How to use multiple TV tuners simultaneously on the same PC?

[ASilver76]

Hello all. I'm new here, and I had a question that Motz felt the members of this forum might be able to answer. He's a nice guy, and I respect his suggestions. And so here I am.

Here's the question: I love the idea of a multi-tuner card like the Ceton InfiniTV, but one thing I want to do with the card seems to be impossible - use multiple tuners to watch multiple TV shows on the same computer at the same time. Either side by side, tiled, or picture in picture. I'm aware that this depends on the software being used (MCR, XBMC, etc), as opposed to the hardware (by and large). However, I have been unable to find any software that would allow this to be done, which seems strange. Given this, I'd like to know if it us actually possible to do this using any current hardware/software combo, and if so, what would be the best way to go about it. It seems to me that if you can assign different tuners to different computers over a network, and watch one show while recording another simultaneously on the same computer, it should be a simple thing to be able to watch multiple shows simultaneously, as long as each is being handled by a different tuner. Consequently, I'd appreciate it if anyone on the forum could either tell me or find out 1) if this is possible, 2) if so how to go about doing this, and 3) if it would requires third-party software The OS I am using is Windows 7 (though I also would be interested in using this with WIndows XP).

I apologize in advance for the query being a bit chunky and repetitive; the post itself if the exact same question I asked Motz, just roughly reformatted for general forum consumption. I didn't want to risk losing it's salient points accidentally in the clean up process.

Let me also add one more point, if I can:I don't intend using the multiple tuners for any networked and/or PVR applications. I know the capability for both is built into most software packages currently available, but if I need to sacrifice these things to make the setup work, it wouldn't be a problem.

Thanks Again!

[gpatlanta]

Hi,

Do you know if your content streams are DRM protected? The reason I ask, is if they are not you may (read may with emphasis) be able to use VLC player pointing directly to content streams from the InfiniTV. I am not sure if this would work, but I read on the XBMC forums a while back that a group had figured out how to tap into content streams from the InfiniTV card using VLC, the key is these were unencrypted channels. I've not used this and don't know much about it since I don't have this need, but if you can stream one, I expect you'd be able to tune and stream all four if you ran in different VLC instances assuming your graphics and CPU can handle it.

May be a stretch, but hope this helps. If you are focused on protected channels I suspect you are out of luck as the software itself handles some part of the decryption as I understand it and WMC is the only software at the moment that does this as far as I know. Also, I do not believe XP is supported by Ceton drivers.

Greg

[barnabas1969]

Another possibility that I've been wanting to try is to use an extender connected to a 2nd HDMI input on the TV. If the TV supports PIP from two different HDMI sources, then it would allow a person to watch two shows in PIP... using the PC as one source, and the extender as another.

I haven't tried it on my TV yet. It's not really a high priority, because I honestly never used PIP even when I was able to do it with my old cable-company-supplied DVR.

[foxwood]

Right now, Windows Media Center is the only application that can play copy protected streams, and Media Center will only display one video stream at a time.

If your cable provider doesn't copy-protect the channels that you're interested in displaying simultaneously, then there are tools that can access the video streams from InfiniTV tuners, and you should be able to display multiple streams in multiple windows.

This (long) thread is about a tool that makes content from Ceton streams available to VLC for use in XBMC. It should be possible to open 4 VLC windows and put a different stream in each window, as long as the content is not copy-protected:
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=119865

[ASilver76]

I wanted to thank everyone for the info they've provided. It's still a bit deflating to find out that even after all these years, no application is able to do this seemingly simple thing without jumping through some major hoops. If anyone has any additional ideas thoughts or suggestions, please feel free to add them.

Thanks again!

[soccerdad]

NextPVR now has PIP in the latest release. Again, it won't work with DRM stuff, but it will work for non-protected stuff. I was a long time user and moved to WMC7 because of the DRM issues. The software is free so you can try it. They have a very active and helpful forum group with the program's lone coder actively participating. They even have what is termed "multi-record" where you can record multiple channels off a singel tuner, as long as the channels are on the same base transport stream. If it works for you, please consider donating a few bucks to help keep that great project alive.

Good luck and welcome to TGB

[Jlagrotta]

I have a similar problem with a twist. I have three Hauppauge dual tuners, each tuner is hooked to a different antenna pointed in different directions. The challenge is some of the tuners get signals off the backside of the antenna (at a lower dB level). WinTV v8 can receive the signals but NextPVR does not.

Any suggestions. I am using the Hauppauge decoders in NextPVR.

[dmagerl]

The only way I know how to do that is by using HDhomerun tuners. You can launch multiple instances of their TV program, Quicktv, and do what you want.