Multiple tuners with different chipsets

[boweng]

I have a system up and running well with a new PVR250mce card which uses the "encoder 16" chipset.  I'm thinking of adding a 2nd tuner.  I can get an older pvr250 card with the "encoder 15" chipset relatively cheap.  Can GBPVR support two PVR250 tuners with different chipsets?  (I notice that Beyond TV cannot.)  If so, are there any issues I need to be aware of?  Thanks.

[sub]

Sorry, I dont have a concrete answer for you. I've never actually tried one of the PVR250MCE cards, let alone the combination you're asking about. If you can install the cards and their drivers, and they're in a fully functioning state with no driver conflicts, then GB-PVR will be able to use them.

[pancapangrawit]

Boweng, you might want to ask on the shs-pvr-forums (SHS or a guy called pvr-lurker (from Hauppauge) know a lot of details about the drivers).

I can't tell for your specific combination, but since about the 3 latest hauppauge-drivers (presently 22254) it is possible to combine "15" and "16" chips, the drivers now do officially support multiple tuners (not the hauppauge software, though). I have it with a 250 and 350 (both retail) - and it works insofar as I get no driver error and can record with both cards at the same time with WinTVCap, and the various little GUI's for it, and also with GB-PVR. Yet I cannot watch liveTV in WinTV2000 and have WinTVCap access the second card automaticaly (-board:0) in order to record while I am watching.

As far as I know BeyondTV before 3.5 didn't support multiple tuners at all. GotTV, BeyondTV 3.5 and MediaPortal, who state to support multiple tuners in principle, do not work with my dual-tuner configuration (250-16 and 350-15) though.

While I can record with two cards at the same time in GB-PVR in principle, I do seem to have issues with it. Yet most of the phenomena I used to think were multiple-tuner-related seem to occure for some single-card-users also - especially the issue that recordings get broken when you watch live-tv before a scheduled recording starts (search the forum for this, it's a known issue and expected to be fixed with the next release). The present workaround is to restart the recording-service after watching liveTV.

Another thing is that at present in my setup liveTV is interrupted when a recording starts (rather than seemlessly use the second card). As such this is only a small inconvenience - you can simply restart liveTV - yet the recording also get's broken, which is quite annoying.

Another little thing that might be significant for debugging: at some point in setting up the two cards it can become necessary to change the 'board number' in the Direct Recording Plugin. I started off configuring the 350 and gave it board-no 1 - I think I had disabled the 250 in win-hardware-setting at that time - and that worked - including FM. Then I added the 250 and gave it no 2 - that seemed to be working in that I could record from both cards. But then FM didn't work anymore. After I switched board numbers it worked as it should.

I have the feeling that since the latest hauppauge-drivers officially support multiple-tuners, something related to card access changed - and that causes trouble when accessing cards in the combination liveTV on one and recording on the other (like the case WinTV200 plus WinTVCap with (-board:0)). Could this also be related to the single-card liveTV/breaking recordings issue?

So back to your initial question: I couldn't tell that it works in your combination, but specifically the 15 vs. 16 issue has been resolved since the latest hauppauge drivers. There is other trouble though which you might run into. Yet in that GB-PVR still acts more acceptable than BeyondTV 3.5, GotTV and MediaPortal, where my combination of 250-16 and 350 doesn't work at all.

Best
.r.

[boweng]

Thank you gentlemen.  It sounds like it might be possible to use a pvr250-15 with a pvr250-16 in a dual tuner scenario.  Any problems I encounter may not be inherent to the different chipsets and possibly can be resolved as gbpvr evolves.  

I use the MediaMVP with gbpvr and want to watch live tv while recording another program.  The pvr250-15 is cheap enough I might buy it anyway and let you know if recording and live tv work well together in the next release.  I will keep your tips in mind when I install the 2nd card.