[mythtv-users] Multi-Input Cards

[Brian Wood]

On Monday, September 13, 2010 01:49:11 pm Thomas Mashos wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 13, 2010 at 12:47 PM, Robert McNamara
> <robert.mcnamara at gmail.com
> 
> > wrote:
> > 
> > On Mon, Sep 13, 2010 at 12:45 PM, mike at grounded.net <mike at grounded.net>
> > 
> > wrote:
> > > Can two tuners or two inputs or one of each be used at the same time?

> 
> And it would depend on the card. Some cards allow you to, some do not.

Two completely independent tuner devices can certainly be used at the same time.

There are limitations.

For example, a PVR-150 only has one encoder, so you can only use one input at a time.

A PVR-500, which is actually 2 PVR-150s, would let you use the composite input from one side and the RF input from the 
other at the same time, or even both RF sides, tuning different channels.

A card which "tunes" ATSC or QAM (or one of the DVB formats) might or might not let you record more than one signal at a 
time, depending on what is on what multiplex. This is "multirec", which is a whole 'nother issue.

The main limitation is disk I/O, as long as you can write the total aggregate data to disk fast enough, Myth is not 
imposing any limitations.

So the answer is an unqualified "Maybe", depending on the cards. It's not a Myth issue.