How many BTV Link's can you have?

[cfaslave]

I'm considering adding a few PC's with BTV Link. How many Link "client's" can you have using one BTV server?

[nanook105]

I've used four at times (they aren't always in use at the same time).

[btvfreak]

I'd think it would be as many as your recording hard drive can handle streaming to simultaneously. Not sure how many that theoretical limit is though. How many are you planning on using? I have no issues with 2. nanook has 4, so I'd think you'd be good to go.

[cfaslave]

Originally Posted by btvfreak

I'd think it would be as many as your recording hard drive can handle streaming to simultaneously. Not sure how many that theoretical limit is though. How many are you planning on using? I have no issues with 2. nanook has 4, so I'd think you'd be good to go.

I have one now and am considering adding three more so hearing that nanook uses four sounds good. I'll probably wait to add the three additional ones until after I know more about the timing of the BTV/BM integration.

Thanks to both of you for the information.

Brent

[btvfreak]

If you already have the boxes, then maybe just install trials of BTV Link to test performance, etc.

[optikhog]

I've had 4 going at the same time as well - 2 dedicated machines, my workstation, plus the kids were watching Scooby Doo on their computer. Twas nice and smooth.

[not_Shorty]

9Mbps video with 384Kbps audio doesn't add up to much more than 1MB/s, so, multiply that by 4 and you still get diddly squat. Even less load when you're watching showsqueezed stuff with much, much lower bitrates. BTV usage is not what anyone might call demanding, by any stretch. You might not even be able to stress it out with 10 clients, and even then you're only going to be stressing the network, at least with 9Mbps/384Kbps mpeg2 data. Again, showsqueezed stuff is less demanding and would give you even more breathing room. Chances are this issue is never going to actually be an issue.

edit - oh yeah, and apostrophes generally aren't for pluralization

[Crutonman]

Originally Posted by not_Shorty

9Mbps video with 384Kbps audio doesn't add up to much more than 1MB/s, so, multiply that by 4 and you still get diddly squat. Even less load when you're watching showsqueezed stuff with much, much lower bitrates. BTV usage is not what anyone might call demanding, by any stretch. You might not even be able to stress it out with 10 clients, and even then you're only going to be stressing the network, at least with 9Mbps/384Kbps mpeg2 data. Again, showsqueezed stuff is less demanding and would give you even more breathing room. Chances are this issue is never going to actually be an issue.

edit - oh yeah, and apostrophes generally aren't for pluralization

It is my understanding that Beyond TV saves data by default uncompressed, which is pretty large. Alot more than 9Mbps, more along the lines of 4-5 MBps. Also, aside from network constraints causing problems for 10 clients, you would also have problems with the harddrive trying to read 10 different files at once, assuming that everyone isn't watching the same thing. I imagine that even if the files were somehow in sequential order, anything short of a ramdisk wouldnt be able to be read from fast enough to stream to 10 clients all at once.

[Bigbird999]

crouton

It is my understanding that Beyond TV saves data by default uncompressed, which is pretty large. A lot more than 9 Mbps, more along the lines of 4-5 MBps.

Not so, TV tuners like the Hauppauge 150 capture mpeg 2, check your file size. At the max DVD compliant bit rate of 9 Mbps (9000 Kbps) one hour of recorded video is about 4 GB.

4 GB/hr = 4000MB/hr = 65 MB/min = 520 Mb/min = 8.7Mb/sec = 8900Kbps

If you run at the BTV default for DVD best file size is about 3 GB/hr or ~7Mbps

A wired 10/100 LAN gives real world transfers of about 70 Mbps so if the hard drive will support the IO 10 clients are possible. A gigabit network is 10 times faster so would not even break a sweat.

BB

[not_Shorty]

BTV doesn't save anything uncompressed. When you use a hardware encoder card, surprise, it's already mpeg2 encoded data. When you use a software card, surprise, BTV is using its software encoder to encode to mpeg2. BTV doesn't save anything uncompressed.