[TheGremlin]

So, I've been a long time lurker here and have been running my own XBMC center at home for some time.

I've asked to replace our seriously aged/non functional cable TV setup with an IP TV type system that also can access our libraries digital media. On top of the that it also needs to be able to access a bulletin board of upcoming events (this is a school environment). They also need to be able to view Live TV.

Most of the time the clients will be showing some kind of looped video/bulletin, not sure on how I'll do this but it will probably be a prism app outside of XBMC running a web app unless someone has a better idea.

The real question is can XBMC support say 5-10 concurrent video streams (dvd quality or less). Network bandwidth is not an issue but I'm a bit worried about the ability to view live TV/play movie files even in a largish raid array. I will probally use MythTV as a backend to handle the Live TV

Is there a way to to limit writing to the database or the ability to delete files in XBMC beyond limiting write access to a share?

Still leaves a bunch of issues like scrapers, configuration, kiosks, etc but those I think I can solve without too much trouble (or causing you guys too much trouble ). This is just in the exploratory phase, just looking for show stoppers.

[topfs2]

Not sure where you intend to put xbmc. If you mean as server then it should be able to, although xbmc really isn't intended to be a server and there are probably better programs for this.

If you meant as client xbmc cannot play multiple streams at the same time, xbmc have never had the need for it which is why its not capable of doing so.

[TheGremlin]

Hmm... let me try this again I'll keep it simple, scout's honor.

How much bandwidth does it take to stream a single DVD quality video over the network?

Can XBMC connect to a MythTV server and view Live TV?

Is it possible to prevent XBMC clients from altering the database of a network share (watched, unwatched, etc) and prevent a client from deleting media files from library and disk?

[Temar]

How much bandwidth does it take to stream a single DVD quality video over the network?

Well, many DVD rips are 1.4 GB in size - so that would be around 1.5Mbps for a 2h movie. Modern codecs are probably much better.

Can XBMC connect to a MythTV server and view Live TV?

Not out of the box, but there are experimental builds.

Is it possible to prevent XBMC clients from altering the database of a network share (watched, unwatched, etc) and prevent a client from deleting media files from library and disk?

Each client can use its own database. You can share movie information with NFO files in the movie directories. This way the clients can extract the data from the .nfo file instead of having to scrape it from imdb.

To prevent clients from altering any files, just mount the filesystem read-only.

[topfs2]

Not out of the box, but there are experimental builds.

True with a modification, myth:// source can view livetv. its not very pretty though

[prae5]

Hmm... let me try this again I'll keep it simple, scout's honor.

How much bandwidth does it take to stream a single DVD quality video over the network?

It depends ;-) Bitrate, size, audio, format, etc... You can do SD content in between 2-4Mbs

Can XBMC connect to a MythTV server and view Live TV?

Yes but its not to pretty at the moment and not how i would recommend doing it for multiple clients. Unitcasting to multiple clients is bad, multicast everything out and you will be good to go.

Is it possible to prevent XBMC clients from altering the database of a network share (watched, unwatched, etc) and prevent a client from deleting media files from library and disk?

Yes, if your are using msql db - give your clients read only access to the db and they can't make any chances. Put them in kiosk mode and limit what views they can use and no changes can be made.