Total Geek Thing for VM & HTPC Lovers

[TheOsburnFamil]

Okay, so this may not ever really prove to be a practical solution but I figured, "what the hell-- let's see if it will actually work."

In my professional life I'm a VMware Architect for a very large national healthcare organization. I've got lots of know-how with hardware virtualization, including VDI technology.

This past week I was rebuilding my home lab (DL380g6 with some local disk in a RAID10) for some vSphere 5.5 stuff & I started really wondering about the VMware PCIPassthru option, in-relation to one of my Ceton InfiniTV PCI tuners. So, I slapped the card in, attached the USB cable for the Motorola Tuning Adapter to the host, installed ESXi 5.5, enabled PCI Passthru for the tuner and the USB, created a Win7 VM and attached the devices. HDCP check failed but after the DCTOverride, Windows 7 & MediaCenter recognized all the hardware correctly and she's able to record on all four tuners.

Okay, that was cool-- but I wasn't ever in any real doubt on that part. So, I decided to enable network tuning and send one of the tuners to my laptop-- why not, right? Okay, that was done and now my Win8 laptop with MediaCenter now has a functioning tuner off that VM.

Cool too-- but then I remembered seeing a blog about ServerWMC & XBMC...

So in my Win7 VM, I installed ServerWMC, made sure it could see the three remaining tuners that MCE was configured for and then installed XBMC and the ServerWMC LiveTV Plugin. Sure enough, now I was getting LIVE TV playing back via XBMC, within the VM itself!

Okay, that was REALLY cool—but then the VDI side of my VMware knowledge kicked in and started wondering about VMware View's capabilities… Enter the VMware View Direct-Connection Agent!

So, I installed the VMware View 5.3 Agent, the companion Direct-Connection Agent, Movie Decoder, Teradici Audio Driver (for PCoIP) and… from my laptop the VMware View client.

I was able to direct-connect to the VM as though it were a VDI, from my laptop (for those of you who don't know, this is with the PCoIP protocol which is RDP on steroids)… and… watching live-tv on XMBC again!

So now I was REALLY getting impressed and decided ONE MORE test… My cell phone!

Motorola Droid RAZOR MAXX HD -- fired up my VMware View client for Android and did the same thing as my laptop! Watching LiveTV on my Droid!

Okay—obviously this was all WAY overkill and not too practical. But for those geeks who ever thought about it but didn't have the time or infrastructure to test, I'm here to tell ya it works! 

In Summary:
HP DL380 G6 >
Ceton InfiniTV PCI Tuner & Mot.USB TA >
VMware ESXi 5.5 and local RAID-10 disk >
Win7 VM >
PCI & USB Passthru devices attached to Win7 VM from host >
DCT Override for HDCP >
Ceton Software Installed in Win7VM >
Network Bridging and one tuner split for "other use" >
7MC Configured for 3 CableCARD Tuners >
ServerWMC Plugin Installed >
XBMC Installed w/ ServerWMC PVR Plugin Configured >
VMware VM Tools >
VMware View Agent >
VMware View Direct-Connect Agent >
Laptop and/or Cell Phone with VMware View Client >
Connection to VDI and Live-TV via XBMC Running on Win7 VM

Happy Days.

[RyC]

Very cool! There's no GPU passthrough to the ESXi host, right? Does VMware View on the clients handle that so you can watch live TV? I'm certified for DCV, but I'm not familiar with any of their End User/Desktop stuff

[TheOsburnFamil]

Doing software based GPU at the moment. I have an ATI Radeon card that will fit in the DL380 I thought about throwing in there too just to see what it looks like.
But as for the View client & video/liveTV playback-- as long as it's not HDCP protected content, it works just fine with the software overlay.

[TheOsburnFamil]

RE the question about VMware View being the spark that allows live-tv.

Not really-- that has more to do with watching non-encrypted channels via XBMC's ServerWMC plugin that levarges the WMC tuner configuration.

The reason I wanted to play around with VMware View was because of the PCoIP protocol. It's a highly compressed protocol and WAYYY better than RDP or ICA. The idea for even trying it really came to me while I was at the airport recently wanting to watch livetv on my phone but not wanting it to stream and suck up my dataplan. I figured having it come thru a PCoIP session would be far better than some direct client connection like RemotePotato.

http://www.teradici.com/pcoip-technology

[RyC]

Yeah PCoIP is definitely better. Now that I think about it, I was able to play video in WMP, but WMC wouldn't and XBMC wouldn't even start. What are the graphics settings for the VM?

[livy203]

Sorry for bringing this topic back to life but I am interested in setting up the same system you describe. You mention that HDCP does not work. Is that only when trying to view through the VM? I use the Ceton Echo devices at all the tv's so I never watch on the actual WMC pc.
I have a DL380p G8
Thanks so much!

[sdca11b]

Okay, so this may not ever really prove to be a practical solution but I figured, "what the hell-- let's see if it will actually work."

In my professional life I'm a VMware Architect for a very large national healthcare organization. I've got lots of know-how with hardware virtualization, including VDI technology.

This past week I was rebuilding my home lab (DL380g6 with some local disk in a RAID10) for some vSphere 5.5 stuff & I started really wondering about the VMware PCIPassthru option, in-relation to one of my Ceton InfiniTV PCI tuners. So, I slapped the card in, attached the USB cable for the Motorola Tuning Adapter to the host, installed ESXi 5.5, enabled PCI Passthru for the tuner and the USB, created a Win7 VM and attached the devices. HDCP check failed but after the DCTOverride, Windows 7 & MediaCenter recognized all the hardware correctly and she's able to record on all four tuners.

Okay, that was cool-- but I wasn't ever in any real doubt on that part. So, I decided to enable network tuning and send one of the tuners to my laptop-- why not, right? Okay, that was done and now my Win8 laptop with MediaCenter now has a functioning tuner off that VM.

Cool too-- but then I remembered seeing a blog about ServerWMC & XBMC...

So in my Win7 VM, I installed ServerWMC, made sure it could see the three remaining tuners that MCE was configured for and then installed XBMC and the ServerWMC LiveTV Plugin. Sure enough, now I was getting LIVE TV playing back via XBMC, within the VM itself!

Okay, that was REALLY cool—but then the VDI side of my VMware knowledge kicked in and started wondering about VMware View's capabilities… Enter the VMware View Direct-Connection Agent!

So, I installed the VMware View 5.3 Agent, the companion Direct-Connection Agent, Movie Decoder, Teradici Audio Driver (for PCoIP) and… from my laptop the VMware View client.

I was able to direct-connect to the VM as though it were a VDI, from my laptop (for those of you who don't know, this is with the PCoIP protocol which is RDP on steroids)… and… watching live-tv on XMBC again!

So now I was REALLY getting impressed and decided ONE MORE test… My cell phone!

Motorola Droid RAZOR MAXX HD -- fired up my VMware View client for Android and did the same thing as my laptop! Watching LiveTV on my Droid!

Okay—obviously this was all WAY overkill and not too practical. But for those geeks who ever thought about it but didn't have the time or infrastructure to test, I'm here to tell ya it works! 

In Summary:
HP DL380 G6 >
Ceton InfiniTV PCI Tuner & Mot.USB TA >
VMware ESXi 5.5 and local RAID-10 disk >
Win7 VM >
PCI & USB Passthru devices attached to Win7 VM from host >
DCT Override for HDCP >
Ceton Software Installed in Win7VM >
Network Bridging and one tuner split for "other use" >
7MC Configured for 3 CableCARD Tuners >
ServerWMC Plugin Installed >
XBMC Installed w/ ServerWMC PVR Plugin Configured >
VMware VM Tools >
VMware View Agent >
VMware View Direct-Connect Agent >
Laptop and/or Cell Phone with VMware View Client >
Connection to VDI and Live-TV via XBMC Running on Win7 VM

Happy Days.

This is really awesome!!! There been many of us who have successfully failed at your achievement. For the past 3-4 years I had been very convinced that VM HTPCs were the way of the future. Well played sir, well played.