Questions on two (digital and analog) Cable Connections

[davidjames]

I have a Hauppauge 250 and a 150 card. I currently have analog cable and use a splitter to attach the coax to both cards.

If I go digital, I assume to use both 2 cards, I'll need 2 digital boxes and 2 IR blasters (please correct me if that's wrong).

Would it be possible to just get one digital box and connect it to one card and keep an analog connection to the other?

If so, is there anyway to "select" which connection (analog/digital) I use with a specific MVP?

[salsbst]

You can certainly do s-video or composite (from cable box) for one card and RF for the other card.

You can specify that the card running s-video or composite is generally preferred in the scheduling process.

I don't know of a way to pin a tuner to a particular client.

I believe there is a way to specify a tuner as being preferred for live TV viewing, but it's a dim memory.

[computer33]

Originally Posted by davidjames

I have a Hauppauge 250 and a 150 card. I currently have analog cable and use a splitter to attach the coax to both cards.

If I go digital, I assume to use both 2 cards, I'll need 2 digital boxes and 2 IR blasters (please correct me if that's wrong).

Would it be possible to just get one digital box and connect it to one card and keep an analog connection to the other?

If so, is there anyway to "select" which connection (analog/digital) I use with a specific MVP?

I have an identical set up as your with a 150 and 250 card. I removed the coax from the one card that has the svideo digital cable feed and keep the analog feed to the other card. In the encoder merit settings I put a '5' for the digital and '0' for the analog. It always tunes in the digital for me MVP or main box.

[jbarr]

I too have a similar setup with 2 150 cards. One has the raw analog coax going into it, and the other has a composite cable going form a Mototola DCT-2000 digital STB. The nice thing about the DCT-2000 is that some kind soul here wrote a serial port control add-on that lets SageTV nocely control the box through the serial cable instead of an IR blaster. (The DCT-2000 is notorious for being tempermental with IR blasters.) Channel changes are 100% accurate, and the picture quality is better than the analog feed. I'd up it to 2 digital boxes, but it would cost me about an extra $6 per month, so I don't think it's worth it at this point...

[mrrrl]

I have 2 PVR-150, one hooked to a Motorola 2524 STB using a serial cable to change the channels, works great. The other card is straight analog cable. But the problem is with the channel guide. The analog 150 can only go up to 99. But if I edit the channel guide for the analog card it changes both guides and vice-a-versa. But sometimes Sage tries to tune the analog card to the higher channels if the other card is busy and I end up not recording the show.

The only way I know of is to get another STB and use the multi tuner serial plugin to control both boxes. This way both channel guides are the same.

Unles someone knows of a way around this?

[jbarr]

In my area, Charter Cable has two services selectable from the SageTV source setup screen: "Charter Spartanburg/Greer" and Charter Spartanburg/Greer Digital". Fortunately, the channel lineup is the same for both, just one is through 99, and the other is through 999. I choose the first for analog and enable channels through 99, and assign the second one to the STB enabling channels through 400. Channels through 99 match exactly between the two, so the Channel Guide only lists them once. The Channel Guide lists channels through 400. When I tune to a channel 100-400, I know it's tuning the digital STB. When I tune channels up to 99, I don't know which SageTV will choose (except that I will or will not see the STB's banner.)

THis setup works great, and the only time I ever really have any conflicts is when I'm trying to watch or record on an upper channel on the STB while it's curently recording from the STB. But considering that the upper channels typically air multiple broadcasts, scheduling is pretty much conflict-free.

[mrrrl]

Hey jbarr, great idea.

I did look and my area also has several Comcast Digital lineups to pick from and I did find one labeled Comcast Digital Utah County. It only goes up to 99, so it worked out just great.

Thanks for the tip.