[ale] Using MythTV in a networked DVR farm setting

[Daniel Howard]

Fellow Linux enthusiasts,

We're considering a centralized vs. non-centralized digital video 
recorder (DVR) architecture based on OSS (MythTV) in Brandon Elementary 
and I was wondering if any ALEs have experience or thoughts about the 
following in MythTV:

1. How well the program guide and network interface work.  Can teachers 
easily program a recording from school or home PC via web interface?  Do 
we need a fixed IP address for each DVR, or does MythTV have a single 
web site you can log into and program your local DVR (like Snapstream, e.g.)
2. If you had a bank of MythTV Linux DVRs in a centralized location, how 
could you set it up so that teachers could set up a recording and the 
interface would to select the next available DVR in the bank to make the 
recording?
3. How does this relate to the upcoming ALE meeting on using Tivo boxes 
themselves?
4. Can you set MythTV to automatically recompress the digital video for 
streaming at a lower bit rate so older clients can stream it from the 
LTSP servers?

Has anyone tried any of this?  Any advice?  Alternative is to put a 
Linux box in each classroom dedicated to DVR and connected to the 
classroom cable feed and then teachers record/store programs with their 
own box, but that's 42 boxes instead of a handful, and one benefit of 
centralized DVR is that we can backup/maintain the DVR boxes more easily.

Regards,
Daniel