How many turners vrs MVP's

[dreckner]

I just downloaded and installed SageTV 4 days ago and I'm loving it.
I've been in the Forum as much as I can to learn all I can in the 11 days I have left for the trail version.
I'm straight on the licensing but my question is if I buy SageTV and 2 MVP's do I need two 150 tuners (I already own one) if I want to watch different channels on each MVP at the same time. From what I have read so far I believe I do, but I didn't see any thread that specifically says that.
I'm trying to get everything straight so when I build a system I don't purchase any unnecessary items.
If this has been posted already, please point me to that post.
Thanks in advance.

[evilpenguin]

Welcome to the forums!

Well, there are two answers to that question...

1) If both MVP's want to watch a different show live then you need two tuners.

2) If both MVP's want to watch previously recorded shows, or one want's to watch a live show while the other watches a previously recorded one then you can get away with one tuner.

Basically, number of tuners = number of simultaneous live shows you can watch. Did that make sense?

[GKusnick]

The number of tuners you need is not directly related to the number of clients. If two clients are watching the same program, they can share a tuner. So there's no one-to-one relation between tuners and clients.

The best way to figure it is, how many different programs do you want to watch or record simultaneously? If you have two programs on opposite each other that you want to record, and you also want to be able to channel-surf at the same time, that's three simultaneous programs, hence three tuners.

In your example, two clients channel-surfing at the same time (with no scheduled recordings) would require two tuners.

But it's really more a matter of how many interesting shows are on at the same time than of how many clients you have.

[carlgar]

Originally Posted by dreckner

do I need two 150 tuners (I already own one) if I want to watch different channels on each MVP at the same time. From what I have read so far I believe I do, but I didn't see any thread that specifically says that.

The above statement is correct if the word watch means watch live TV or if it means record. The MVPs are for watching shows, if you are watching recorded shows there is no relationship with the number of tuners. You should determine the number of tuners you need by finding out how many shows you need to record at the same time. You can do this by selecting all of your favorite shows and see if SageTV gives you any conflicts. If you do have conflicts then you do probably need more tuners. You may be surprised to see how many shows are repeated at different times and may not cause conflicts. If you are really hung up with the concept of watching live TV then you probably should plan on one tuner per MVP, but that does not insure that a tuner will be available for each MVP. One MVP user could be recording a show and then watching another live, using 2 tuners.

[dreckner]

Thanks everyone for the quick replies.
I will probably end up buying the Hauppauge pvr-500 then and run it with my existing pvr-150.
In this case it would be correct to say, if I have two MVP's and my family wants to watch live TV with both on different channels at the same time I then would have one tuner as a spare to record another live channel while their watching their live programs.
Again, thanks everyone for you replies..