Possible to show multiple feeds at the same time?

Help with tuners from ATI, Hauppauge, AverMedia and more.
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wackychimp

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Possible to show multiple feeds at the same time?

#1

Post by wackychimp » Fri May 17, 2013 5:42 pm

The new Ceton 6 tuner looks enticing and I'd love to be able to be able to watch all 6 tuners at once (ok maybe just 4) during March Madness and other sports-heavy times. It'd be great to turn the home theater into a "sports bar" type of feel by projecting multiple games.

Is there any way to do this? (In WMC or outside if necessary.)

Thanks!

bmblank

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#2

Post by bmblank » Fri May 17, 2013 6:03 pm

With an extender for each viewing device its easily possibly.

Shackleford

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#3

Post by Shackleford » Fri May 17, 2013 6:14 pm

With an Ethernet attached tuner you could use separate PC's too.

wackychimp

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#4

Post by wackychimp » Fri May 17, 2013 6:29 pm

What about sending it all through a projector though. Is there something that will put all of the feeds together and send it to one HDMI port?

Something like this (though I think these are separate LCDs) - I'd need a projector:

Image

Shackleford

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#5

Post by Shackleford » Fri May 17, 2013 6:43 pm

Each PC or extender would need its own display. So unless the projector was able to display multiple inputs at the same time, no.

foxwood

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#6

Post by foxwood » Fri May 17, 2013 6:47 pm

With the InfiniTV4, the Linux drivers provided a stream that you could play in VLC, so it was possibly to have 4 VLC streams displayed on screen at once, but it obvioulsy only worked for unprotected content.

The Windows drivers didn't allow this (VLC can play a video stream from an InfiniTV in Windows, but you need WMC to start the stream, and VLC can't access the channel when WMC has it, and WMC turns the tuner off when it stops).

The InfiniTV6-ETH may work slightly differently, though - the beta drivers support tuner pooling, which isn't an option for the PCIe or USB versions.

wackychimp

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#7

Post by wackychimp » Fri May 17, 2013 8:41 pm

Hmmm... I would think that if you could record from 2 tuners at once that you could display from 2 tuners too. But I'm no programmer.


I'm not clear on what tuner pooling is... is that an option here?

foxwood

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#8

Post by foxwood » Fri May 17, 2013 9:09 pm

wackychimp wrote:Hmmm... I would think that if you could record from 2 tuners at once that you could display from 2 tuners too.
WMC doesn't provide any mechanism for displaying two videos at once. WMC is the only Windows tool that can use the InfiniTV tuners. It's not that you couldn't write an application that could display two streams at once, it's that the guys who wrote WMC didn't do that.
I'm not clear on what tuner pooling is... is that an option here?
The InfiniTV6-ETH has 6 tuners. If you have 3 PCs, any of them can grab up to 6 Tuners, if they are available (using the beta drivers). Machine A can record 6 programs at once, then release the tuners when it's done, and B can record 6 programs at once, and then release the tuners, and A can record 2 programs and C can record 4 programs at the same time.

With the PCIe and USB models, you had to assign your 4 tuners to a specific machine - 2 to machine A, 1 to B and 1 to Cm for example. Even if B and C were not using their tuners, A could only use 2 tuners.

wackychimp

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#9

Post by wackychimp » Fri May 17, 2013 9:54 pm

Tuner pooling sounds like it was definitely needed. That's cool.

On the multi-source thing, we just have to find someone that has written software that can handle this. I really wish I was a programmer because I think others would like this too...

foxwood

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#10

Post by foxwood » Fri May 17, 2013 10:18 pm

wackychimp wrote:On the multi-source thing, we just have to find someone that has written software that can handle this. I really wish I was a programmer because I think others would like this too...
The number of people interested in doing it is a tiny fraction of the already relatively small number of people interested in running a HTPC.

The main reason that WMC and Cable Card tuners go together is because WMC is the only software that can handle copy-protected content. And WMC just doesn't do muiple video streams at once. So if your cable provider marks the content that you're interested in as Copy Once, then just walk away - what you want to do isn't technically possible.

If the content that you are interested in displaying multiple streams of at once is not copy protected, then it's technically possible to display multiple live streams on a single screen at once - you just won't be using Windows Media Center, because it wasn't designed to do that.

I know that you can setup an InfiniV4 in Linux and use a set of Python scripts to allow VLC to access the InfiniTV tuners, and that you can run 4 copies of VLC at once, each showing a different stream. The copies of VLC can even be running on Windows, and accessing the tuners over the network. I don't know if the new InfiniTV6-ETH will also allow access to unprotected video streams over the LAN (I understand that you can do this in Windows with HDHomeRun Prime tuners).

wackychimp

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#11

Post by wackychimp » Sun May 19, 2013 8:39 pm

If anyone wants the details on this for posterity's sake, here's the technical explanation on why this can NOT work (from MSDN):

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library ... 89073.aspx

Love how the article is titled "Displaying Multiple Video and NowPlaying Items" and then the first line says: "The Windows Media Center shell can play only one video stream at a time." :crazy:

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#12

Post by blueiedgod » Mon May 20, 2013 4:53 pm

How badly do you want it done?

I have built a similar set up using WMC HTPC and 5 extenders, but if you want it done via single projector, you will have to pay some programmer to write it for you. Ask someone form Ceton if they want to take on a side job, perhaps, $10,000 will get you the software to do this. Otherwise, you will just have to suck it up and pay $1000 for HTPC, 6 TV's(or 6 projectors if you want the screen), and 5 extenders.

If this worth $9,000 to you?

wackychimp

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#13

Post by wackychimp » Tue May 28, 2013 4:57 pm

blueiedgod wrote:How badly do you want it done?
...

If this worth $9,000 to you?
Definitely not. ;)

I'm new to HTPCs but I was just surprised that there isn't a solution like this somewhere (for a price that fits the average HTPC builder's budget). Seems like a technically easy thing to do (provided you have multi-tuners) but evidently it's not... even outside WMC with solutions like MythTV and the like.

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#14

Post by jerryt » Tue May 28, 2013 8:40 pm

wackychimp wrote:The new Ceton 6 tuner looks enticing and I'd love to be able to be able to watch all 6 tuners at once (ok maybe just 4) during March Madness and other sports-heavy times. It'd be great to turn the home theater into a "sports bar" type of feel by projecting multiple games.

Is there any way to do this? (In WMC or outside if necessary.)

Thanks!
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=119865

blueiedgod

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#15

Post by blueiedgod » Thu May 30, 2013 4:23 pm

wackychimp wrote:
blueiedgod wrote:How badly do you want it done?
...

If this worth $9,000 to you?
Definitely not. ;)

I'm new to HTPCs but I was just surprised that there isn't a solution like this somewhere (for a price that fits the average HTPC builder's budget). Seems like a technically easy thing to do (provided you have multi-tuners) but evidently it's not... even outside WMC with solutions like MythTV and the like.

Look at the screen behind the guy on stage
Image

XBOX One

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#16

Post by kp4akb » Tue Jun 04, 2013 12:45 am

Has anyone recorded 4 shows that are unprotected and played them back with VLC? I did and there was a slight delay but they were displayed all at once. Next thing is sound, how to allocate the sound from each channel so that one has a choice of what to listen to
Ed Rios

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#17

Post by EZEd » Wed Jun 05, 2013 10:12 pm

Also note that in a sports bar what you are likely looking at is multiple feeds from multiple Satellite boxes (STBs) and individual display devices as well...not multiple sources going to one projector. The way to get what you want with individual sound for each is either individual PCs or extenders on individual display devices. 2 Infinitv6's, 12 xbox360s (or Echos) and 12 TVs will get you what you want. The logisitcs of which I wouldn't even want to think about.

foxwood

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#18

Post by foxwood » Wed Jun 05, 2013 10:36 pm

As kp4akb mentions above, getting 4 videos on a single screen at once isn't that difficult, though it obviously only make sense for videos that don't need sound.

VLC can access live Video streams, and some people in the XBMC community have used the Linux drivers for the Ceton InfiniTV to create scripts that allow VLC to access live video streams from the Ceton Tuners. It's theoretically possible to do this in Windows, but right now, the only software that actually controls the tuners in Windows is WMC, and VLC can't access a stream when WMC is controlling it, and WMC sends a STOP command to the tuner when WMC isn't using it. It's technically possible to write an application to turn on the tuners in Windows, and tune the channels so that there's a stream for VLC to capture, it's just that nobody with the skills to do that has ever felt the need to do so.

I don't know if the ETH6 in Tuner Pooling mode will be any easier to access from VLC.

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