[NickWalker]

I'm new to PVR , and I've been able to answer most of my questions just by reading all of the other newbie threads in this forum and around the web, but I was wondering if somebody could touch on a few questions I still have.

My current XBMC setup is consists of two front-ends (one Windows, one Ubuntu, both running Frodo RC3) and one Ubuntu/Amahi server for files, MySQL, etc. The natural choice for the live TV backend is also the server. I'll be watching ATSC OTA signal in the SF Bay area.

Question 1: How CPU-intensive is it to run the backend TV server? I think I read somewhere that it's not at all CPU-intensive because Digital OTA signal is all MPEG2, but just making sure.

Question 2: If I record a TV show, how is that accessed through XBMC? Is it going to be under Live TV->Recorded (or something similar), or will it be under Videos->TV shows? Is this something I can control through various settings?

Question 3: I was leaning towards using TVHeaded or MythTV as my backend. What kind of commercial-clipping functionalities do these have? I think I saw on Myth's wiki that Myth has some kind of commercial-clipping algorithms. Are they any good?

Thanks,
Nick

[jp2code]

I'm a noobie at this too.

I've got an ASUS Eee Box 1501 (Dual Core Atom processor) with the NVIDIA ION graphics card. My Tuner runs on a network device called the HDHomeRun Dual.

Everything runs on that one PC. It pulls in the video from the CAT5 connection from the tuner and acts as the backend server for itself.

I get bad reception, but that's because of weather and the fact that I live in the woods.

Otherwise, it does really well!

Too bad others won't pitch in.

[cousinjerry]

1. The server process is not very intensive at all. The biggest benefits I've seen us upgrading my network to gigabit.
2. Recorded tv is available in Live TV -> Recordings.
3. Sorry, don't use myth,just mediaportal currently.

[NickWalker]

Alright, thanks

[Prof Yaffle]

Comskip is the answer for automatically flagging commercials out of TVHeadend recordings - not sure about Myth, whether that has something built-in or whether it needs post-processing, I thought it still needed something like Comskip. Alternatively, you can do it by hand, since XBMC supports a variety of edit decision list formats - you just need to find the cut points.

Comskip has traditionally been Windows-only, but has just been ported to Linux and is actively being developed - see other posts on this forum: http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=150084

[schumi2004]

Comskip is the answer for automatically flagging commercials out of TVHeadend recordings - not sure about Myth, whether that has something built-in or whether it needs post-processing, I thought it still needed something like Comskip. Alternatively, you can do it by hand, since XBMC supports a variety of edit decision list formats - you just need to find the cut points.

Comskip has traditionally been Windows-only, but has just been ported to Linux and is actively being developed - see other posts on this forum: http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=150084

Thanks for this tip, very handy tool.
Going to check how i can implement this in my htpc setup.

[LastCoder]

Question 1: How CPU-intensive is it to run the backend TV server? I think I read somewhere that it's not at all CPU-intensive because Digital OTA signal is all MPEG2, but just making sure.

Watching TV takes a little bit of gpu/cpu power (decoding, some neat filters, deinterlace and so on) but receiving and forwarding the mp4/mp2 stream by the server like tvheadend doesn't take to much resources .. less than 2 % with a 2x2,4 GHz Celeron ..

Question 2: If I record a TV show, how is that accessed through XBMC? Is it going to be under Live TV->Recorded (or something similar), or will it be under Videos->TV shows? Is this something I can control through various settings?

there is more than one way ;-) .. first you find it under livetv->recordings. But you can add the recording path as media/video section (I did it); in that case you can use the functionality of xbmc's video section, like different views, scrappers and so on .. btw. it's useful to install something like Handbrake-CLI to convert recordings to for example h.264 (with preset "Normal" in Handbrake) in background on the tv server (I do that that way, saves a lot of space up to 1/10 !) and save them to other sections / pathes if you want to keep it, otherwise delete.

Question 3: I was leaning towards using TVHeaded or MythTV as my backend. What kind of commercial-clipping functionalities do these have? I think I saw on Myth's wiki that Myth has some kind of commercial-clipping algorithms. Are they any good?

Don't care since it's a little bit of voodoo that sometimes works and sometimes not .. you can fast forward up to 32x so there is no real need for that; or you use something like avidemux and cut it out by yourself (be careful, h.264 cutting doesn't work flawlessly, there is unfortunately a audio sync problem) ..

Greetz to SF Bay Area, especially to Machine Head from Berlin ;-)

LastCoder