4 Month BTV workout!

[noodleNT]

Well, after August I will put BTV to the biggest workout of it's life! My office is sending me to Paris for 4 months to help with two new office setups. The problem is I don't know a lick of French! So durring this time I will be heavely relying on the web admin for my US shows.

I have spent the day making sure every PC that stores recordings has a UPS and they all shutdown and restart automatically in case of a power outage. I have a VPN setup so I can access the machines just in case there is a problem or some cool upgrade. I was just wondering if there is anything else I should consider? Does BTV have any issues with Remote desktop? BTV will be keeping me sane when month 3 rolls around. SS Devs

[merrypig]

I would recommend a ups power supply or another module, that has internet control of the power. If your machine locks up, you'll be pissed as hell that you can't reboot the machine. Unless you have someone over in the us to do it for ya.

[noodleNT]

Good suggestion. Wasn't there an issue before with Remote Desktop and BTV?

[merrypig]

I prefer vnc myself. I like nice simple deterministic ports and minimal intrusion into the running system.

[Eric3a]

Well I've been away (in DC) for the last 6 months, and the web-admin is a life saver indeed.
If your machine is stable you should be OK. Make sure obviously you put your router on the remote controllable UPS. My remote control is my wife.... And she's had to reset it 3 times in the last 6 months despite having a monster commercial grade UPS.

I use dyndns.org for ip redirector, but a few times I lost redirection. I don't know why... Nothing major as my ip hasn't changed in a long long time, and theoratically the client on the machine should rebroadcast the ip via dyndns.

Because I am paranoiac I run PC anywhere server, VNC server and FTP server: Make sure PC Anywhere resets itself if the connection messes up. Same with VNC.

So far, so good. I've had to restart BTV a couple times from the web admin.

I compress everything to PMP quality, which is OK to view and bearable to download on a broadband connection. The news I compress at a low quality so i can get them fast.

Enjoy Paris. Fun place if you don't have to live there your whole life.
Eric

[k_kirk]

Side topic - Make sure to pack a VISA card. American Express is not accepted in most restaurants etc. Good luck with the assignemnt. Sounds like a great opportunity.

[noodleNT]

Didn't even think about that Kirk! Thanks!

BTW, Also upgraded my Cable Internet to upload to 768kbps! All it took was a phone call and an extra $10 a month.

I also found this cool little app to keep an eye on my apartment.
http://logisphere.seiz.ch/en/index_html

[bnflaherty]

Yes -- Remote desktop has issues -- I would advise to use something else as well...

Just to make sure...!

[Rich A]

I can echo bnflaherty's comment. If you are talking about the actually Windows remote desktop application, I too had a some problems. Going to a third party solution might be something better. Check it out fully before committing to it.

Good luck .. have fun.

[DonK]

VNC works really well.

[queonda]

how much is VNC? Do you have a linK?

[merrypig]

it's free.

www.realvnc.org is the flavour I prefer ( the original version).

But there are variants on it with various compression tweaks and ui's on them.

Only thing to bear in mind; keep the same version on the server as on the client. Sometimes the server can quit if you try talking to it with a newer version. At least with older releases of realvnc it would do this. Doesn't seem to with the latest releases, but why risk it

[bnflaherty]

try this -- www.logmein.com -- free as well -- works Very well...

[k_kirk]

Hi NoodleNT,

By now you must be nearing the end of your appointment in Paris. Hope it all went fine. Care to share with us a little on your remote BTV viewing success rate? How did it go?

Regards

[noodleNT]

HEHE... well, I went out for like 1 week and then went back because I got everything done and the new office was working smoothy. Curse my productivity!

Now I am London though with another office setup. I will be here for about 3 weeks. So far my BTV system runs great. I use my VPN and then launch Blink and watch all my transcoded shows from there. It works great! Last night I caught up on "Lost" and "Invation" while I was on the hotels wireless. It was "bloody" fantastic!