Dual Country/Timezone Setup???

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mattlach
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Posts: 125
Joined: Wed Jun 11, 2014 2:52 am
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Dual Country/Timezone Setup???

Post by mattlach »

Hey Everyone,

I have been bouncing an idea around in my head for some time. I'd appreciate hearing what you with advanced MythTV experience on here might think of it.

So, I've run a dedicated MythTV backend using Ethernet tuners in my rack for almost 10 years now. Front ends were originally the MythTV frontend, but years ago I migrated to using Kodi as a front end with the MythTV plugin.

It is a system that - apart from "copy once" encoded channels - has worked very well for me.

My better half is Brazilian. For the longest time we have been paying $19.99 per month to Verizon to get a single SD channel "Globo Internacional" from Brazil. I always found that a somewhat grotesque ripoff.

For years I have been thinking, what if I set up an OpenVPN server on my network, brought an ethernet tuner and a cheap pfsense box with me down to her mothers apartment in Sao Paulo, configured it to VPN in to my network, and placed the Tuner behind it.

Could I add that tuner, 5000 miles away, in a different time zone, as an alternate tuner to my mythtv backend and have all 100+ brazilian HD channels here? I mean, $20 bucks is a ridiculous price here for a single SD channel, but that's almost 100 reais there, and that goes a lot further.

In the past this was a moot point, as her mother did not have access to sufficient upstream bandwidth to make this a reality, but pover the last year things have changed, and she now has access to fiber with substantial upstream bandwidth, making this somehwat crazy idea a reality.

A few questions:

1.) Is this legal? I figured it would probably be a legal grey zone, but I am not sure.

2.) There would be more latency between the tuner and the backend than in a typical LAN ethernet tuner setup, Would this cause problems?

3.) Do the differing time zones present an issue?

4.) What about channel numbers? With different channel sources (one Verizon Fios here in the U.S., one, whatever TV provider her mom has in Brazil) does that become an issue?

5.) If the above are issues, does placing a slave backend with some limited storage in Brazil, and having it communicate with my server as a master backend resolve those issues?

6.) If the above is the way to go, can I have it somehow offline transfer recordings to the storage on the master backend, so I don't need to duplicate a sizeable NAS down there?

Appreciate any thoughts/suggestions on this topic!

--Matt
v33 backend in 22.04 LTS w. LXDE, in LXC on server w. 16C/32T Xeon E5-2650v2, 256GB RAM. 6C & 8GB assigned to container.
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kmdewaal
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Re: Dual Country/Timezone Setup???

Post by kmdewaal »

1) There are lots of people that use a VPN to watch their recordings from home so I personally do not see an issue. But I am not a legal expert.
2) I do not expect problems. But I have not tried it.
3) I do not expect problems. MythTV does everything internally in UTC and only for presentation the local times are used.
4) The channels can become mixed-up in the guide but that is all. You can edit the channel numbers manually to get them in the right order.
5, 6) I would go for the network tuners.

For network tuners, the HDHomeRun is the obvious choice.
It is also possible to build a Linux box with any kind of tuner and use minisatip (https://github.com/catalinii/minisatip) to connect to them via the Sat->IP network protocol. This protocol is supported in MythTV v32 and it might be a good reason to upgrade.

Another reason to upgrade is the mythtv-setup channel scanning; most of the improvements are in v31 and a few more in v32.

Please post your results here, I think lots of people will find that interesting!
mattlach
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Posts: 125
Joined: Wed Jun 11, 2014 2:52 am
United States of America

Re: Dual Country/Timezone Setup???

Post by mattlach »

kmdewaal wrote:
Tue Apr 19, 2022 4:46 pm
1) There are lots of people that use a VPN to watch their recordings from home so I personally do not see an issue. But I am not a legal expert.
2) I do not expect problems. But I have not tried it.
3) I do not expect problems. MythTV does everything internally in UTC and only for presentation the local times are used.
4) The channels can become mixed-up in the guide but that is all. You can edit the channel numbers manually to get them in the right order.
5, 6) I would go for the network tuners.

For network tuners, the HDHomeRun is the obvious choice.
It is also possible to build a Linux box with any kind of tuner and use minisatip (https://github.com/catalinii/minisatip) to connect to them via the Sat->IP network protocol. This protocol is supported in MythTV v32 and it might be a good reason to upgrade.

Another reason to upgrade is the mythtv-setup channel scanning; most of the improvements are in v31 and a few more in v32.

Please post your results here, I think lots of people will find that interesting!

Thank you for the input.

If I do indeed get around to doing this, I will definitely post my results back here, but please don't expect anything soon.

This will require me going to Brazil and setting things up at my mother-in-laws apartment. As much as I like Brazil, I don't get to fly there very often!

--Matt
v33 backend in 22.04 LTS w. LXDE, in LXC on server w. 16C/32T Xeon E5-2650v2, 256GB RAM. 6C & 8GB assigned to container.
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