BeyondLink Tuner?

[whytcolr]

I'm in the market for a new TV, and it's almost certain to be a widescreen HDTV. I don't really have any desire to sink a fortune into enough diskspace and processing power to save HDTV shows, though. What I'm considering is having an HDTV tuner in the media PC, and then using BeyondLink to access previously recorded SD content from a server in another room.

Basically, I just want a semi-seemless way to choose a "live" HDTV tuner instead of the SD tuners in the BeyondTV server.

Does this make sense? Am I thinking about this all wrong? Would it make more sense to set up the server with an HDTV card and access that tuner through BeyondLink? I have a gigabit connection from the server room, so bandwidth wouldn't be an issue, but I fear that streaming an HD signal, and recording two analog signals (worst case scenario) would be too taxing for the system...

[Rich A]

The "Link" is only a client for the BTV server. I'm doing what you want to do and don't have any problem. I have two analog tuners and a digital tuner in my server. I can watch HD playback on my link PC's while the server is recording from all three. The two analog tuners have their own mpeg encoders so they are just writing to the disk during encoding. The Over the Air digital tuner only writes the mpeg transport stream directly to the hard drive as it's received over the air. So in both cases any recording is not very CPU intensive. But you should consider adding a second drive dedicated for show recording/storage. It would not be advisable to try to do all that writing and reading on the same drive that has the OS on it.

[MickP]

<disclaimer>I don't have any experience with HD in BTV as I live outside the US where we have DVB-T which is still not supported</disclaimer>

I'd suggest running two copies of BTV. As the show info is stored within the files themselves you should be able to add a video folder for a drive mapped to the recording directory on the other server and all shows will show up just as if they'd been recorded locally. Put a hd tuner in the lounge btv server and whenever you view live tv on that box you'll be getting hd.


Mick.

[Rich A]

Why run two computers when one will work fine ?? Watching a live digital show makes for very little additional CPU use. There is no encoding required. It's just writing the transport stream from the OTA signal directly to the hard drive.

Today's modern hard drives can certainly handle the through put. As long as you don't bog down that hard drive with Windows swap file or program execution etc. That's why you want your storage drive dedicated to just storing BTV shows.

[MickP]

Originally Posted by Rich A

Why run two computers when one will work fine ?? Watching a live digital show makes for very little additional CPU use. There is no encoding required. It's just writing the transport stream from the OTA signal directly to the hard drive.

Today's modern hard drives can certainly handle the through put. As long as you don't bog down that hard drive with Windows swap file or program execution etc. That's why you want your storage drive dedicated to just storing BTV shows.

I agree that one machine could handle the recording and streaming load Rich. A link machine was mentioned though and using 2x BTV rather than 1x BTV and 1x Link with an HD tuner in the machine connected to the hd display may allow for a more elegant distribution of cards for live TV (as I thought that was the initial question). The downsides would be the need to schedule recordings seperately and the additional cost of BTV over Link for the 2nd machine.

Mick.

[Rich A]

Originally Posted by MickP

I agree that one machine could handle the recording and streaming load Rich. A link machine was mentioned though and using 2x BTV rather than 1x BTV and 1x Link with an HD tuner in the machine connected to the hd display may allow for a more elegant distribution of cards for live TV (as I thought that was the initial question). The downsides would be the need to schedule recordings seperately and the additional cost of BTV over Link for the 2nd machine.

Mick.

Okay Mick, I "think" I understand. I just can't wrap my mind around a two server scenario which I think is what the goal is. I think you are correct about the problem of "scheduling" and it might become somewhat confusing having to remember which server is recording which show and where the parameters for said recordings exist. If he does go that route, I'd like to hear about the results.

[nanook105]

Originally Posted by whytcolr

I'm in the market for a new TV, and it's almost certain to be a widescreen HDTV. I don't really have any desire to sink a fortune into enough diskspace and processing power to save HDTV shows, though. What I'm considering is having an HDTV tuner in the media PC, and then using BeyondLink to access previously recorded SD content from a server in another room.

Basically, I just want a semi-seemless way to choose a "live" HDTV tuner instead of the SD tuners in the BeyondTV server.

Does this make sense? Am I thinking about this all wrong? Would it make more sense to set up the server with an HDTV card and access that tuner through BeyondLink? I have a gigabit connection from the server room, so bandwidth wouldn't be an issue, but I fear that streaming an HD signal, and recording two analog signals (worst case scenario) would be too taxing for the system...

I use multiple BTV servers. One of my servers has 3 analog and 2 HD tuners. It is primarly used for recording HD and watching live TV for my links. I also have a GB network and watching HD on a link works great. My second BTV server is used mostly for recording.

[Rich A]

Originally Posted by nanook105

I use multiple BTV servers. One of my servers has 3 analog and 2 HD tuners. It is primarly used for recording HD and watching live TV for my links. I also have a GB network and watching HD on a link works great. My second BTV server is used mostly for recording.

I'll never complain about "my" electric bill again.

[nanook105]

Originally Posted by Rich A

I'll never complain about "my" electric bill again.

It is a killer. I also have a third BTV server that I use for testing/streaming (it has a SW card), a "Security" server, and a FreeNas Server for storage. Add that to the desktops for my wife/kids and the links, and I should own stock in the electric company.