Analog and Digital Tuners

[Tinker]

I currently have one Hauppauge MCE500 (two analog tuners). I am considering buying an HDHomeRun (two digital ATSC tuners).

Are there any problems having both analog and digital tuners installed at the same time?

What happens if you have two programs being recorded and you are watching live TV at the same time. If you change channels does it just skip the channels that are not available because the tuners are busy or does it give you a message box or does it not allow you to watch any TV because some of the channels are not available?

Right now I just get a message box telling me that I can't watch live TV unless I cancel one of the recordings. Can anyone give me the low down on how this works? Thanks.

[stustunz]

pretty much as you said if the tuner is a available it will switch form analog to digital (maybe a slight pause as it changes over)
but yes if no tuners are available it pops up and tell you

i dont really surf so it doesnt bother me (3 analog tuners 1 digital)

[nia]

Are there any problems having both analog and digital tuners installed at the same time?

Not at all - works brilliantly. You just have to consider the sequence of the cards in the recording source configuration to make sure you get the recordings you like most of the time.

I.e. if you would like your recordings to be primarily digital, move the HDHomeRun tuners to the top of the list, as it searches from the top down to find available tuners for scheduled recordings. So if you leave the analog on top, it is used first if it is available and have the relevant channel.

What happens if you have two programs being recorded and you are watching live TV at the same time...

Live tuner selection is from the bottom up (in the configured devices). So it will choose the first available tuner from the bottom of your list. If you try to start LiveTV on a channel with no available tuner, you get what you say above ("cancel rec..").

When starting to channel surf (which I do very rarely on GBPVR), I have never seen it change from the tuner it has selected (but my digital tuners has a subset of my analog channels, so it would never have to). However I'm sure stustunz gave you the correct behaviour on that one above...

[Tinker]

Thanks for the input. The one detail that is still unclear to me is this. If you are channel surfing and, for example, both digital tuners are busy. You are currently on an analog channel. When you press Ch+ the next channel is a digital channel. Now what you have said is that a message box pops up about the channel not being available but what happens now? If you do not want to cancel the currently recording channel does it go back to the previous channel or does it continue on to the next channel? Would you have to enter the channel number to skip over the unavailable channels?

[stustunz]

this is not going to be the outcome you want
it gives you the option to watch what is been recorded or not watch tv

[Tinker]

So what you are saying is that if you do not want to cancel the recording it will kick you out of live TV and back to the main menu?

This would be a rare occasion but that does seem a strange outcome. Just buy lots of tuners and then there is no problem right.

[sub]

There are some situations like this that arent handled nicely.

You can still go into the TV guide and watch any channel that is on an available tuner, but if you attempt to switch to channel that is not currently available (because the tuner is recording), then you'll be kicked out of live tv.

[nia]

Just buy lots of tuners and then there is no problem right.

If only. I just replaced a PVR350 with a PVR500 (2 tuners). Now I have two PVR-350s shelved due to lack of PCI slots. It almost physically hurts to have two excellent tuners you can't install

But right you are - one can never have too many tuners (only to few slots)!

[Tinker]

Thanks for the clarification. I too do not do much channel surfing like that and the odds of this happening are very small. Normally I surf the guide and select the show I want and then watch it. This scenario is much nicer because if the tuner is busy I just get put back to the guide and I can make a second choice.

I am mostly trying to detrmine how many tuners make sense for my purposes. It is good to understand what happens so I can supply the right amount of tuners and have a smooth running machine. I can handle these senarios myself but the wife and kids sometimes struggle.

Thanks for the help.

By the way sub, I have played with other PVR software programs and I am never leaving the GBPVR ranks. Great program! Thanks!