Another copy of BTV or BTV Link? Recommendations?

[JLR2000]

I have BTV 3.5 running in my family room and have been very happy with it. I'm putting together a TV room in my basement and my question is should I build another BTV machine or use BTV Link? I would like it to be a stand alone BTV machine meaning I will have even more choices for recording, but I would also like to view BTV recordings FROM either machine ON either machine. Does this make sense? The computers are networked, I'm just not sure 2 BTV machines will share their files. I'm also looking at Media Portal, but I really like the feature of BTV and for simplicity would rather have the family learn 1 interface.

Thanks for your input!

[dlandrum]

1) setup the basement to be BTV and the family room BTV Link. Then you have fewer cables in your family room, and possibly one less external sat/cable box. One can consolidate harddrives and use space better. If you pause a show, exit, go to the other room, and play the show ... you will resume from where you paused. Number one reason: You can setup all of the chows in one place and let BTV decided when to record.

or

2) Have 2 BTV machines that each reference the video folders of the other. You will be able to watch the shows from either machine. If you pause a show, exit, go to the other room, and play the show ... you will start at the beginning. You will download guide data twice as often. You will process commercial markings twice as fast. You need to record different shows on different machines due to conflicts.

[nanook105]

Originally Posted by JLR2000

I have BTV 3.5 running in my family room and have been very happy with it. I'm putting together a TV room in my basement and my question is should I build another BTV machine or use BTV Link? I would like it to be a stand alone BTV machine meaning I will have even more choices for recording, but I would also like to view BTV recordings FROM either machine ON either machine. Does this make sense? The computers are networked, I'm just not sure 2 BTV machines will share their files. I'm also looking at Media Portal, but I really like the feature of BTV and for simplicity would rather have the family learn 1 interface.

Thanks for your input!

If you want it to be a stand alone BTV machine with it's own tuner and it's own recording schedule, it will have to be a full BTV server. I have two BTV servers and can view recordings made by either on either (just no good way to say that). Because both of my servers are able to view/play shows recorded by the other BTV server, all of my link PCs can also play files recorded on either BTV server.