2 tuner cards for 4 channels at once?

[Supertastic Fool]

http://www.hauppauge.com/pages/products/data_pvr500mce.html

this is a dual tuner card so it does 2 channels already

If i have 2 of these, can i record 3 shows and watch 1 with media center?

 

[intogamer]

You are correct

 

[Supertastic Fool]

sweet! more pr0n to record!

 

[mercanucaribe]

You'd need a pretty powerful computer.

 

[Shawn]

Originally posted by: mercanucaribe
You'd need a pretty powerful computer.

Nope. It's a hardware decoder. Recording with my PVR-350 only uses about 1% of my cpu power.

 

[XMan]

Are you going to be using MCE 2K5?

Out of the box it only supports two cable tuners (like the PVR-500) and two HD tuners. You can get it to support more, but you have to edit the registry. I currently have two PVR-500's, two VBox 360's, and a PVR-950 for a total of 4 cable and 3 HD tuners. Yeah, we watch a lot of TV - saves money on movies. All this on a Venice 3200+ - so no, you don't need a very powerful computer.

See here.

The best procedure outlined there is this one:

N Tuners in MCE, Method 1 (only registry editing): Peters

Stop the Media Center Receiver Service (net stop ehrecvr)
Open Registry Editor (regedit.exe) and open this key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Service\Video\Tuners\{GUID}
where {GUID} is either {71985F48-1CA1-11D3-9CC8-00C04F7971E0} for Digital (ATSC or DVB-T) or {A799A800-A46D-11D0-A18C-00A02401DCD4} for Analog (NTSC or PAL).
Under the {GUID} key, there will be one key per tuner device.
Select the first tuner's key.
Select the UserSettings key.
Set these DWORD values as follows (case sensitive, all values in hexadecimal), creating them if they do not exist:
EnabledForMCE = 0xffffffff
UseSTB = 0
Create a REG_SZ value named UserDefName and set its value to "Tuner X", where X is the tuner number (1 for the first tuner, 2 for the 2nd, etc.)
If this is the FIRST tuner:
RecordOrder = 0
RecordPrefered = 0xffffffff
WatchOrder = number of tuners - 1, e.g. for 4 tuners set this to 3
WatchPrefered = 0

If this is the LAST tuner:
RecordOrder = number of tuners - 1, e.g. for 4 tuners set this to 3
RecordPrefered = 0
WatchOrder = 0
WatchPrefered = 0xffffffff

If this is a tuner somewhere in the middle:
RecordOrder = whatever you put for the last tuner + 1
RecordPrefered = 0
WatchOrder = whatever you put for the last tuner - 1
WatchPrefered = 0

The idea here is that you increment the RecordOrder by 1 for each tuner, and decrement the WatchOrder by 1. RecordOrder starts at 0 on the first tuner and goes up to #Tuners - 1; WatchOrder starts at #Tuners - 1 and ends at 0 on the last tuner. RecordPrefered is true (0xffffffff) on the first tuner, false (0x00000000) everywhere else; WatchPrefered is true on the last tuner, false everywhere else.
Repeat steps 7 - 10 for each tuner, adjusting the values of RecordOrder, RecordPrefered, WatchOrder and WatchPrefered as appropriate.
Close Registry Editor.
Start Media Center. Voila!
Yes, "Prefered" is misspelled. We caught that after we shipped, and it's a little late to change now...

 

[bobdelt]

yeah but having to record 3 shows at the same time to one hard drive might cause a problem...

are you guys all using analog cable for this? or with a digital box and IR blaster?

 

[arod]

nah its not.... I have 2 HD tuners and 2 SD tuners in my vista mce server..... works perfectly fine.

 

[mugs]

Originally posted by: Shawn

Originally posted by: mercanucaribe
You'd need a pretty powerful computer.

Nope. It's a hardware encoder. Recording with my PVR-350 only uses about 1% of my cpu power.

Fixed. 150, 250 and 500 are hardware MPEG encoders. Your 350 is a hardware MPEG encoder and decoder.

 

[mugs]

Originally posted by: bobdelt
yeah but having to record 3 shows at the same time to one hard drive might cause a problem...

are you guys all using analog cable for this? or with a digital box and IR blaster?

Hauppauge built a demo HTPC that had (I believe) 5 PVR-500s in it for a total of 10 tuners. The data rate of the MPEG video is low enough that a hard drive can handle it.

(Edit: I don't recall if that demo HTPC had multiple drives, but I'm fairly certain you could record 3 or 4 streams onto one hard drive)

 

[XMan]

Originally posted by: bobdelt
yeah but having to record 3 shows at the same time to one hard drive might cause a problem...

are you guys all using analog cable for this? or with a digital box and IR blaster?

I have seven tuners, like I said, and my recording drive is a single Seagate 250GB SATA II drive. I can record seven shows and be watching another without a problem.

 

[Alprazolam]

who needs to watch all that tv and shows? Lames.

 

[Indolent]

Originally posted by: XMan

Originally posted by: bobdelt
yeah but having to record 3 shows at the same time to one hard drive might cause a problem...

are you guys all using analog cable for this? or with a digital box and IR blaster?

I have seven tuners, like I said, and my recording drive is a single Seagate 250GB SATA II drive. I can record seven shows and be watching another without a problem.

4sd tuners, 3 hd tuners and only one 250 gb hard drive? That's gotta fill up fast.

 

[Bootprint]

Originally posted by: Alprazolam
who needs to watch all that tv and shows? Lames.

It's not like it's for constant recording, its for the times when conflicts occur.

If you've got two people that want different show. Shows that overlap by a few minutes.

Let me tell you having extra turners comes in handy.


Besides 4 tuners is nothing, this setup using beyondtv has 11 tuners (4 HD and 7 SD)

 

[XMan]

Originally posted by: Indolent

Originally posted by: XMan

Originally posted by: bobdelt
yeah but having to record 3 shows at the same time to one hard drive might cause a problem...

are you guys all using analog cable for this? or with a digital box and IR blaster?

I have seven tuners, like I said, and my recording drive is a single Seagate 250GB SATA II drive. I can record seven shows and be watching another without a problem.

4sd tuners, 3 hd tuners and only one 250 gb hard drive? That's gotta fill up fast.

It lasts about a week, but we usually have the shows watched by then. I've also got a DAS RAID box I can backup to if I need to.

 

[nsafreak]

Personally I'd build an HTPC but my problem would be that I'd lose the ability to record some of the cable programming that I watch on a regular basis that requires a box to decrypt.

 

[XMan]

Originally posted by: nsafreak
Personally I'd build an HTPC but my problem would be that I'd lose the ability to record some of the cable programming that I watch on a regular basis that requires a box to decrypt.

MCE supports set top boxes, why wouldn't you be able to record? Also, Vista supports cable card tuners, as well.

 

[0roo0roo]

Originally posted by: Bootprint

Originally posted by: Alprazolam
who needs to watch all that tv and shows? Lames.

It's not like it's for constant recording, its for the times when conflicts occur.

If you've got two people that want different show. Shows that overlap by a few minutes.

Let me tell you having extra turners comes in handy.


Besides 4 tuners is nothing, this setup using beyondtv has 11 tuners (4 HD and 7 SD)

heh i only have one. but yea i think you need a separate tuner for each channel. so if you want to watch something and record something else you already need 2 tuners. record 2 things at once and ur already at 3, might as well have 4
kind of sad mce only supports so few by default microsoft aiming low

and yea shows tend to be bunched up together.. primetime ya know.

 

[slackerinabox]

Seriously, who watches this much tv? I watch tv often enough, I'm not trying to judge. But my two-turner cable company PVR is plenty - it saddens me that you watch so much tv that you worry that 4 shows that you watch are on at the SAME TIME. I don't think I even follow 4 shows to care enough to tape them, let alone 4 at the same time.

 

[nsafreak]

Originally posted by: XMan

Originally posted by: nsafreak
Personally I'd build an HTPC but my problem would be that I'd lose the ability to record some of the cable programming that I watch on a regular basis that requires a box to decrypt.

MCE supports set top boxes, why wouldn't you be able to record? Also, Vista supports cable card tuners, as well.

I don't know of any cable card HD capable tuner cards that are available to the public at the moment, do you?

 

[Bootprint]

Originally posted by: freedomsbeat212
Seriously, who watches this much tv? I watch tv often enough, I'm not trying to judge. But my two-turner cable company PVR is plenty - it saddens me that you watch so much tv that you worry that 4 shows that you watch are on at the SAME TIME. I don't think I even follow 4 shows to care enough to tape them, let alone 4 at the same time.

What if the OP has an SO that wants to record something else?

 

[slackerinabox]

Originally posted by: Bootprint

Originally posted by: freedomsbeat212
Seriously, who watches this much tv? I watch tv often enough, I'm not trying to judge. But my two-turner cable company PVR is plenty - it saddens me that you watch so much tv that you worry that 4 shows that you watch are on at the SAME TIME. I don't think I even follow 4 shows to care enough to tape them, let alone 4 at the same time.

What if the OP has an SO that wants to record something else?

Three SOs though? What is he/she, mormon?

 

[Bootprint]

Originally posted by: freedomsbeat212

Originally posted by: Bootprint

Originally posted by: freedomsbeat212
Seriously, who watches this much tv? I watch tv often enough, I'm not trying to judge. But my two-turner cable company PVR is plenty - it saddens me that you watch so much tv that you worry that 4 shows that you watch are on at the SAME TIME. I don't think I even follow 4 shows to care enough to tape them, let alone 4 at the same time.

What if the OP has an SO that wants to record something else?

Three SOs though? What is he/she, mormon?

Works for the guy in Big Love

 

[slackerinabox]

Originally posted by: Bootprint

Originally posted by: freedomsbeat212

Originally posted by: Bootprint

Originally posted by: freedomsbeat212
Seriously, who watches this much tv? I watch tv often enough, I'm not trying to judge. But my two-turner cable company PVR is plenty - it saddens me that you watch so much tv that you worry that 4 shows that you watch are on at the SAME TIME. I don't think I even follow 4 shows to care enough to tape them, let alone 4 at the same time.

What if the OP has an SO that wants to record something else?

Three SOs though? What is he/she, mormon?

Works for the guy in Big Love

Ok, fair enough - *if* you are mormon, have 3 spouses and one is as hot as Chloe Sevigne then, yes, 4 turners is not excessive.

 

[arod]

theres a few times that i want to record 3 things at once... namely when a sporting event is on (that i want to watch) and 2 shows on the networks i record.

it doesnt happen much but it does from time to time and having 4 tuners is great for that.