Accepted Solutions
Although I have not tested every possible product from all manufacturers, I would guess that the type of hypervisor you use would not matter. Remember, you're asking your machine to run two OS' so anything the host OS does will affect your capture quality. A bare-metal hypervisor would have less overhead than a hosted one so hypothetically, you'd have more sytem resources to give to the virtual machine that's doing the capture. However, you still couldn't normally use a PCI capture card, unless your capture card were VMDirectPath compatible or similar. I don't know of any so basically, the answer is still no to the PCI cards. Thus back to USB capture devices.
As I mentioned earlier, capture of video streams requires a LOT of processing power. Since you can't use a PCI card, which often has some hardware acceleration of the encoding on-board, you're limited to USB devices and software encoding. USB also has some overhead so basically it's going to be very CPU intensive. Running other virtual machines, or any other background task (in the virtual machine or host OS) is almost a guarantee of failed captures and/or high amount of stuttering in the video.
The only way to know for certain how badly it's going to be is to actually try it on whatever system. Different OS' have different amounts of overhead, some devices have more efficient drivers, so you'll have to determine which combination of things you need to do to make your system work. This always varies between systems so you may be able to find something that works a little better than what I have. BUT it will likely require you do to a lot of trial-and-error work with your specific equipment. My testing indicates that for most things, it's not possible to get a acceptable fullscreen TV capture in a virtual machine. Reliable TV capture is possible with lower resolutions, and with the right combination of host OS, capture device, etc. But that is my testing as of 2010 and if you go with what I say, then you shouldn't do this at all. 
However it is now 2011, so you may be able to find new drivers, faster CPU, faster RAM, faster AV software, etc. that would make it possible for TV capture in a virtual machine. This is "bleeding edge" stuff so you have to try it yourself to see what can, and cannot, be done. 
...If not, what's the advantage of a Hypervisor compare to a bare metal multiboot system?...
BTW, not to be snarky and I don't think you're directing anything negative at me, but I've never told anyone that there is an advantage to doing TV/video capture in a virtual machine. A virtual machine has advantages in and of itself, but the limitations of virtual machines puts them at a serious disadvantage when it comes to TV/video capture. Thus a "bare metal multiboot system" has a significant advantage over virtual machines with regard to TV/video capture. (i.e.: Ability to use PCI(e) cards, ability to utilize all CPU power to capture rather than some CPU resources to host OS or hypervisor.)
Thanks and no offence, I'm just trying to find ways to avoid rebooting regularly btw Win7 and WinXP to use my TV Tuner. And also get more understanding of VMWare capabilities in that area along the way.
What about HD Audio support by VMWare Workstation? My motherboard has an integrated Realtek chip that outputs HD Audio via S/PDIF Coaxial Out port. The PC's PCI-E GPU card also has an integrated Realtek chipset that supports HD Audio via HDMI Out. Assuming I use a USB TV Tuner, can I listen to HD Audio while running it via a VMWare VM, if a Home Theater system is connected to the PC via HDMI or S/PDIF Coax? What would be sound quality & spec in this scenario?
I'm trying not to offend so don't take this the wrong way. As I said at the very beginning:
The virtual machine cannot directly access most physical hardware....
This also includes the sound card. The virtual machine is presented with a Ensoniq ES1371 sound chip, basically a Soundblaster 128 PCI sound card. It will NOT have access to any advanced HD features of your sound card. Workstation will send it's sound output to, in essence, the line in of your sound card. But it will still be basic 2 channel sound. The "quality" of the sound will more depend on the quality of the source stream (a.k.a.: the TV tuner) but it will still be two channel non-HD.
If you want to see what will, happen, it should be a simple matter of finding or making some high quality recording, either video or audio-only. Make it on your existing physical equipment. Then play it back in a virtual machine.
Again, not trying to offend, but your history shows you've been using VMware virtual machines for a few months now, so you should be familiar with the "basic" virtual hardware concepts. And like I said, this is "bleeding edge" stuff, even the use of physical partitions and converting disk images like you've discussed in your other posts, that is advanced, "power user" stuff, not "beginner" stuff. If you are going to be a "advanced power user", you have to do a lot of experimenting on your own. IOW, you have be the one who's "been there, done that" and tell us whether it's possible or not.
...As most users, I don't use VMWare WS daily. Besides, easy & breezy QEMU provides quite compelling choice for many testing tasks.
One might argue that you are not a typical user either as "most users" don't use QEMU, let alone know what QEMU is.
...using VMware vSphere Hypervisor ESXi4 PCI passthrough feature with certain HW configs to work directly with PCI Cards. That seems to fit my TV Tuner bill.
The PCI card needs to be compatible with VMDirectPath. It may be possible, but ESX(i) was intended for hosting server OS' in the server room, rather than "desktop" type environments. So things like video and audio were not a priority and is actually rather primitive compared to the hosted products like Workstation, Player and Fusion. PCI passthrough and VMDirectPath has potential, but realize that it's no guarantee. And like I said, video capture is very sensitive to disruptions so running any other virtual machine simultaneously with the virtual machine doing the capture will significantly increase your possibility of errors in the capture. The real-world reliability will be different between a "tolerant" device like a modem compared to a "sensitive" device like a TV tuner card.
...Is it possible to install ESXi4 on a PC into Win7 64-bit (not server) and try this feature in action?
"Whitebox" ESX installations are possible. ESX(i) is very picky about it's SCSI/SATA controller and NIC. You will want to check the compatibility list and vm-help. Since you mentioned that your sound card is a Realtek chip, it's likely that your NIC is Realtek, which usually won't work with ESX. So it's going to require more hardware just to try ESX(i).
Or wise versa: install ESXi on a bare metal, add Win7 as host, and VMWare WS as guest?
ESX(i) as a guest in a Workstation virtual machine is possible and supported. Workstation on a ESX(i) virtual machine while it would be possible to install, I don't think is supported. But either way, performance of a virtual-machine-within-a-virtual-machine would be worse than just a "single" virtual machine. Think about it: if you consider that virtualization is like translating a foreign language, then a virtual-machine-within-a-virtual-machine is like translating English to French to Swahili compared to a "single" translation from English to Swahili.
? Will it affect Win7 performance in a serious way, if installed on top of ESXi (or in parallel to it if that's possible)?
Note that ESX(i) doesn't have a way to access the guest virtual machine's console. You must use another machine to either run the vSphere client in Windows, or remote to the guest OS. (e.g.: RDP or VNC.) So ESX(i) would actually be worse for you.
Bottom line is that you can't do what you want with what you have. The current state of the technology does not allow for this. And likely the hardware you have wouldn't work with the technologies that might allow for it. (i.e.: your PCI TV tuner probably won't work with VMDirectPath.) But no way to know unless you try. However, you need to build another machine to run ESX(i) directly on, rather than use your existing system. But if you were going to build another system, then the need for virtualization really goes away. IOW, the point of creating the virtual machine was to not have to reboot to use the TV tuner. But if the TV tuner is installed on another separate physical computer, then you won't be rebooting anyway.
So USB tuner for your virtual machine has a possibility. But your existing PCI tuners: no. Try it with VMDirectPath. (We'd all like to know if it works or not. ) But you will be using / building a second system to do that.
As you infer that you're testing a lot and doing a lot of "bleeding edge" stuff, I'm assuming you realize that you should be doing a lot of trial-and-error work rather than just take my word for it. Many of us got our knowledge in virtualization by "trying and failing", then trying again. Just look at someone like Continuum (the member replying in your other thread.) I believe much of his knowledge came from whenever VMware tells him "it can't be done", then he goes and hacks away until he figures out something. His entire website is filled with "it can't be done" information. As I alluded to previously, my knowledge is based on virtualization in the past. In the future, who knows, but someone (a.k.a.: you) has to be first to try-and-fail-and-try-again before we know.
Thansk a lot for your detail reply. It doesn't get easier though, while its understandable that gathering collective experience via forums is a more productive way to move forward, when of course complemented by trial and error.
You mentioned that another PC must be used to access ESXi VM Console. Is it possible instead to access one ESXi VM from another VM running both on the same PC? Since ESXi is supplied with some VMs pre-configured, one of these may possibly be used to access and further configure another? Or its not even possible to launch an ESXi VM from the same PC to begin with?
I'm still thinking, how to install ESXi and Win7 64-bit on the same PC to be able to switch btw them at will? Probably the wrong Hypervisor for the job...
Thanks a lot for such encouraging news! :smileycry:
I just wanted to listen to a nice background music station while working on that PC, not even watch or record a video with this TV Tuner (and no, its not available otherwise), and even that seems to be impossible with such a smart Hypervisor despite abandant HW resources.
BUT... As Continuum mentioned, it is possible to install ESXi and Win7 64-bit in parallel to the same PC using some tricks, but one may only boot one of those at a time. For the sake of learning, how exactly I can do that?
sambul12 wrote:
Thanks a lot for such encouraging news! :smileycry:
I just wanted to listen to a nice background music station while working on that PC, not even watch or record a video with this TV Tuner (and no, its not available otherwise), and even that seems to be impossible with such a smart Hypervisor despite abandant HW resources.
You do not understand virtualization if you think that it is just the amount of resources that is needed. The type of hardware resources is critical as well. If you think of the hypervisor as an OS (which for ESX(i), it is,) then as you can't run some hardware because they aren't compatible with Linux, the same is true for ESX as some hardware is not compatible (or MacOS, or Win95, etc.) And just as Windows 7 has certain minumum specifications, (i.e.: you can't install with only 128MB of RAM, you can't install without having a video card, etc.) so ESX(i) has some minimum requirements such as the need for a separate machine to manage the ESX(i) host.
BUT... As Continuum mentioned, it is possible to install ESXi and Win7 64-bit in parallel to the same PC using some tricks, but one may only boot one of those at a time. For the sake of learning, how exactly I can do that?
If the point is to learn ESX(i), then it would be better for you to install ESXi as a virtual machine. Install VMware Player or Workstation (as a trial) then create a virtual machine to install ESXi. Then the vSphere client can be installed to your host, or to Player/Workstation virtual machine.
If you were still going to attempt playing with the tuners inside of ESX(i), then you still would need a separate machine anyway since ESXi-as-a-virtual-machine would not have access to the tuners. I say this because dual-booting ESX(i) is not for the faint of heart. ESXi's installer assumes it has full use of the hard drive and will wipe your drive if you choose the defaults. I don't normally recommend this since you will need another machine to manage ESX, so why not just build another machine for ESX instead, rather than dual boot? If you insist on dual-booting, then I suggest you install ESXi4 to a USB flash drive. That way you do not have to alter you existing hard drive. In fact, I recommend you temporarily disconnect your existing hard drives to prevent user error when creating datastores. Get an additional, blank hard drive just for your ESX datastore rather than trying to reparition your existing hard drives. Unless you really know what you're doing, a separate hard drive and disconnecting your existing drives is much, much, much, much, much safer.
If you insist on reparitioning your existing drive and/or not installing to USB flash drive, you'll want to contact Continuum for advice, as that is extremely dangerous stuff and one small slip will completely ruin your day.
sambul12 wrote:
Trying to get my question answered somehow instead of getting unrelated advice, can I install ESXi onto a partition or unpartitioned space on a hard drive with several existing partitions? If its going to change MBR of the drive, it can be fixed later by installing Grub4DOS MBR or fixing Win7 MBR. Once its done, can I add ESXi section to Grub4DOS menu.lst or BCD menu (boot.ini)? How Grub4DOS menu.lst ESXi section should look like - an example? Or, can I boot ESXi from its ISO disk with Grub4DOS and work with it (not just install)?
Pardon my bluntness again: bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. Not to say it can't be done, but if you've never installed ESX(i) before, it is all to easy to wipe out your data.
ESXi does not boot from the CD like a LiveCD. The CD is used to install to either hard drives or to a USB flash drive. The installer will affect your hard drive if you aren't careful. Best thing for you is to install to a USB flash drive. DO NOT INSTALL TO YOUR EXISTING HARD DRIVES AT THIS TIME. Use a separate blank hard drive, if you have one. But for your first install of ESXi, you just need the USB flash drive to see what it's all about. And since this is obviously your first install of ESXi, trying to not damage your existing partitions is going to be practically impossible, (unless you're the kind of person that never makes mistakes...ever...never ever...never never ever. )
Practice installing ESXi a few times with "disposable" hard drives first. We all learn from our mistakes, and trust me, what you're going to try to do, you will make some mistakes. (Or don't trust me, and be sure you've imaged your system well. But IMHO, that's why you use separate "disposable" hard drives so that you do get to learn from your mistakes and not kill yourself because of your mistakes. ) You can ask all the "how can I" questions you want, but as we all know, "book learning" doesn't replace real world experience. And I believe it's time for you to get some of your own real world experience mistakes to learn from. I'm not trying to discourage you from installing ESXi, just that it's time to try to fly on your own rather than just watching all the other birds flying around.
Thanks for your care. Your answers at least provide some extra info (apart from good wishes), while some other members merely seems to try increasing their post count, delivering NO useful info at all in solid number (if not majority) of their posts, or delivering very small portions so one can't replicate them without asking more and more about the same. Does VMWare Inc. pay the most frequent posters hefty fees, or its just for referral purposes some adapted posting empty "two words about nothing" staff?
Most of the people on the forums are not VMware employees and do not get paid by VMware. Some have gotten "appreciation gifts", but no grand prizes or anything like that. We're pretty much all here for love and not money.