Client-Server
#This is a basic guide and it supposes you have advanced knowledges. All are
common net configurations and the programs are free and
included in all linux distributions.
timeshift.sh too works as a client-server for local networks,
that is video on demand like some IPTV providers offer for one week or so of the
broadcast channels's past programs although this service for paid TV
subscribers lacks some promised features like it only stores a few
channels and only local productions's programs cause legal questions.
With timeshift.sh your home server distributes videos of television
channels at your choice, recorded continuously, the time margin is
until you want, with linux machines, naturally you need ultra durable and low
power consumption components, and a UPS,
there are many cheap computers that consume less than a lamp which may
be more than enough.
You can configure your sever for unattended operation, after a reboot of the system timeshift.sh will continue to work with minimum data lost. For console only servers, If TV-card initialization is needed optionally it launches ttv instead of xawtv.
To configure timeshift.sh in your LAN you can try SAMBA/CIFS or any
other network
file access like NFS or iSCSI (iSCSI
needs a special solution for concurrent access), you have to configure timeshift.sh for
record the video buffers in a server's share directory and then clients
access these videos as they were in their hard disk... and then too
others timeshift.sh if you install more capture
cards or if you have one capture card with multiple analog capture
devices, in this case be careful about issues like antenna signal loss,
poor framerate with cheap
multidevice cards, you might need additional
sound capture lines, and the max power of your processor. timeshift.sh
has no digital TV support, If you receibe digital channels or your
video card has no tuner then you need stable external decoders
connected through SCART (it does not support high definition), although
this configuration requires more
space and consumes a little more, image quality is good and has some
advantages like easy channel change or programmable via decoder and, it
may be, is less copyright restrictive.
SAMBA/CIFS configuration should be: server with timeshift.sh+SAMBA
access to a local dir without mount.cifs it and client mounts.cifs this share dir
with -o nounix,directio to fix symbolic links and no caching (file refresh
issues if caching is active but it works well too for at least one
buffer delay; nounix if timeshift buffers's full path doesn't match on
both clients and server). With the suggested options you get the exactly same
functionality and speed as timeshift.sh in standalone mode, server recording video
while one client watching it works fine and client can watch the TV
channel near live without file locking issues.
Don't worry about security, server side is simple, at least as secure as your linux server, without X-Windows for extra performance and stability, really the most important is net stuff up-to-date and iptables allows only ro clients inside the local network. SAMBA/CIFS is well known, recommended and tested option.
