a look at the dvb linux wiki (http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/DVB-S2_PCI_Cards) to make sure the card works under linux. The cheapest one I can find probably is TBS-8920 (have not tested but tempted to buy).