What TV Tuner Cards supports 3 or 4 simulateneous TV inputs?

Archaea

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Oct 19, 2004
Messages
11,821
A friend of mine wants to hook up four 32" HDTVs to his PC (with a 1660TI) graphics card and a six core Ryzen to show four live game feeds on TV -- with the capability to pull up a security cam, webpage, or youtube on one of the monitors as well.

I know the graphics card will output 4 screens.
What I'm unsure of is if buying four USB HDTV tuners will conflict if he tries to show a different channel on each display?

Any suggestions?
 
Yeah, I have a hauppauge quad atsc tuner in my server that I use to DVR from OTA. Works well. It only has a single coax input though so I can't put two different antennas and point them in different directions sadly.
 
I have that Huappage. It works well for two simultaneous streams, haven't attempted more than that. I use it for DVR through a plex server primarily.
 
must be nice to live somewhere when the cable companies don't encrypt every single channel
 
must be nice to live somewhere when the cable companies don't encrypt every single channel

ATSC OTA is not encrypted. But you are right in that not everywhere can get good OTA reception (forced to use cable).
 
Just got that quad card. To get it to work in generic linux, you need to put it in debug mode (debug=5 or higher) and then blacklist your kernel messages to the log otherwise they will fill up quick. Hauppauge has windows binaries and also a Ubuntu repository if you want to try those. I am using Fedora, works good with mythtv as a backend PVR. Kodi frontend. The local channels in US are mandated for clear qam broadcast over the cable system. As stated, Canada had no such requirement. I cut the cord a few years back.
 
Last edited:
must be nice to live somewhere when the cable companies don't encrypt every single channel

By law they have to offer a cable card. Most TV Tuners (the good ones) can accept cable cards to view/watch/record the encrypted cable.

HDHome run is by far the best IMHO. You can use more than one and they plug into the network and cable externally. No need to take up a PCI-e slot in a computer or otherwise.

edit
Didn't realize you lived in Canada. Might not be an option there then.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Using the hdhomerun-

One HD stream would need 2 Mbps minimum
X 4 streams = 8Mbps

a PCIe slot with the quad tuner uses no network bandwidth installed locally.
 
Using the hdhomerun-

One HD stream would need 2 Mbps minimum
X 4 streams = 8Mbps

a PCIe slot with the quad tuner uses no network bandwidth installed locally.

8Mbps on a Gigabit network isn't anything.
 
You dont put your network turner card on the wireless network. You plug it into a wired port.

Any wireless devices that use it will have the same bandwidth limitations over the network as a pci-e card in a computer.

And if the computer you're streaming on is connected via wireless then you're doing it wrong.
 
Using the hdhomerun-

One HD stream would need 2 Mbps minimum
X 4 streams = 8Mbps

a PCIe slot with the quad tuner uses no network bandwidth installed locally.
Who cares? I guess it's worth noting but the advantage greatly outweighs that small cost.

Can't see a reason why that would be a big deal in any situation.

If the TV's are smart TVs or any of many streaming devices are attached you wouldn't have to deal with a PC with 4 video outputs and 4 different instances of a media player open. But that option is also available should he choose to do it like that.

I think the real problem is are you going to have four games to put on if we're talking only OTA. Maybe for college football bye even there likely not.
 
You all know the OP's implemetation plan before they posted it - I love my Psychic {H} friends! Post your numbers so I can get a reading.
 
You all know the OP's implemetation plan before they posted it - I love my Psychic {H} friends! Post your numbers so I can get a reading.
Not sure who you are referring to, but I did notice for some reason i assumed it was sports but when looking back to the OP it wasn't there. Oh well.
 
Back
Top