new setup suggestions

[wiper]

Well, I moved to new area with a very crappy local cable system that doesn't even carry the freakin sci-fi network. Obviously I had to order a directv reciever to get sci-fi which I hooked up to my old replay. What I'd like to do now is ditch cable completely but I'm not sure of the best setup to use. I've tried searching the forums but any search terms to describe my delima are too broad. I don't believe there's a way to make a single beyondtv box control multiple satellite recievers (seriel controllable d10's), but I could be wrong. That would be the easiest method for sure.
The other option is to split up my tuners to multiple machines(that used to be running btvlink) and have them record over dedicated gbit to a fileserver I have with 4 300gig ultra320 drives in raid 1+0. With that layout each machine would get it's own gbit card on the server, the limiting factor here would be cpu utilization on the tuner machines. The problem with that setup is scheduling, I'd have to go to each machine to manage recording schedules in order to ensure they're not recording the same thing.
Of course I could just ditch the whole setup and get a couple of directv dvr's but that's not nearly as fun :P

[tscales]

BeyondTV can easily handle multiple set top boxes. You just have to change the frequency of the remote and use a USB-UIRT. Might be possible with serial, but I don't know. I think your only limitation would be the number of remote frequency choices in the set top box. For that matter, with a USB-UIRT, you can use zones and control three set top boxes on the same frequency. Multiply the two and you'll be beyond the amount you want to spend on boxes

[LORENJOHNS]

what you want to do is very easy,
i have a 4 tuner server in the basment 2 directv d-10 controled via seriel cables
and 2 analog cable tuners.
my other server has one sat reciver d-200 also seriel and one analog cable
i use the rca cable pack from snapstream and everything works fine
if you need a little more details just ket me know,be glad to help
loren

[wiper]

Thanks for the feedback, upon further searching the forums I've discovered that you can assign com ports to tuners so my original idea will work with 3 satellite recievers hooked up to one box, just need to get me a serial port card.

[btvfreak]

Be sure you get boxes with active serial ports. Awhile ago there were problems with controling DirecTV boxes over serial cable, specifically the d10 boxes. You might want to investigate that a bit more.