Help with DirectTV, 2 sources == 2 tuner cards?

[sean_snider]

Hey Everyone:

I have seen lots of posts on subjects similar to this one, but have not seen an all inclusive answer b/c there are lots of things that have to be considered. . .

I have some questions regarding using BeyondTV with 2 Direct TV satellite box sources.

Basically want I want to do is be able to record one show on one DirectTV satellite channel and watch another show on another DirectTV channel. (Like you would if you had/paid for DirectTVs DVR service, but obivously i don't want to pay for that!! )

Currently I have an extra DirectTV satellite box laying around for just this purpose, but of course I have some questions:

1.) I'm using a direct serial connection throught the "low speed data" port on the back of my primary direct tv box. So the channels always stay in sync regardless of which buttons I push. But how can i connect to 2 DirectTV satellite boxes? Do I need to use a direct connection for one and an IR blaster for another?

2.) Do I have to have 2 tuner cards? Currently I am using a Hauppauge 350 card. Obviously I could have coax from one satellite box and S-video from another satellite box (which is what I have set up right now for just one source). But can Beyond TV handle this or be set up for this? (I have seen many posts about doing this, but no concrete "Yes and here's how answers").

3.) The way my current system is set up. . . some one can come in an watch tv through the computer and BeyondTV, or they can just turn the HomeTheater receiver to "TV", and use the regular old DirectTV remote, and its piped to my television rather than the PC. But of course if someone does this with my current setup, and I happend to be recording something, they screw up the recording. The DirectTV boxes that I have have an option in them to turn off receiving "remote signals". So I could have one satellite box take the serial connection and not receive remote signals, and that would solve part of the problem. But can I force BeyondTV to only watch from one source and only record from another source?

I'm hoping to get response from BeyondTV tech guys b/c this is a hugely complicated, but I believe solveable problem. . .

Thanx

Sean

(check out my uber machine, everything runs amazing!!)
P4 3.73 EE CPU 2.5MB cache, 1066Mhz FSB
1GB DDR 533Mhz DDR RAM
Western Digital Raptor 74GB HDD, 10000RPM SATA
Nvidia GeForce 6800 GT, 256MB RAM
Hauppauge WinPVR 350 card
SoundBlaster Audigy Platinum

[merrypig]

1/ Use two serial com ports. One for each box. BTV can be configured to use a specific com port for a given tuner so the right box changes channel only. a LOT cleaner than using IR.

2/ You will want two capture cards to watch and record, or record two seperate shows simultaneously.

You can configure btv to use coax + svideo inputs of the same card, and connect one to each box. However you can still only watch or record one at a time as the 350 only has one compression engine. So this might be useful if you had two different video feeds and wanted to amalgamate them into one transparent selection - but for two identical feeds it wouldn't give you anything extra that one feed didn't do.

To make the most of things, get a second capture card. Either a 250 or 350 to go alongside your current card, or replace it with a 500mce (dual tuner). (though if captions are important don't go for the 500mce just yet. you'll lose caption support for the time being).

Should you still want to configure both inputs of the one 350 anyway, all you do is configure a second video source and pick the same card but different input. BTV is smart enough to know that it is the same card and that it can only schedule one recording at once.

3/ Re someone interrupting the recording. Yes. absolutely. bad idea. You will want to adopt a new approach to tv - where your htpc IS your tv. All video pipes through btv . in this way you can let BTV make sure that noone changes the channel when you are recording, but you are free to watch live tv when it isn't. It is even smart enough to let you watch a channel that is being recording without tying up two tuners, so even if you start watching a show late your second tuner would still be free to record something else. (or service a btv link remote tv session for example

3b) As far as dedicating one source to watch, one to record. Sadly, not quite. At one point you could put cards in a specific order and btv would work from one end for recordings and the other for live tv. Unless you had two recordings going it would have done what you wanted. For some unknown reason they took this out. Well. ok. I have a hunch why, but it's a real shame they didn't allow you to 'dedicate' a card to a particular task.

You can perhaps mitigate it though. When setting up recording jobs you can tell it to use 'any free tuner' or you can specifically nominate one. So with a little bit of manual maintenance when you add a job you can make sure that all your recordings happen on one particular card. However, this still won't force livetv onto the second card unless that recording is in use already. (say both tuners are idle, you start watching live tv which picks tuner 1. later a job nominated for tuner 1 starts and thus interrupts your live tv session when it changes channel. You then have to (it may do this automatically) jump to the 2nd tuner to continue watching live tv.

Oh. final comment. You can turn off remote signals yes. Personally I just hide the remote in the closet. Thenif I want to turn on ppv shows or something I can pop in with a live tv session and use the remote directly and then let btv do the recording.

Hope that helps

Nice machine spec btw. Only thing missing is several terabytes of disk storage right?

[sean_snider]

1.) 2 serial / com ports??? How can I do that? The machine only has one serial port. . . I'm guessing I'd have to go buy a PCI card that has an extra serial port. . .or do a virtual thing with USB port, or maybe a parrallel to serial conversion?

2.) Yeah I figured as much about 2 tuners. . . and that's fine. . .just means i gotta go spend some more money. . .

3.) Yes, i also figured that this is a bad idea. . . until now I only had a 17 inch monitor. . . so that made watching stuff somewhat painful. Now I have a 24" wide flat screen so its much much better. but the reason i have it set up this way is 2 fold. . .a.) b/c some people just weren't comfortable or familar with the HTPC setup (although this is getting better since the new machine works so well), b.) b/c I have to have a tv in the room to play xbox, ps2 etc. I suppose I could try hooking up the game console to the pc (via the tv tuner) but i've never done that and i'm not sure how it would work. . .not too mention you'd have the same issues about if you were recording something, an xbox session might interrupt that unknowingly. . .Any suggestions? (maybe going s-video on one of the cards for the game consoles would work, if i went coax on the inputs from the satellite boxes, and then all i'd have to do is switch the source in BeyondTV, but i don't know how to do that w/o using the setup wizard or web admin).

Sean

P.S. Yeah actually I have a secondary 250MB drive for that. . .(could always use more), but since virtual memory and os operations almost always take place on the primary drive. . . the raptor 10000RPM makes a huge difference).

[merrypig]

Hmm. if you mobo really doesn't have a second serial port (sometimes it has a header just not connected to the back plate) then yeah, you'll want a pci (maybe usb?) serial port.

You won't want to play your game console through btv. There will be too much latency for it to be playable. If this mode you will want to use something like wintv that doesn't buffer the video (only a modest latency here) or an old fashioned sw capture card... Really.. your best bet is probably to get a multi input switch box that will jump to the game console when the video is active, or the output from your pc when it isn't. (failing that a manually switched one).