This whole thing got my interest so I started looking a bit further into it as if they worked they would be great (cheap) Media Directors.
They obviously have the ability to network boot as that is how they work. This makes them appear as good candidates for MDs in Pluto land. They run linux so it should not be too hard to get pluto software running on them.
The hards bits that I see are as follows;
Pluto Media Directors take a basic linux (debian) kernel off the core and then utilise the pluto config database and scripts to source/install the software that each MD requires. This depends on what options/devices are selected in the admin environment. From what I can tell the basic kernel that the core provides is/must be the same version that the core runs and is built for intel machines. From what I have learnt the MediaMVP is not intel based and would not be able to use this kernel.
The dongle.bin file is essentially a similar type kernel (don't know what distribution it is based on - if any) that will run on the MediaMVP. Problem is that it knows nothing about Pluto and doesn't know how to source the software it requires to be a Pluto Media Director.
Assuming that a basic kernel file can be built that I guess is a combination of the two then it should (in theory) be able to get to the boot stage. The next problem is getting a base set of software compiled for that environment and available for the initial config. In theory, I can't see why this is not possible.
This same theory would apply to any MD contender that has a linux kernel available.
My understanding of all this is pretty basic so I could have made some wrong assumptions but would really like to know what the Pluto developers opinions are and whether the software now would support this at all. Like I said previously, in the scripts that I have looked at there seemed to be code that checked that the kernel versions on the MD and the core were identical.
I am interested in getting one (or more) of these devices and having a play around with all this but would like to hear from others (especially Pluto people) if they think it is at all possible.
Another option may be to not have them as full blown Media Directors but just have them as slaves to a Media Director and write proxy devices for the media director to control the MediaMVP. I think this would be similar to how the network audio devices currently work - is that right?
Interested in some discussion anyhow.....
Regards
Darren
