Ability to use tuners in multiple computers

[soccerdad]

Many of the new HTPC motherboards have only 2 pci slots. It would be great to be able to seamlessly schedule and use tuners in more than one PC so you could use more tuners in the system. (the main and a client?) or....

[agidius]

there have been discussions of a "recording farm" in the past.

[Smoker]

there have been discussions of a "recording farm" in the past.

Yes and no real good answers or solutions. I would like to see a good solution for this as well.

[SteveTyrakowski]

Many of the new HTPC motherboards have only 2 pci slots. It would be great to be able to seamlessly schedule and use tuners in more than one PC so you could use more tuners in the system. (the main and a client?) or....

I just built a new box that had only 2 slots with 2 HVR1600s. Each card has an ATSC tuner and an analog tuner, so I can record 4 shows at once. That should be good for most of the time.

I do have my old box with 2 PVR150s and 500gb of recordiings on it if I do need to record some more channels.

I don't care about controlling the tuners on the second box since I usually do most of my guide viewing with the web interface. What I would really like tho is the ability to view the shows on that second box via the MVP clients in the first box.

Right now I can set a videos directory to do this, but I don't get to see all the show info in the database. It would be great to allow a videos directory to also specify a location for the program info database.

Or, if that is too tricky, is there a way to force PVRX2 to create the .DAT files for each entry so that the program info is available when viewing it as a fileshare from another computer?

Steve Tyrakowski

[martint123]

If drive and directory names are the same for recordings on both machines, you should be able to
(1) copy the video file from the 'unofficial' server to the proper server
(2) do an "export recordings" on the 'unofficial' machine and copy to the main one.
(3) do an import recordings of the xml file from (2) to get the details into the database.

I think it should work, although I've not tried it.

[SteveTyrakowski]

If drive and directory names are the same for recordings on both machines, you should be able to
(1) copy the video file from the 'unofficial' server to the proper server
(2) do an "export recordings" on the 'unofficial' machine and copy to the main one.
(3) do an import recordings of the xml file from (2) to get the details into the database.

I think it should work, although I've not tried it.

Sure that should work, but that would kind of defeat the purpose of having the second computer if you had to copy those 500gb of videos to the new computer. I'm always fighting for free space to record, so my new box has a new 750gb drive to start the new season. SInce I'm now gonna start doing some hidef recording, I'm gonna need every bit of space I can spare.

I've already got a standalone file server with 1,500 gb of RAIDed drive space that is over 80% filled with archived stuff. The wife wants lots of stuff recorded, but she doesn't want to get around to watching and deleting. Or else it's a bunch of Oprah, Dateline or 20/20 shows with "something I want the kids to watch" which of course they have no desire to suffer thru. Sigh.

At least I can purge some stuff after we buy Season discs for a few shows.

[martint123]

Ah OK, - I only mentioned that method as I thought your problem was lack of slots for tuners rather than lack of disk space.

[Smoker]

Ah OK, - I only mentioned that method as I thought your problem was lack of slots for tuners rather than lack of disk space.

I believe that was the intent of this thread but Steve got a tiny bit off topic

I like your idead but was wondering about the manual work factor. Can the export/import functions be automated (i.e. batch jobs) ?

[bgowland]

It would be great to be able to seamlessly schedule and use tuners in more than one PC so you could use more tuners in the system. (the main and a client?) or....

....or go for USB capture devices?

One of the reasons I'm happy with my current rig is that it has 6 PCI slots. I've thought about what I'd do if I ever had to replace it. There'd be a whole load of PCI tuners on eBay for one thing and I'd possibly be searching for a load of USB replacements.

Cheers,
Brian

[martint123]

I like your idead but was wondering about the manual work factor. Can the export/import functions be automated (i.e. batch jobs) ?

Sorry the delay, not been able to get into the forum.
From the announcement page at http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php?t=28626
it shows command line args below which includes export and import that would seem to do the job for a batch file.


- command line parameters now working on PVRX2, including -direct, -directonly, -export, -import, -removehistory, -emptyepg, -emptyepgonly, -updateepg, -updateepgonly, -removeallgenre, -removehistory and -deletependingrecurring


Martin