InfiniTV 6 ETH - Multiple MC Tuner Share

[glorp]

I have 2 Win7 media center HTPCs. One just records TV and the recordings are later moved to a server for use at the other MC, so the first one is the "DVR". The other HTPC/MC is where all TV is viewed. I'd like to get an InfiniTV 6 ETH and dedicate 4 tuners for the DVR and use the other 2 dedicated to the HTPC for live + an occasional local recording. I'd do this rather than use actual tuner pooling just to avoid pooling problems that people seem to have. Can't imagine needing more than 4 simultaneous recordings at the DVR.

Is this possible? I haven't seen any info on it in the Ceton set up guides but I seem to recall that it's possible to select individual tuners at the time TV Setup is run so I'm assuming I could simply enable tuners 1-4 on one MC and 5-6 on the other? Any fatal flaws in any of this or is it just better to use tuner pooling?

[JohnW248]

The only problem you might encounter depends on your service provider, if any channels are marked copy once (CCI 0x02) then you won't be able to view them on machine #2. You can record and view them on machine #1 and you can move them to a server and still watch them on machine #1 but not any other machine. With Time Warner Cable almost everything other than OTA re-trans are marked as copy once and protected. If you have FiOS, then most everything other than HBO & Showtime and other premiums (depending on area) are copy freely.

But this can change with a whim of the service provider where you just wake up one morning and nothing works anymore. The best solution is to use one machine for recording and then media center extenders (Ceton Echo or Xbox) to video feeds to tv sets. Then you can watch anything on any tv and you can watch live tv on any time and you can schedule recordings on any tv. You can move recordings to a server for storage and it'll all still work. You just need to add that source to each extender since each has its own account.

[glorp]

Thanks JohnW. I'm more-or-less informed about the DRM issues. For me it's Comcast, and no premium channel subscriptions. Nothing of mine is protected content at this point. Since I only have one main viewing TV if it ever became protected content I'd just have to record the non-locals at the HTPC instead but as long as it's not I like to offload most HTPC recording duties elsewhere so they don't affect other activities. I've had a 4-tuner Ceton PCIe in the "DVR" for a year now using network tuners to assign one of those 4 tuners to the HTPC. But I've also been able to take up some of the viewing/recording load at both by using a shared SDHDHR for locals. Now that my buddies at Comcast are encrypting them I'm down to 4 tuners and it's just not enough at times.

I was really interested in whether or not it's physically possible to designate certain tuners on the ETH 6 to one MC exclusively. From reading the install guide, apparently tuner pooling is a different firmware/hardware than the non-pooled version so I'm not sure exactly how the "non-pooled" operation works if there is more than one WMC accessing it. Non-pooled is fine as long as I can still use my 2 WMCs in the way I described before without running in to tuner conflicts. I just can't remember if you can enable/disable individual tuners at TV Setup time (I know you can channel by channel afterwards but that would be a 500-channel nightmare!), or maybe Ceton's drivers or diagnostic app for an ETH6 gives you the ability to de/select individual tuners at the MC prior to running Setup? If it's not possible then I'll need the beta tuner pooling firmware.

If anyone with an ETH 6 or the Ceton guys could tell me for sure how the non-pooled operation works in a multi-WMC environment that would be great.

Thanks.

[erkotz]

We are unaware of any issues with tuner pooling (besides the obvious potential problem of attempting to use more tuners than exist). There is no way to "shut off" pooling on firmwares that support it, however if you only assign each tuner to one PC, that will essentially be the same thing.

[glorp]

Eric,

Thanks. I guess that's what I'm still asking, that I've not seen described anywhere before: where/how does one assign each tuner to one PC on an ETH6? Is that part of the setup or something that's been added to the diagnostic app? I can only get that functionality on my PCIe by using Network Tuners and bridging on the host. I assume that's not at all necessary or even possible with the ETH6? If I can assign tuners to PCs then I would probably not have a need to use firmware with pooling capability.

[erkotz]

Just go through WMC tuner setup, go to manual setup, and un-check the tuners you don't want used on that PC.

[glorp]

I had forgotten you can enable/disable individual tuners on a multiple tuner device from that step in set up. Been too long ...

Thanks Eric. Now I'm sure that the non-pooled firmware version will work fine for what I want to do.