Dual Tuners needed?

[lawrenceboland]

hello all... I'm pretty new to the PVR scene and have been doing a lot of research on the hardware that I'll need to build my own. I can't quite find a definitive answer to this... so here goes. Do you need to have 2 tuner cards if you want to watch one channel and record another at the same time? Or do you only need 2 cards if you are trying to record 2 channels at the same time?

Thanks for the info guys

[Brett]

You need 2 cards.

The only case where you would need 1 card. Is if your recording liveTV and watching a show that was already recorded.

-Brett

[btvbuddy]

Just wanted to add that in addition to those two PIC cards, if you watch premium channels you will most like like need two cable or satellite boxes. Regretfully, many companies also charge extra for each box :-(

[lawrenceboland]

If i have a dedicated PVR computer sitting below my TV that only has 1 card... couldnt I just use my cable box to change channels to what I want to watch when the PVR is recording... or will the recording follow me as I change channels? 2 boxes would totally suck and throw off my pricing for this project.

[lawrenceboland]

Or, what if I had a motherboard that has integrated S-video out... and I also had a Hauppauge PVR-350 that had TV in and TV out. Would I be able to swing recording and viewing live TV at the same time without 2 cable boxs?

[btvbuddy]

When you are recording a signal if you change the channel on the box you have changed the signal, multiple PCI cards and multiple cable/sat boxes is want you want and that cost will only increase with all the goodies you will want, more disk, external disk, more disk, did I mention more disk.... So, yeah it's gonna chew on the wallet! GOODLUCK

[lawrenceboland]

dang... so the commercial Tivo can't record and view live TV at the same time either eh?