How many PVRs can be used?

[SLR_65]

Hi Guys,

I think I'm getting this all sorted out. Right now I just have one PVR-150 installed, but I want at least one more tuner. I was thinking of adding another PVR-150 but I was wondering if I could add a PVR-500? So I would have a PVR-150 and a PVR-500 for a total of three tuners. Is this doable?

[Etacovda]

Yes, many people have three or more tuners.

[pcostanza]

As mentioned, it is possible but much also depends on your computer. You don't want too many tuners if you don't have some muscle.

[stustunz]

i have 3 analog tuners and 2 digital tuners its all good

[philly_phenom]

As mentioned, it is possible but much also depends on your computer. You don't want too many tuners if you don't have some muscle.

Adding more hardware encoding tuners (like the 150 or 500) doesn't really increase the load much on your PC. The main issue there would be a quality hard drive if you have lots of simultaneous recordings since it will be put to much more work.

If you include things like comskip & other processor intensive activities, then yes adding tuners would need some more muscle to keep up with the extra recordings (especially if you end up w/ multiple comskip jobs runningat the same time)

[pcostanza]

You are correct and I should have given more detail in my answer. Thanks for the backup.

[kayak4ever]

If you include things like comskip & other processor intensive activities, then yes adding tuners would need some more muscle to keep up with the extra recordings (especially if you end up w/ multiple comskip jobs running at the same time)

I ran into this problem a bit when I added my second tuner and found that if you run comskip after processing (an option in the config panel), then the problem is solved. The only downside is that if you watch while recording, the comskip doesn't work because it hasn't been processed yet.

[SLR_65]

Thanks Guys!

I was more worried about running into problems with each of the cards wanting the same resources, or the drivers not being able to handle more than a certain number, etc.

I think my system can handle a couple more tuners - I'm actually thinking more along the lines of being able to record two shows while watching a third (a rare occurence probably but the situation has crept up for us before. In reality we'll probably just watch one while recording the other most of the time).

Here's my system:

*) Motherboard - Asus M2NPV-VM
*) CPU - AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ with the 65nm core
*) Memory - 2 gigs Kingston DDR2 800 mhz, 256mb currently given to the video memory.
*) Hard drive - Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST3750330AS 750GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s
*) DVD burner - BenQ DW1620
*) Tuner card - currently only one, a Gateway OEM PVR-150, came with an usb ir receiver / blaster unit and remote. The tuner works fine, but I'm not overly happy with the Hauppauge MCE remote (this is OEM model 1062 I believe and it takes a bit to get it working and even then not all the keys will work)
*) Case - Antec NSK-2480
*) Operating system - Windows XP Pro SP2

Thanks!

Steve