dual tuner question

M

maxse

Gawd
Joined
Apr 21, 2004
Messages
516
I have MCE 2005. I am looing to get 2 PVR150s. Now here is my quewstion. I have DirectTV. In order to utilize the dual tuner, will I have to have 2 different DirectTV boxes? Is it possible to have just on direcTV box and use a spliter or something to split the coax. Than input into each card?

I just thought of this because it doesnt make sense to for me to spend $200 about, in addiotion to the money I just spent on my HTPC to just do this. Can any1 help me out in describing how this process works. Thanks
 
Yep, you need seperate boxes since each box can only tune one channel at a time. Sattelite or digital cable can be costly with a HTPC :( Essentially you need a "two room" setup for your HTPC.
 
yep, waht he said. That is why I did a standard cable service. I use the standard cable input in one tuner card, and my additional card will be hooked to the digital box once I get a new tuner and usb-uirt.
 
IDversusEGO, i think that is the setup i am contemplating. i already have an HTPC setup with a single tuner. since i have an HDTV i can't run all my tv through the HTPC because it means i lose all the HD channels. so i split the cable at the wall and ran 1 cord to the HTPC and 1 to the STB. i really would like to be able to record shows on HBO though- like ali g, sitc, etc. so i was going to add another tuner and run a line from the STB to that new tuner.

is that kind of what you're doing?
 
May I suggest DirecTivo if you are a DirectTV customer. The box is cheap(49-99dollars) the service is cheap (only $5 per HOUSE, not box), and it has DUAL tuners and requires no IR blasters. Also you can NOT get better quality either, since it records the untouched mpeg stream straight the the disk, this also means it records the AC3 audio on shows that broadcast it. These are things a HTPC or standalone Tivo can not do.

Mind you I like HTPC and it can do other neat tricks that a DirecTivo can not, however if you are using it strictly for recording TV and want the best quality, ease of use, and cost, you can not beat a DirectTivo.

I personally am going to build a SageTV box, because in my recent move I was unable to keep DirecTV because of no LOS :(. I already sold my DirecTivo so do not bother asking, I still miss it.

Also with Dual Tuner setup for you, you will need 2 recievers and 2 coax runs coming into the room from your dish. You can not just through a splitter on the single line coming into the room. So if you do not have 2 coax runs into the room you will need to run a second line. This is also true for DirecTivo.
 
direct Tivo is cool, but you can't burn the files or share them to other devices. otehrwise, I like it.
 
m1abram said:
Also with Dual Tuner setup for you, you will need 2 recievers and 2 coax runs coming into the room from your dish. You can not just through a splitter on the single line coming into the room. So if you do not have 2 coax runs into the room you will need to run a second line. This is also true for DirecTivo.
Click to expand...
i don't understand what you're saying here. the line is going to be split regardless. the cable company is not going to run to discrete lines off the pole for you. it is split somewhere in your house. what is it you're saying here? just looking for some clarification.

thanks
 
big daddy fatsacks said:
i don't understand what you're saying here. the line is going to be split regardless. the cable company is not going to run to discrete lines off the pole for you. it is split somewhere in your house. what is it you're saying here? just looking for some clarification.

thanks
Click to expand...
Talking about DirectTV here, not cable. Cable is different.

DirectTV requires signal to be sent back from the receiver to the LNB (head on the dish).
 
For multiple tuners/boxes on DirecTV you need a multiswitch and a dual LNB dish.
The multiswitch will lock one LNB to 'odd' and the other to 'even' and will handle switching the requests from the decoder boxes.
 
Jake said:
For multiple tuners/boxes on DirecTV you need a multiswitch and a dual LNB dish.
The multiswitch will lock one LNB to 'odd' and the other to 'even' and will handle switching the requests from the decoder boxes.
Click to expand...

Exactly but just so people understand you can NOT use a multiswitch with just 1 input they require 2 input that connect to the Dual LNB.
 
This makes me love analog cable even more :p I've got it running to 5 sources from one line, no extra costs except about $5 for my bigass splitter.

(sorry I know that wasn't helpful :()
 
k1114 said:
This makes me love analog cable even more :p I've got it running to 5 sources from one line, no extra costs except about $5 for my bigass splitter.

(sorry I know that wasn't helpful :()
Click to expand...

Ah but DirectTV users do not pay through the nose in taxes, and ALL channels are Digital unlike Digital Cable where only the high channels are digital. If you are halfway compenent you can do a DirectTV install yourself and resolve any signal issues yourself, with cable you are at the mercy of the cable company (my cable company still has not fixed my signal strength issue at the pole). And people who say "What about Rain Fade" have never used DirectTV or used it on a poorly setup system. I had only experience Rain Fade once in the two years I had it and that was because of a Hurricane hit! The outage lasted about 30 minutes, my neighbors cable was out for 2 weeks.

The mirroring fee can be an issue if you have ALOT of recievers, however if you were to get a Digital Cable box for each TV you would be spending about the same amount of Cable Box rental fees.
 
oh man guys are u serious??? I was sooo looking to use the PVR function in MCE 2005 with dual tuners. Oh man this sux big time. Your saying I cant just split the cable for directTV? Doesnt the tuner card hav e a built-in tuner to change the channells???!!!
 
maxse said:
oh man guys are u serious??? I was sooo looking to use the PVR function in MCE 2005 with dual tuners. Oh man this sux big time. Your saying I cant just split the cable for directTV? Doesnt the tuner card hav e a built-in tuner to change the channells???!!!
Click to expand...

The built in tuner can ONLY handle analog cable signals, just like your TV. Which is why you have a DirecTV reciever box.
 
m1abram said:
Talking about DirectTV here, not cable. Cable is different.

DirectTV requires signal to be sent back from the receiver to the LNB (head on the dish).
Click to expand...
thanks for the clarification.
 
oh man. This is terrible news. I should have done more research before building the HTPC. U guys are saying for digital cable it wouldnt be neccessary?
 
wouldn't need what? the tuner cards? You still need something to capture the video, even if the channel is being tuned by a box or not. The PVR cards are still vauable in an HTPC because they capoture and encode the video feed into a mpeg file format.
 
maxse said:
oh man. This is terrible news. I should have done more research before building the HTPC. U guys are saying for digital cable it wouldnt be neccessary?
Click to expand...

Tuner card is still needed regardless if you have digital cable, sat, or analog. Just with digital cable or sat you need to reciever box (cable box, sat box) too and a way to change the channels on the box, usually via and IR blaster, however some boxes (Hughes DirecTV boxes) can be controlled directly via serial cable.
 
I would assume you dont techincally need a "tuner" card for each box, just a seperate capture source since the onboard tuner isn't used.
 
no no no. u guys had it all wrong lol. I know I need the tunre cards. 2 Tuners. But I was talking about the STB boxes. The direcTV boxes. Im saying will I need to boxes just to be able to view one channell and record another? IT seems kinda stupid to me if u need to buy another box just to be able to use. It makes the HTPC setup very expensive.

Now are u guys saying that for cable, I would not need the two seperate cable boxes?(I know I need 2 tuners...)
 
If you want to watch one channel while recording another you'll need two STBs. For regular analog cable all you have to do is get a video splitter and run two cable lines into your HTPC.
 
and to expand on what CrimandEvil said if you are using digital cable or directv/dish you will need 2 set top boxes as each box only contains 1 digital tuner.
 
yes you need 2 STB's for Digital cable and 2 STB's for DirecTV. for regular cable, no boxes are needed.

don't get your hopes down by this factor, an HTPC can do a lot more. depending on your processor power and video card, you can do things like increasing DVD resolutions, watch divx movies, mp3's, play games, browse internet, install emulators, everything all from an HTPC. the possibilities are almost endless !
 
plus, how many times are you going to be recording 2 shows at the same time? I have only wanted dual tuners a couple of times. not enought for me to get off my ass and get a usb-uirt yet.
 
IDversusEGO said:
plus, how many times are you going to be recording 2 shows at the same time? I have only wanted dual tuners a couple of times. not enought for me to get off my ass and get a usb-uirt yet.
Click to expand...

I do not watch all that much TV, however I have found that having 2 tuners is key for a DVR. In fact now that I am married 3 or 4 is probably needed.

With NBC pulling its weird start times, 2 tuners become very handy if you record any primetime shows on NBC. For instance ER starts at like 9:57 and I also record CSI which goes from 9-10, I would need 2 tuners just for that overlap.

Also recording sporting events usually means blocking out 4 hours of tuner time, that the wife will usually want to watch or record something else.

Having to get a second STB should not be that big a deal, hell you can get a brand new DirecTV reciever for less than $50.
 
oh wow really? They are that cheap? Can you link me to a decent DirectTV STB? Also what are the procedures for splitting th ecable. They seem to be a littl eocmplicated for directTV. The thing is I already have 2 STB but one is in my basement and has to remain there... So any suggestions?

I am running an Athlon XP @ 2.4ghz with an FX5700 and 1 gig of ram. I would love to post-process but right now MCE does not have FFDShow support.
 
m1abram said:
With NBC pulling its weird start times, 2 tuners become very handy if you record any primetime shows on NBC. For instance ER starts at like 9:57 and I also record CSI which goes from 9-10, I would need 2 tuners just for that overlap.
Click to expand...
Reasons like that is why I got them. :D

Maxse said:
I am running an Athlon XP @ 2.4ghz with an FX5700 and 1 gig of ram. I would love to post-process but right now MCE does not have FFDShow support.
Click to expand...
Which is why I'm not using MCE ;). FYI there is a hack for FFDShow support, I'll try to find the link but it's pretty easy to do in SageTV ;)
 
maxse said:
oh wow really? They are that cheap? Can you link me to a decent DirectTV STB? Also what are the procedures for splitting th ecable. They seem to be a littl eocmplicated for directTV. The thing is I already have 2 STB but one is in my basement and has to remain there... So any suggestions?

I am running an Athlon XP @ 2.4ghz with an FX5700 and 1 gig of ram. I would love to post-process but right now MCE does not have FFDShow support.
Click to expand...

http://www.valueelectronics.com/

I have dealt with them in the past, very good people.

If you do NOT have a mutiplexer, then you will need one if you need more than 2 STBs. Also the pain in the butt part comes getting the second cable drop to where you want your HTPC cause you can NOT split at that point. You need the multiplexer as close to the Dish as possible and it requires 2 inputs.
 
oh man. This is becoming harder than I thought. Does that website sell multipleexors as well? Does tihs mean I will have to drill yet aonther hole in my house?

And thanks for the FFDShow link but I dont really watch divx all that much. I hope they will come out with a hck for DVD movies as well.
 
If you already have connections from the 2 LNBs on the dish coming in then you will not need any more holes drilled.
 
Jake said:
If you already have connections from the 2 LNBs on the dish coming in then you will not need any more holes drilled.
Click to expand...

Chances are though he does NOT have two connections going to the same room, which he will need. So you will need to run a second coax, if that means drilling holes not sure have not seen your house.

Yes they sell multiplexors, so does radio shack, and even home depot and lowes, or any place that sells Sat equipment. They come in a variety of flavors, you may want to do a little research before buying one. Will you need a powered one? Will you need one that is cascable, wihat size do you need?

Check out tivocommunity.com, they have a DirectTV forum and answer a good number of the questions regarding getting dual tuners setup, since you need to for a DirecTivo or any other Sat. system to record with two tuners.

edit: there is one other option I have not mentioned, called Stacker/Destacker device. This allows you to send BOTH LNB signals over a single coax, however they are rather pricey, sometimes unreliable, and generally not worth the savings of just running a second coax. You still would need 2 STBs and the cost to run a second coax is usually not that big a deal.
 
m1abram said:
Chances are though he does NOT have two connections going to the same room, which he will need. So you will need to run a second coax, if that means drilling holes not sure have not seen your house.
<SNIP>
Click to expand...

Sorry, I was assuming he meant into the house, inside pffft! who worries about interior walls! lol
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top