USB Dual tuner and more

[jad3675]

Interesting situation here. I ran WMC for years with two AverMedia H837 usb tuners - which I thought were single tuners. MCE only allowed me to record 1 channel on each tuner - two total. For the past 6 months I've been using NPVR and Kodi as a replacement for MCE. One of my AverMedia USB tuners died, so I replaced it with a Hauppauge Dual Channel USB tuner. A slight upgrade, now I'd be able to record 3 shows at once. Or so I thought...until I was testing out the configuration and managed to record 8 shows at once. Well, it appears my AverMedia USB tuner is really two tuners, which when added to the Hauppauge tuner should make 4 tuners. So, how did I manage 8 recordings? I think I have an idea - it appears you record a channel and it's sub-channels (ie, 5, 5.1 and 5.2) and NPVR somehow treats it as one tunner/channel. Is this right?

John

[johnsonx42]

I think I have an idea - it appears you record a channel and it's sub-channels (ie, 5, 5.1 and 5.2) and NPVR somehow treats it as one tunner/channel. Is this right?

correct. the logical channels are just different data streams transmitted on the same physical channel; npvr receives the entire transport stream from the tuner, and picks out any or all of the the logical channels as needed. this is called "Multi-Record".

the AverMedia H837 is indeed a single tuner, MCE wasn't lying to you.... NPVR is just better.

in europe and most of the rest of the world where DVB-S and DVB-T can have 10 or more logical channels on one physical frequency, some users are able to record every single channel they receive simultaneously with just 2 or 3 dual-tuners. I've seen people who've said they tested recording over 20 shows at once.

[jad3675]

correct. the logical channels are just different data streams transmitted on the same physical channel; npvr receives the entire transport stream from the tuner, and picks out any or all of the the logical channels as needed. this is called "Multi-Record".

the AverMedia H837 is indeed a single tuner, MCE wasn't lying to you.... NPVR is just better.

in europe and most of the rest of the world where DVB-S and DVB-T can have 10 or more logical channels on one physical frequency, some users are able to record every single channel they receive simultaneously with just 2 or 3 dual-tuners. I've seen people who've said they tested recording over 20 shows at once.

That is pretty awesome, thanks for the explanation. Now that I know what's it is called, I see it's been discussed a lot on here which makes this thread seem rather...dumb.


John