[mythtv-users] Overloaded system?

[Steven Adeff]

On 3/22/07, Brian Wood <beww at beww.org> wrote:
> 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.


my backend has a PVR-150, two A180's (HD) and a remote firewire
connected cablebox. At one point I had 3 HD tuners and no firewire
connected cablebox. All this with two remote frontends and I haven't
noticed any issues. I *have* had all recorders going at once along
with both frontends playing back HD content.