How does WMC select appropriate tuner?

[herrakonna]

I'm planning on setting up a HTPC using Windows Media Center (am buying a new machine) and still have some technical questions... (don't have the machine or WMC to test things myself)

If I have two tuners on my machine, one that is freeview only and the other having a pay-channel decoder card, does WMC "intelligently" choose the most appropriate tuner, or is it just from a "dumb" list, such that it just grabs the next available tuner in the list and you're just screwed if either (a) it doesn't have a decoder card and you are tuned to a pay channel or (b) it has a decoder card but are tuned to a freeview channel, thus "wasting" the card for other use?

I.e. if I change the channel to a freeview channel, and both tuners are available, will it use the freeview tuner, leaving the more capable tuner available, in case e.g. a scheduled recording from a pay channel is about to begin?

Or, if I change the channel to a pay channel, will WMC know to select the tuner with the card reader and decoder card, or will I have to manually select the tuner?

Finally, when scheduling a recording, can I explicitly specify the tuner to use, so that I can force WMC to either use a freeview tuner for a freeview channel or ensure that it uses a tuner with the pay TV card for a pay channel?

Or is WMC so dumb that the only way to retain sanity will be to have tuners with pay channel decoder cards for all tuners?

(I'd love it if a single card reader and decoder card would work for all tuners, but it seems that none of the available solutions, e.g. Hauppage Win-CI, anysee E30, etc. support that. Each tuner apparently needs its own dedicated card -- but someone correct me if I've missed such a solution...)

[barnabas1969]

Media Center should only setup a channel to be tuned on an individual tuner if that tuner is in fact capable of tuning the channel. Then, you can manually edit the tuner priorities on a per-channel basis. You can move the tuners up/down in the priority list, or enable/disable specific tuners for each channel.

Once you set the tuner priorities, and you watch live TV or schedule a recording, Media Center will attempt to use each tuner in the order of priority. If the first tuner is busy or unable to tune the channel, it will try the next one and so on. You can't specify which tuner to use when you schedule a recording, but if you set your priorities correctly that won't be a problem.

It sounds like you're in Europe, so you have a little different setup than I do in the US. However, it works the same way. For example: I have ten tuners. There are some channels that can be received free over the air (ATSC), unencrypted digital over cable (QAM), analog cable (NTSC), and also encrypted digital cable (QAM with CableCARD). I have the tuner priority on those channels set in the following order: ATSC, QAM, CableCARD, NTSC. I chose to make NTSC the last resort because the quality is much better on the digital channels.

Hope this helps.

[richard1980]

Once you set the tuner priorities, and you watch live TV or schedule a recording, Media Center will attempt to use each tuner in the order of priority. If the first tuner is busy or unable to tune the channel, it will try the next one and so on. You can't specify which tuner to use when you schedule a recording, but if you set your priorities correctly that won't be a problem.

I don't think that is correct. At least that's not how my system behaves. My tuner priorities are set in order (InfiniTV tuner 1, InfiniTV tuner 2, InfiniTV tuner 3, then InfiniTV tuner 4). However, the order of usage for recordings is 2-4-1-3, while the order of usage for live TV is 3-4-1-2.

[barnabas1969]

Well, I can definitely say that my setup will definitely use the ATSC tuners for local channels before it tries the Clear QAM or CableCARD tuners... and I think that's what the OP is trying to accomplish.

[mark1234]

I agree with Barnabas, my 7MC follows the set tuner priorities.