Quad head video card needed for displaying 4 different sources (2 TV, 1 webpage, 1 cinema)

Archaea

Archaea

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A buddy wants to setup four 32" monitors by his pool.
He want's four different live sources on them.

The displays will show:
(1) his security camera's which are hosted on a local intranet website.
(2) for TV signals (USB TV Tuners) for different pro sports games.
(1) for a movie - bluray - whatever to playback.

He asked what type of setup he'd need to run such. I think I'll just recommend him a inexpensive current gen Ryzen build - that should be sufficient processing - these will likely be 1080P displays, but I think he might need a pretty powerful video card, or maybe even multiple video cards to do this?

I've never tried to do something like this, and I'm not even sure how it would work with a single PC and four separate displays with unique sources. Maybe he needs a workstation card, vs. a traditional gaming card?

Gaming is not important to him in any capacity for this system - he just wants to be able to display these different sources without studder or frame rate drops from the source.

Any suggestions?
 
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Not a solution here but some starter input:

I would honestly think just about any modern video card would do this. I run 3 monitors + a TV hooked up to my 980Ti, before that I did the same with an R9 280x w/ AMD FX 8320. I regularly game on one while having a movie play on another, browser on another, discord on another without a hiccup. So full screen the browser on monitor #1 with the security cam going, Kodi (or whatever movie playback software) on another. I don't think you need a workstation card and I don't think you need much at all in terms of CPU and Graphics. You can use multiple cheap GPUs or one GPU with enough outputs. Displayport to HDMI adapters are cheap since we're talking tvs.

I haven't done TV tuners but I would think they're no different than a capture card (which I also use).. Not sure what software they'll use for playback though, have to make sure whatever Tuner card you usehas some software that will allow multiple instances to run at the same time. Hopefully somebody else can jump in and comment on that.

Lastly, my primary concern is Audio. Is he expecting each TV to receive it's own audio signal? If so some mixing software like Voicemeter is going to come in to play here. I use that for splitting audio sources out to two devices, I'd imagine it can be done to 4 without too much overhead. I believe sound cards like the x-fi have hardware that can be used by the mixing software to reduce latency and speed up processing (if it were to be an issue).
 
For audio I suspect he’ll just pick one of the four. Likely the movie to play over his outdoor speakers.
 
Ok so I really think the question at hand is just what tv tuner / capture card software he should use to run those two inputs simultaneously. That's the only thing I can't speak on with any guarantee. I would think two instances of OBS studio (one for each card) with audio monitoring enabled would handle the capture cards, but I'd check with the AV dudes first.

I would just grab a budget GPU with 4 video outputs (usually that's 3DP and 1HDMI) and 3 DP to HDMI cables, maybe they made a gtx 1050 that way? Even that video card would probably be overkill and leave some room for firing up a game if he felt like it. First gen ryzen 5 on the stock cooler would probably be way more than up to snuff as well.
 
Archaea said:
Any suggestions?
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probably tell him to get some taste. i cringed when i read his idea for the pool, seriously. a single big screen mounted by the spa is acceptable though. not four 32 inch screens, woo lad. kodi is what you want though, any card with enough physical display ports will do. im running 3 screen 1080p at work often with separate media playing off a macbook pro iris with no card at all.
 
I don't think finding a video card with 4 hdmi outputs is easy. So he'll need 3 dp to hdmi adapters.

preferably use the native hdmi port for movie playback
 
Mode13 said:
Ok so I really think the question at hand is just what tv tuner / capture card software he should use to run those two inputs simultaneously. That's the only thing I can't speak on with any guarantee. I would think two instances of OBS studio (one for each card) with audio monitoring enabled would handle the capture cards, but I'd check with the AV dudes first.

I would just grab a budget GPU with 4 video outputs (usually that's 3DP and 1HDMI) and 3 DP to HDMI cables, maybe they made a gtx 1050 that way? Even that video card would probably be overkill and leave some room for firing up a game if he felt like it. First gen ryzen 5 on the stock cooler would probably be way more than up to snuff as well.
Click to expand...

This is the question at hand. He bought a machine it has a six core, 12 thread Ryzen and a Nvidia 1660TI video card and he has decided he wants 4 simultaneous TV inputs -- so he can have four games going.

Created a new thread to question that specifically.

https://hardforum.com/threads/what-tv-tuner-cards-supports-3-or-4-simulateneous-tv-inputs.1986805/
 
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