[mythtv-users] What's the practical limit on capture cards?

[Steve Peters - Priority Electronics]

> So with a Core 2 Due processor, would it be possible to have a six tuner
setup?  Anyone on the list actually 
>have this many tuners in one  box?    Issues you encountered?   
>
>Thanks,
>
>-- 
>Eric Mesa 

Eric, I had 3 of the pvr-500's in a pentium 4 2.8ghz 512mb ram computer, and
never had any issues with them all recording, and playing back two files at
the same time, and even doing other things at the same time, like
transcoding. So to give you an idea, here's what I had the mythbox doing all
at the exact same time, never without any issues:

1. Record 6 tv shows (all analog)
2. Transcode 2 shows at the same time using nuvexport
3. Commercial flag one show at a time
4. Watch one show at a time (sometimes even two shows, by recording 4 shows,
then watching live tv, and using picture in picture, using all 6 tuners)
5. Moving large files across the filesystems (Storage groups was not a
feature yet, so I had my recordings split up among 2 500gb hard
drives...recordings would happen on one drive, then I'd move them over to
the other drive to free up space on my recording drive.

I never had buffer underrun problems or any sort of disk problems, and the
mythbox was a combined frontend/backend. It was able to do all that without
any issues. Pretty cool if you ask me. Now I have a core 2 duo with 1gb ram,
and it's like three times as fast (or more) when it comes to some of this
video stuff (ie transcoding, comm flagging, etc)
-Steve