<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Nov 9, 2007 3:02 PM, James Orr <<a href="mailto:james.orr7@gmail.com">james.orr7@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div class="Ih2E3d">On 11/9/07, Kevin Nelson <<a href="mailto:kevin@soundcyst.com">kevin@soundcyst.com</a>> wrote:<br>> Hi all, I'm new here and I have a couple of questions.<br>><br>> I'm setting up a household distributed video system (one server for
<br>> the house, each TV as a client). Basically, I was wondering if this<br>> has been done before.<br>><br>> I have yet to build the computers, so any hardware suggestions would<br>> be appreciated. Also, it will be running through Comcast, and I need
<br>> it to be able to access both digital and onDemand content (ok, so<br>> MythTV doesn't really neeeed to be able to record onDemand, but it<br>> would be nice. The main requirement is that onDemand works at any of
<br>> the TVs)<br><br></div>Using onDemand with MythTV will require a lot of jumping through<br>hoops. In general the only thing myth will do to a set-top box is<br>change the channel and onDemand would require it to also be able to
<br>navigate the comcast menus. However, once you have all your recording<br>rules in place, you shouldn't really ever have a need to use onDemand.<br><div class="Ih2E3d"><br>> I'm assuming we will need one set top box / tuner card in the server
<br>> per TV.<br><br></div>Nope, you could have one set-top box/tuner card going to 3 TVs if you<br>wanted, or you could have 3 tuner cards going to 1 TV (like mine).<br>You would only need one tuner/TV if you wanted to watch different
<br>channels of live programming on every TV in the house.<br><div><div></div><div class="Wj3C7c">_______________________________________________<br>mythtv-users mailing list<br><a href="mailto:mythtv-users@mythtv.org">mythtv-users@mythtv.org
</a><br><a href="http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users" target="_blank">http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users</a><br></div></div></blockquote></div><br><br>I have a backend with 2 PVR 250s and a PVR500. I needed to have at least 1 tuner available all the time for Live TV and a second tuner for part of the time for Live TV. With the number of tuners I have, this is workable. I'd say generally you may want to keep 2 tuners for recording duties and add a tuner for each tv that you would want to be able to simultaneously watch live TV without interruptions (the backend asking you if you want to cancel live TV so it can record) or to guarantee that you can watch live tv anytime (mythtv not complaining of all tuners busy). Sometimes, I even have all 4 tuners capturing a scheduled show at the same time (hence no live TV), but this is rare. On the average, only 2 tuners are busy recording shows.
<br><br>One of my PVR 250's is connected to a motorola set top box. And as long as that tuner is not busy recording a show, I can access it from any frontend by changing to a channel that is only assigned to that tuner (example BBC america). Mythtv handles the tuner switch transparently. Of course, only one frontend at a time can access the set top box programming.
<br><br>Hope this helps<br>Chris<br><br><br><br>