I agree that It's getting very hard to find a decent board that supports dual core processors and has enough regular PCI Slots to fit my needs.
Also, I've yet to see a PCI Express version of the Sound Blaster line of Soundcards, yet they do have an external USB Version...
If someone were to come up with a Motherboard that had a decent chipset, One PCI Express x16 Slot, Six PCI Express x1 slots, Four SATAII Ports that supported vairous RAID types (including a Stripe), DDRII 800 or better, and Dual Core CPU Support, It would grab my attention.
That is to say, it would grab my attention If I could go out and buy Six PCI Express x1 Dual-ATSC OTA HDTV Tuners (do they even exist?) and use them all at the same time with BTV on the above imaginary motherboard.
Oh and to sweeten the deal, and to save those of us who already have a dedicated BTV Server that's already stuffed with Tuners we still want to use, True BTV support for multiple servers (not just the lame folder-sharing or "Server Select" method of today ~ this has been discussed before elsewhere) would be icing on the cake.
But back to the topic at hand...
You can see from my sig that I'm using all 4 PVR-500's in my Core2Duo Motherboard, so that I can have a total of eight SD Tuners.
They're the good kind, what most people refer to as the "Type C Cards".
But yeah, I also have an extra PVR-500 (Type A) and a PVR-150 that I can't use on that board because it lacks two more standard PCI Slots.
I dunno.
I highly doubt it, but maybe someone will come out with a Quad-ATSC-OTA-HD Tuner that can go in a PCI Express x1 slot, and maybe we'll be able to install three of them in a single motherboard that has:
Dual Core Support.
DDRII Support (Four DIMMS)
Onboard video, Audio and Gigabit LAN.
Three PCI Express Slots.
Four Four PCI Slots.
Or, and I doubt I'll ever live to see it, some Dual-QAM-Tuners in both PCI and PCI Express formats that support Cable Card, BeyondTV, and has no DRM Restrictions; ie:
No auto-expiration of recorded shows.
Able to convert and burn to DVD and/or HD-DVD and/or BluRay without paying an extra fee.
Erm.. sorry about my rant for today.
But, um, yeah, I think that until hardware manafacturers fully embrace the PCI Express format, they should at least make some PC Cases that have an extra layer of slots, and include a PCI Express to PCI Riser Card or the like.
The Riser Card could convert a PCI Express slot into seven PCI Slots that could be mounted in another row of slots above the existing ones.
[ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ]
- - - - - - - - - - Horizontal Riser Card Connector w/seven PCI Slots.
(...Exaust fans...) Several Vertical Riser Card Connection options but only need to use one.
[ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ]
- - - - - - - - - - Motherboard's Slots.
But again, even though it's a great idea for people with a wad of cash and desire to make the ultimate home-built DVR, I doubt I'd ever see such a thing.