[mythtv-users] Overloaded system?

Brian Wood beww at beww.org
Thu Mar 22 21:53:30 UTC 2007


On Mar 22, 2007, at 12:30 PM, Larry Sanderson wrote:

>
> My question: has anyone loaded up a similar system, and can the PCI  
> bus handle
> 4 recordings sent to a PCI controller card, with a FE playing back  
> another
> stream off the same controller?

I have a FE/BE system with 4 PVR-150s that can make 4 recordings  
while playing back another.  I am using a RAID0 array for disk  
storage, which may make a difference, though it does all have to go  
through the same PCI buss.

>
> I wasn't really worried until I stumbled on this link:
> http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/PCI_Latency
>

I happen to have written that particular entry. The information in  
the "summary" section was valid when I had 3 PVR-150s and a VIA-based  
mobo. Attempting to go to 4 PVRs at once didn't work too well, but  
replacing the mobo with an nForce-based Asus board worked better,  
thus 4 recordings are possible, but maybe not with the VIA board, and  
I can't say how much the RAID0 is helping because I've never tried it  
with just a single drive.

I will say that I have never used all 4 PVRs at once except for  
testing purposes. The sort of stuff I record gets repeated enough  
that 3 PVRs would be more than adequate, two for recording (one  
satellite and one cable) and the third for use as live TV (rare) or PiP.

Your plan to just see what happens seems like the best approach.

Brian Wood
beww at beww.org





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