Sorry i can't get sick of this thread :-)

In case anyone was wondering, here are some actual pix of my MCE baby with 4 tuners in it!!!

Just think of the possibility, if I had 4 PVR-500's!!!!!!!! That'd be 8 TUNERS!!!

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Mike Garcen
TGB Moderator | MissingRemote Editor/Reviewer| Microsoft MVP - Media Center
My MCE Setup

I suspect this setup will only work with cable or OTA since or possibly DirecTV since an IR Balster is required for Set Top Boxes. Correct?

Is there a way to add more than two IR Blasters?

Is there a way to control more than 2 DirecTV receivers?

I would love to use this type of setup and truly have a single media center server to serv up all the families media needs. 

This is all GREAT news!  Thanks guys!

To terryd - there may very well be a way to control the multiple boxes, but I'm not sure.  There is a thread that for controlling channel changes via a firewire connection to STB's.  But I'm not sure about wether or not it will handle more than 2.

Something worth looking into.

Mash

OK - for people that may be a little confused (maybe me - but I think i've got it), I think in layman terms this is what scuffs discovered.

MCE will only "discover" 2 analog tuners when you run the TV setup.

But, if you insert the correct registry settings, it will handle more than 2.

Therefore you can run the TV setup with 2 tuner cards enabled (the rest should be disabled) at a time to learn what the registry values should be.  You then export them to a .reg file, and delete them from the registry.  You repeat this process until you have the correct registry values for all of your cards.

Once you have all of the registry values, you enable all of your cards, and run the registry files to insert all the correct registry values. 

And MCE will handle all of the tuners correctly.

Is that correct scuffs?

 

Thanks again,

Mash

Thanks for this, it works great!

It works with DVB-T tuners too. Right now I've got:
- Hauppauge Nova-t PCI 90002 #1 - Digital Antenna A
- Hauppauge Nova-t PCI 90002 #2 - Digital Antenna B
- Hauppauge Nova-t USB2 - Digital Antenna C
There is one very small "problem". The red record indicator doesn't appear in the program info banner (but appears everywhere else).

Edit: Set the Record and Watch order (to make them unique) and then restart Media Center services (or reboot). Then the indicator works as expected.

Now let's see, I've got three more PCI DVB-T cards laying around and an 8-output distribution amplifier....

Thats it exactly Mash, I might steal that for my howto.

If I had more than 1 STB I would try this but if any of you do.  Try buying a second USB reciever and using it when setting up.  Disable it when you disable the cards, then re-enable with it.

 

This is probably an obvious statement to make, but from what has been said, the existing limitation of two tuners is with the MCE frontend (and the setting up of the tuners) rather than the backend recording service.

Cheers

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Steve

My Media Center Setup

Media Center Version Info

Cool! Do any of you have more than two extenders? I assume this will allow >2 extenders to watch live tv simultaneously.

I wonder what the real limit is (i.e. how many tuners can record simultaneously before the disk I/O bogs down) and I wonder what the result will be in that case--dropped frames, corrupted files, ehrec.exe crashing?

Good work guys. My next MCE box will be a tower with 10000RPM SATA disks!

Dan

Can someone post at export of the registry under Video/Tuners when there is 4 tuners? I have channel change via firewire working with 2 tuners. I want to look at making it work with more tuners.

Damn. Now I got to order me a dual tuner PCI card to play catch up. (Drooling at shady's screen cap). I already have a Freestyle OEM 250 and a MCE PVR-250. I think I have 1 PCI slot left open to try out. Maybe have to find a good deal on a PVR-500 or USB tuner to try this out.

This is a great find! I haven't seen anyone claim success with more than 2 ATSC tuners yet. I will attempt it tonight if someone doesn't beat me to it!

Crank up a screen shot with the atsc tuners going also.

I'll play with more than 2 stbs this weekend.

I think I might be able to make an install program to skip all this mess and just add the extra cards that the inital tv setup couldn't do. Probably the easiest way unless you can specify provider and zip/postal code in the standalone guide setup.

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Bryan Socha
Media Center MVP

I just showed someone at work the screen shots and they are working on approval to make the mother of all video servers using mce.  With a bus extender I think I might be able to get 30 tuners in 1 machine. 

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Bryan Socha
Media Center MVP

hmmm 30 Tuners, no wonder Microsoft didnt want more than two lol.  I dont think it will work with MCE because of the disc usage, even in a raid setup I dont think you could keep up, SataII drives raided on a PCI express 8 slot with....

Shrug we'll see

I'll let you know what it takes.  I even have some firewire 800 arrays here and theres a 6 terrabyte netapp on the shelf waiting for an upcoming project.  I love work sometimes. 

If your in nyc in the village, best buy on broadway just sold out of their dual tuners   Its dangerous here, I still have an office depot, staples, game stop and electronics boutique to raid, all within 4 blocks.  I'm trying to avoid the subway.

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Bryan Socha
Media Center MVP