Questions about multiple tuners

[GJM]

I upgraded to 3.5 and everything seems to be working well. I only use it to record shows. I'm interested in using up to 3 tuners in one computer but I've got a couple of questions before I go out and spend the money.

1) Can I tell BTV which tuner to use for each show? I've got a lot of back to back shows to record and I want a 2 minute buffer on each show. That means that I don't want BTV to use the same tuner. I want to be able to decide which tuner will record which show.

2) I've read that BTV won't record the same channel at the same time on 2 different tuners. Will it allow you to overlap recordings on the same channel with different tuners? In order to have a 2 minute buffer for back to back shows BTV will have to record the same channel on different tuners for 4 minutes. I'm hoping that since the recordings will have different start times that BTV will allow this.

[GJM]

I need to ask one more question.

Can I have BTV asign each tuner to record to a different hard drive?

I think I just found the answer to this question. If I'm correct I can have individual shows record to different drives.

[nanook105]

1) Can I tell BTV which tuner to use for each show? I've got a lot of back to back shows to record and I want a 2 minute buffer on each show. That means that I don't want BTV to use the same tuner. I want to be able to decide which tuner will record which show.

Setup Recordings/Recording Settings and Priorities/View and Edit details/Record From lets you choose which tuner is used for the recording. If it is a series, it will apply to all future recordings. I don't believe that you actually need to do this. If you use padding of two minutes, the second recording should always use the idle tuner since the first tuner is still recording. The only time that it will not pad is if you are recoding two shows at once and also have back to back on one or both of the tuners.

2) I've read that BTV won't record the same channel at the same time on 2 different tuners. Will it allow you to overlap recordings on the same channel with different tuners? In order to have a 2 minute buffer for back to back shows BTV will have to record the same channel on different tuners for 4 minutes. I'm hoping that since the recordings will have different start times that BTV will allow this.

I think that you are asking about back to back recordings on the same channel. I do it all of the time. Set up some test recordings to see how it works.