TV server on VMware ESXi 4.1 (4 Viewers)

[Keyser]

I have a TV-Server running as a ESXi 5.1 Virtual Machine but it took a lot of grief getting there. I have tried several USB tuners and at first used Vmware USB Passthrough which just doesn't perform in Mediaportal (It works partially with DVBViewer Recording Service) and later on VMDirectpath to pass a USB controller to a VM. The later can be brought to work, but I can't recommend it as it reqires a lot a hardware validation (VT-D, IOMMU, qualified USB controllers and so forth).
In the end the only really good solution is to use the HDhomerun network Tuner. That works absolutely flawlessly and requires no special solutions. Only problem is for all those people out there that does not get their channels unencrypted :-(

 

[clarkey2r]

Can anyone recommend a Low Power AMD setup that can used for IOMMU? A Google search doesn't yield much apart from other asking the same question.
Can anyone else give a specific example of CPU/board/Tuner that works?

There has to be a few others that are looking into this?

 

[4Fred]

I have successfully had TV server running on VMware ESX(i), Hyper-V and Virtualbox using hdhomerun, excellent solution to have network based tuner.

 

[clarkey2r]

It seems the HDHomrun doesn't support DVB-S2

 

[VirtualMP]

This is the best thread I have found on using VT-d or IOMMU (http://communities.vmware.com/thread/297072?start=555&tstart=0). Mostly based around passing through a GPU but the associated google doc (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Aqp_xYBwP_Y7dE5EclhtaDdIV09lNWxfODd1alRUTlE#gid=0) with equipment tested is usefull. As for tunners I have tried and had working a Pinnacle PCIe 3010i, a Hauppauge NOVA-T 500 and soem generic OEM PEAK twin tuner working no problems. I am about to start testing my DVB-T2 quad tuner with ESXi so I will report back.

I have now been running TV server as a VM under ESXI for 18 months with no issues, the MP client is on another VM on the same PC using VT-d for the GPU to give a local monitor.

 

[4Fred]

It seems the HDHomrun doesn't support DVB-S2

This one does:www.elgato.com/elgato/int/mainmenu/products/tuner/netstreamsat/product1.en.html
Not sure if it works in MePo TV Server though ?

 

[clarkey2r]

This is the best thread I have found on using VT-d or IOMMU (http://communities.vmware.com/thread/297072?start=555&tstart=0). Mostly based around passing through a GPU but the associated google doc (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Aqp_xYBwP_Y7dE5EclhtaDdIV09lNWxfODd1alRUTlE#gid=0) with equipment tested is usefull. As for tunners I have tried and had working a Pinnacle PCIe 3010i, a Hauppauge NOVA-T 500 and soem generic OEM PEAK twin tuner working no problems. I am about to start testing my DVB-T2 quad tuner with ESXi so I will report back.

I have now been running TV server as a VM under ESXI for 18 months with no issues, the MP client is on another VM on the same PC using VT-d for the GPU to give a local monitor.

What motherboard/CPU/ram are you running??

Is it just the 2 vm's or are there others?

 

[VirtualMP]

This is the best thread I have found on using VT-d or IOMMU (http://communities.vmware.com/thread/297072?start=555&tstart=0). Mostly based around passing through a GPU but the associated google doc (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Aqp_xYBwP_Y7dE5EclhtaDdIV09lNWxfODd1alRUTlE#gid=0) with equipment tested is usefull. As for tunners I have tried and had working a Pinnacle PCIe 3010i, a Hauppauge NOVA-T 500 and soem generic OEM PEAK twin tuner working no problems. I am about to start testing my DVB-T2 quad tuner with ESXi so I will report back.

I have now been running TV server as a VM under ESXI for 18 months with no issues, the MP client is on another VM on the same PC using VT-d for the GPU to give a local monitor.

What motherboard/CPU/ram are you running??

Is it just the 2 vm's or are there others?

I have an i7 870 on a Q57 Chipset MATX board, 12gb of budget DDR3. Currently running;

TV Server (XP), passed through Tunner card and RDM storage drive. Upto 4 clients at any 1 time.
Client (Windows 7 Unltimate x64 with 4gb and 4 cores, plays games no problems) Passed through HD5770 and USB, 1.5tb media drive on USB.
2 XP machines for myself and my wife to use as cloud desktops
another XP machine doing some building management stuff with eventghost, passed through USB (I did try to put it on the same VM as the TV Server but it caused problems).
A linux server as our home email server (the wife deals with this one).
A linux workstation install which to be honest only ever gets used to do Linux things, its powered up all the time but doing nothing but updating itself
Linux OpenVPNAS server x 2 (1 for the outside world and another bridging between my WiFi and home network)
Linux Trixbox PABX with passed through Telephony card doing my home phones and voicemail.

Also a number of down powered VM's including my windows 8 evaluation machine and some work ones. The wife is the linux person I only get involved when ESXi needs tweaking or non supported things (like RDM) need to be setup. This is the reason I am using pre built Linux machines for trixbox and openvpn, if I was a linux person it would all be on the same machine as the email server but I'm not a linux person.

All inside an Antec Fusion with a corsair H100 keeping the 4 cores with HT and turbo boost cool in such a small case. I use USB drives and RDM where possible so if (when) it all falls over I can get to the files without having to look 'inside' the VMWare file structure.

And as for tuners I can confirm that the TBS 6284 Quad DVB-T2 tuner I mentioned in my last post also works perfectly.

 

[Benoire]

Sorry to drag this out of the depths, but are you guys still using ESXi 5.5? I've had my configured for a while and I thought it was all ok except that after about two hours the TVServer/Client connection seems to fall apart and the client freezes and therefore the TVServer shuts the stream down... I've used pcipassthu.msienabled = False in the config settings as that seemed to fix the short time I had before the problem occurred.

Its a GA-970A-UD3 with 2 x tbs 6981s.

Cheers,

Chris

 

[Dirk23]

I have a ESXi 5.1U1 Running on an Asus P7H55-M/USB3 Mainboard with 12GB RAM with a Intel i5 3,2 GHz Processor.
I installed a Windows 8.1 as VM (configured with 2 CPUs, 2GB RAM and 200GB HDD) and installed a MePo TVServer v1.6
I'm passing a Hauppauge WinTV Nova HD USB2 to the VM wich installed successfully and is recognized by TVserver.
Watch SD Live TV works great, but when i switch to HD i get a bunch of discontinued Packets and a stuttering LiveTV with a Lot of Pixelerrors.
Why does HD lead to those discontinued packages?