I would suggest that this is all about scale. As an example: If you store a lot of media, mysql and updatemedia both run on the core/hybrid, depending on the size of your media collection your cpu usage could be pretty hefty at times.
My guess is that this CPU usage has to do with this updatemedia making thumbnails and such from the media files you have.
Of course with a big collection there's going to be a lot of management which could use a lot of (my)sql time, but using two 3+ GHz processors is ridiculous for a home automation server.
My ideal solution would be:
- Have a 24/365.25 headless server which ideally consumes about 10 Watt.
This could be a small form factor computer with an energy efficient processor like MIPS, ARM or Intel Atom depending on scale and functions like security camera processing or audio decoding (including pbx).
It could have internal storage or access to remote storage like a NAS. - Have something like the current Hybrid Core running as primary media device.
I would have this as the most competent hd playback device, it has to have a good video card and serious processing capacities if it plays the 50+ GiB blue ray movies and it will probably reside near the living room.
I wouldn't mind having to turn this device on to be able to use other media directors, to stream live television or maybe transcode movies to other media directors with limited hardware.
I'm not sure whether this device needs to have a hard disk, maybe it could also be pxe'd. It surely can be started with Wake on LAN from the server. - Media directors.
Not sure whether they actually need access to the Hybrid/media core or can run directly on the Standalone core. - Orbiters.
Would be connecting directly to the core server (internal or external over VPN)
The big question is what the difference between the hybrid/media core and the media directors will be.
The easiest way would be to have one updatemedia on that hybrid and one dcerouter on the core.
But what if the media database isn't authoritative? It's no longer a problem that it's redundant, because the inconsistencies can be automatically managed by an updater that searches for differences between filesystem mtime and database timestamp. The media directors could perform this on an on-access basis and should be able to simply play un'registered' files without indexing causing extra latency for the user.
The whole idea is to distribute processing power to machines that aren't authoritative and can be unreliable in availability.
Also to distribute resources like live television or even storage to devices that are only powered on-demand is a great advantage in reducing energy consumption and total cost.
This would mean that except for the core maintaining a best-effort resource inventory the whole media part is modularized and becomes optional. The Core would then become more media unaware and retains to what it does best, streaming.
PS. I'm sorry to have to say I still haven't seen a way to install lmce so I'm still guessing and playing on emotions, please correct me if I'm wrong about anything.
I can tell you the graphical installation of the dvd halt my Panasonic CF-51 (Centrino 1.7 / 2GiB / ati9600) which runs the normal ubuntu flawlessly.
