Use BTV with 2 Tuners to 2 DirecTV Boxes?

[jaykchan]

I would like to take advantage of the two-tuners capability in BTV 3.5. Obviously, I need to put two tuner cards in the PC (such as two PVR-250 cards). This should work with TV service that doesn't require a decoder box. What is not clear is whether this will work with TV service that requires a decoder box.

I am currently using DirecTV, and I have two decoder boxes -- one for a PC that is running BTV, another one is connected to a regular TV. I would like to put both decoder boxes to the same PC. Currently, BTV controls the decoder box through a serial connection. I am wondering how BTV will control _two_ decoder boxes. Does BTV control the second decoder box using a second serial connection?

Any idea? Thanks.

Jay Chan

[flavius]

You'd need a second serial port, obviously.

[dequire]

Fro DirecTV, you can have as many tuners are your dish allows, provided you have a tuner card (150,250,350,500), serial port, and Sat box. I have 3 going into my SS Server. I had to add a PCI card w/ 2 serial ports to compliment the one onboard port. Setup was a breeze.

[btvbuddy]

One cool thing is these USB to serial port devices, some new systems have 6 to 9 USB ports which could support up to 6 - 9 DirecTV boxes! nice!

http://www.usbserial.com/

[jaykchan]

Thanks for confirming that I need a second serial connection to control the second DirecTV decoder box. Seem like I should get a USB-to-serial device instead of adding a serial-board; I have free USB-1 ports available anyway.

Thanks again.

Jay Chan