2 Tuners. Different Channel Line-Ups for Each?

[Hurin]

Hi,

I just bought my 2nd Hauppage PVR-250 (Only $79 at CompUSA after rebates!). So, I'll soon have two tuners and will be upgrading to BTV 3.5.

I'm going to plug the coaxial cable (un-cable-boxed) directly into one of the tuners. The other tuner will use S-Video cable from the cable box for pay channels.

Question: Can I "assign" the non-pay channels to the coax tuner and *not* have those channels appear on the cable boxed tuner? Or, even better, Can I have the channels all appear at once, but the cable boxed tuner will record only the pay channels while the coax tuner records all the others?

Basically, as you may have determined, I'd like to be able to watch the cable box without BTV changing the channel to begin a recording without warning.

I hope that was clear. Any info?

H

[yiannis]

I'm not sure if I understand what you are trying to do, but I have a similar setup; 2 PVR's in a PC, one plugged into standard cable and the other plugged in a cable box. Once you configure the two inputs appropriately, all channels show (normal cable and payTV) up in the schedule and you can schedule recordings without any hassle.

However, and here I think some of your questions may be answered, the following are true (in my case at least)

* When you watch live TV, you don't pick which input it comes from. Of course, if you pick a station that is available on the cable box it will use the cable box, but if you pick a channel that is available in both you don't control which input is used. This can become awkard if you have a scheduled recording that is on the cable box only and you watch a channel available on both inputs right before the recording and for which the system picked the control box for live input; it will interrupt the live tv to let you know it has to change channels. Once the recording begins, you can go to live TV and watch the 'normal' cable channels from the normal cable input.

* You can record two things at the same time, but of course they both can't be "cable box".

* You can record two 'normal' cable shows at the same time, which is reason enough to have the cable box include the normal channels as well.

* When perusing the program, there is no indication (at least one I have found) that indicates which channels are normal cable and which are cable box.

Hopefully that makes sense. What confused me initially was that the system doesn't allow you to control which recording goes where, but it does a reasonably good job of managing recordings and sources to make things happen (if physically possible). In retrospect, that's a good approach, but confusing to control freak geeks who want to know all the details of what's going on

[ejdriscoll]

It has been posted elsewhere that the BTV tuners list is an *ordered* list, and BTV will choose from the top down for recording, and from the bottom up for watching live TV.

So, I would think that you would want to make your "box" tuner the second tuner on the list. That way, BTV would choose the "box" tuner first for live TV and would choose the "straight" tuner first for recordings (when possible), thus minimizing the instances where BTV changes you off watching a pay channel in order to record a non-pay channel. I think.

[yiannis]

Originally Posted by ejdriscoll

It has been posted elsewhere that the BTV tuners list is an *ordered* list, and BTV will choose from the top down for recording, and from the bottom up for watching live TV.

So, I would think that you would want to make your "box" tuner the second tuner on the list. That way, BTV would choose the "box" tuner first for live TV and would choose the "straight" tuner first for recordings (when possible), thus minimizing the instances where BTV changes you off watching a pay channel in order to record a non-pay channel. I think.

I agree with your comment; the problem is that when I was configuring the system I did not know that so I ended up with an arbitrary order. Also, I had quite a bit of trouble configuring the system the first time (unfortunately I can't clearly spell out the problems) so it's going to be like this for ever ...

Another thing to consider is that it appears as the program's intentions is to not expose selection of the inputs to the user; the fact that "we" have figured it out doesn't make it a feature. It works though, so no complains.

[ejdriscoll]

I believe that you can re-order the tuners through the web admin; I don't think you'd have to reinstall/reconfigure your system.

Also, the guy who posted the "tip" turns out to be the Snapstream CEO - in my mind that makes as much a "feature" as anything else is.

[Hurin]

Just a quick follow-up. Things worked out fine where the tuners and channel lineups are concerned. Snapstream has two line-ups available for my area, the non-digital and the digital one. I assigned the digital one to my 2nd tuner which has the S-Video cable from my cable box as it source. I then put the coaxial (un-cable-boxed) directly into my first tuner and assigned it the "non-digital" channel lineup.

It works great. As someone said, I have the non-digital one first in the list. . . and it records from this source whenever it can. Only if a recording is on the pay channels does it grab control of the cable box (via my IR blaster) and interrupt my girlfriend's TV viewing.

Thanks for the input. I'm actually very pleased with how this worked out.

However, I'm going to have to go back to 3.4 because I'm getting the stutteriness and tearing that so many are describing with 3.5. That's such a shame.

And, Yes, I've tried four different decoders, all the registry hacks for the Intervideo decoder, etc. Nothing helped. The odd part about the stuttering/tearing is that it's intermittent. You'll watch a scene and it will appear fine. Then you'll "rewind" and watch the scene again, and it'll tear all over the place.

Oh, I should mention that I did a totally clean install of 3.5 on a freshly formatted computer (as always). So the stuttering/tearing isn't caused by any prior software installation gumming things up.

H

[DonK]

What's your system specs? Are you running updated drivers, defragged drive, etc?

[Hurin]

P4 2.0 GHZ
ABIT IS7 Motherboard
512MB RAM
Radeon 9200 w/ 128MB
Windows XP SP2 (clean install)
2 x Hauppage PVR-250
200GB Maxtor 7200 RPM Drive w/ 8MB Cache
250GB Maxtor 7200 RPM Drive w/ 8MB Cache
(the 250GB drive and part of the 200GB drive are merged into a 450GB drive via Dynamic Disk)
Sound Blaster Audigy

All the newest drivers are being used on a pristine installation of Windows XP Service Pack 2.

Thanks,

H

[Hurin]

Yes, correct. They are "combined" in the viewscape. But not on the more technical side of things.

[Hurin]

Originally Posted by MayaManiac

for LiveTV, I would like to be able to pick which tuner to watch from, as they don't have the same channel line up, one could be basic cable and the other digital cable or Satellite. I hope this is in the works and they are coming up with new ways to manage the multiple tuners. Hopefully it'll be in the 3.5x or 3.6 release.

In my experience, the line-ups are combined. . . and even if you are watching a channel from one line-up and then choose one on another line-up/tuner, it will dynamically change to that tuner and show you the channel. . . instantly.

At least, that's what happened as far as I could tell when I tested it all last night.

Again, I think the multi-tuners works very well. It's just too bad that playback now looks like. . . uh. . . booty.

[enormus]

Originally Posted by Hurin

In my experience, the line-ups are combined. . . and even if you are watching a channel from one line-up and then choose one on another line-up/tuner, it will dynamically change to that tuner and show you the channel. . . instantly.

When you say the lineups are combined, I assume you are referring only to within Viewscape. I just installed a second PVR-250 and created a second channel lineup for the second card that does not overlap with that of the first card and vice versa. When I look in the WebAdmin or remotely in Snapstream.net, I see two separate channel lineups that I have to switch between in order to see all channels.