How are you all having multiple tuners??

[Anthony]

I have two HVR-1600 tuners that use two regular PCI slots. This gives me two digital tuners and two analog tuners (4 tuners total).

If you didn't have slots available, you could use something like the OnAirGT that plugs in a USB port, or the HDHomeRun that plugs in your network.

As for linking multiple computers, one solution might be to set up a NAS (network attached storage), and have each computer dump the show to that drive after recording. You could then access that central drive from any computer, or use a network media player like the TVix or Popcorn hour.

I only have about 7 local broadcast stations, plus a couple of analog stations I record off of cable. I find I rarely record more than two shows at a time anyway, though it's nice to have the extra tuners when the networks decide to show the best shows at once. I have a 250Gig hard drive, and by deleting shows after I watch them, I usually have 50% or more of the drive free. Of course, that varies if I don't have time to watch everything I've recorded, but we've always caught back up before I run out of drive space.

Anthony

[myfriendtanky]

Hello there,

I need to setup a PC with 4 or 6 tuners which can allow me to record programs simulatneously.

I record only Free-to-air channels which comes available through the Starhubs' CableTV socket (RF signal), (I did not subcribe to any digital setup box). I presume the channels I am recording are all analogue signals (eg Channel 5, 8, U etc)

Considering the limitations with the number of PCI slots, I am thinking of getting dual tuner cards (eg. Hauppage PVR500 MCE), i.e. i should need 3 of such cards to get 6 channels. will multiple cards of the same model work properly in the same PC environment?

Any recommendations of such cards?

Apparantly SageTV will get around the Windows XP limitation of 1 tuner support?
Should I go for SageTV or BeyondTV or MediaTV or ??
When recording, am I using SageTV recording functionality or the softwares that come with the tuners? Why I am asking this is because I wonder if I should just get cheap TV tuner cards if the softwares that come with them are not used in SageTV environment?

many thanks in advance.

tanky

[psycik]

Hello there,

I need to setup a PC with 4 or 6 tuners which can allow me to record programs simulatneously.

I record only Free-to-air channels which comes available through the Starhubs' CableTV socket (RF signal), (I did not subcribe to any digital setup box). I presume the channels I am recording are all analogue signals (eg Channel 5, 8, U etc)

Considering the limitations with the number of PCI slots, I am thinking of getting dual tuner cards (eg. Hauppage PVR500 MCE), i.e. i should need 3 of such cards to get 6 channels. will multiple cards of the same model work properly in the same PC environment?

Any recommendations of such cards?

Apparantly SageTV will get around the Windows XP limitation of 1 tuner support?
Should I go for SageTV or BeyondTV or MediaTV or ??
When recording, am I using SageTV recording functionality or the softwares that come with the tuners? Why I am asking this is because I wonder if I should just get cheap TV tuner cards if the softwares that come with them are not used in SageTV environment?

many thanks in advance.

tanky

You're probably asking in the wrong place about sagetv, mediatv or beyondtv.

[myfriendtanky]

I just googled on the products I knew, and this forum came up. and in all honesty, I didnt realise that gbpvr was actually a PVR software itself. I thought this is a general PVR forum.

I am a newbie, its great to find that GBPVR is freeware, I willl definitely consider this as an option than the paid options out there I knew.

[myfriendtanky]

Hope someone can help me with the questions above..

thanks

[stustunz]

you can use gbovr it will take as many tuners as you have pci slots
then if you run out of them you can use usb tuners
it depends on what broadcast as to what sort of tuner cards or cards you will need

so if you you had 3 pci slots then you can have 3x pvr500 giving you 6 analog tuners
or you can mix it up and have 2 pvr500 and a hvr3000 or 4000 giving a analog and digital mix
im not sure what they broadcast in singapore

have you read the wiki http://www.gbpvr.com/pmwiki/
there is normally a website aswell gbpvr.com but some dickhead hacked the site so its down at the moment

[myfriendtanky]

thanks for the input stustunz. I don't need digital channels, only analogue at the moment. I went to the link you provided and came by the capture card listing.

I read somewhere that a card of the same model and same make cannot and should not be installed in the same machine more than once, since the same software/drivers etc may not recognise more than 1 of the same card, and thus give problems. will it be a problem if I had 3xPVR500, or many of the same card, in the same machine?

another consideration is PVR500 costs about SGD$350 each, that will set me back by abt 1K for 3 of such cards.

If I had a motherboard that comes with enough PCI slots, I could potentially get 6xsingle tuner cards. Cheap ones can go as low as SGD$60 each (or total $360 for 6), which totals up to only a third of my estimated setup costs with the PVR500 option. So my question is, does GBPVR take over the recording function, and program recording scheduling functions that came with the tuner cards? if so, I would go for basic cards without much softwares, since I wouldn't use them.

Is this the understanding correct?
are there cheaper dual tuner cards out there?

[stustunz]

you get what you pay for
dont buy analog cards that dont have hardware mpeg2 encoding
software encoder cards dont work with lots of pvr software(including gbpvr)
also they put more load on the cpu and you wont be able to have more than 2 or 3 before your system becomes unstable and jumpy (playback and recording at same time)
finding a board with 6 pci slots i havent seen any in recent times
another card to look out for is the hvr2200 pci-e card 2 analog and 2 digital but can only use 2 at a time but in your case it would be the 2 analog tuners cheaper than the pvr500 i think aswell
either that or look on ebay or similar and buy second hand

[myfriendtanky]

do you mean i can get 6 analogue channels out of 2 x hvr2200 ?
(4 x analogue + 2 x digital, leaving 2 digital free?)

sorry for asking again - will 2 of the same card install ok on the same machine? I am afraid of conflicts, and this is my major concern. should I get an assortment of cards from various manufacturers to make up the 6tuners or can I get all the same?

[stustunz]

2xhvr 2200
will give you 8 tuners but it can only use any 4 at any one time
so no you will still need 3xhvr2200 to get 6 analog tuners
been a new card on the market it may have a few issues i think read some where there are couple of issues with swapping back and fourth from analog to digital or something but im sure nothing that wont be sorted

you can have the same type of tuners no conflicts when you add them gbpvr just let you choose the device number