I am using an Nvidia DualTV with standard cable in the cable TV input without any problem.

I would like to add the output of my cablebox in one of the Svideo Input of the DualTV card, but I am wondering how MCE will  handle these two inputs, given that although they share the same guide, they do not offer the same range of channels.

The cable TV input only has the basic cable channels, when the cable box on the Svideo input will have all the digital channels from the cable box.

If it works, will MCE be smart enough to try to record with the Cable box input first and the Standard Cable second?
Are there any ways in Media center to specify which input to use for recording, or for live TV?

Apreciate if anyone has any experience with this type of configuration (two inputs with different channel range), even if not with the Nvidia dualTV

Not possible since MCE expects all tuners of the same type to be able to access the same channels. If you want to use your cable box, rent another one and connect both via svideo.

That is what I suspected.

This being said I found this utility on the web: http://www.salloway.org.uk/mediacenter/util/index.htm

that seems to implie that there could be a registry hack for tuner priority setting.

The thing I am wondering about is that the dualTV card has two tuners which will decode the signal on the Cable TV input, but the Cable box signal is an Svideo one coming in the Svideo Input, so it should not be going through a tuner, and so the registry hack from above may not work.

Any one has experience with the above mentionned tuner priority utility ?

 

The problem is not tuner priority but that MCE restricts you only only one program guide (EPG). So MCE can't have tuners that access different channels or different subset of channels. MCE does a hack for digital OTA channels by mapping them in the 1000+ range so it doesn't conflict with the analog channels, but the digital and analog versions of the same channel are viewed as two separate channels.

Normally, MCE uses the first tuner for LiveTV and the second tuner for recordings. I guess the utility may be helpful if you prefer the quality of one tuner over another for a specific task, but there is no guarantee that MCE will always use the same tuner since you can't control how MCE responds to conflicts, such as the case when you have more than one recording going at once or when livetv and recording sessions overlap.

Sure you can lie to MCE about what your tuners can tune to, such as choosing the digital cable EPG instead of the analog cable guide EPG. And maybe if MCE tries to use a tuner that can't tune to a specific channel, it'll generate an error and try to use the other (and correct) tuner to record. I haven't tried this. Certainly you're going to have a problem if more than one recording needs a specific tuner at the same time. I guess the matter that one tuner uses the built-in tuner and the other uses the IR-blasters to control the cablebox may be an issue. Give it a try and see if MCE will accept that configuration.