Sage and multiple PCs?

[sunray]

I have a HTPC with 3 PVR-250 cards that record to a seperate media server. I intend to replace them with 3 HVR-1600 cards I've bought and use them to record SDTV and QAM. I'm also setting up a 2nd computer to hold 3 ATI 650 cards for ATSC (over the air). I want the HDTV (QAM) & ATSC) recordings to be stored on the internal hard drives of the 2nd computer not the media server which will only be used to hold SDTV recordings. Is this possible? Do I need to buy another copy of Sage and use some kind of network encoding setup?

[GKusnick]

A network encoder is one way to go (and yes, you need another full copy of Sage for that).

But you might want to look at USB tuners as an alternative. I have seven tuners on one server, 3 PCI and four external USB tuners. You don't need to resort to a second machine to add more tuners when you run out of PCI slots.

[sunray]

GKusnick, thanks for the help. I already have the ATI 650 cards from a previous attempt to upgrade my HTPC which didn't work out. I'm basically tryng to both add more tuners for HDTV and salvage some of my investment in the ATI cards. I have all the parts for the 2nd computer already so the only investment would be in buying a 2nd copy of Sage and with Christmas coming up I hope Sage will offer a discount. I also bought a WinTV-PVRUSB2 to add a 4th SDTV tuner but the picture it produces is horrible as I've posted about in another thread.

What I wonder about is whether I can make the HDTV files record only to the 2nd computer not to the media server and make the SDTV files record to the media server not to the 2nd computer.

[GKusnick]

Originally Posted by sunray

I have all the parts for the 2nd computer already so the only investment would be in buying a 2nd copy of Sage...

Well, there's the ongoing energy cost of operating the second machine. Where I am that works out to be around $5-$10/month.

Originally Posted by sunray

What I wonder about is whether I can make the HDTV files record only to the 2nd computer not to the media server and make the SDTV files record to the media server not to the 2nd computer.

You can direct specific tuners to record into specific directories via the mmc/encoders/xxxxxx/forced_video_storage_path_prefix property. However in the case of a network encoder recording to a drive on the same machine, I'm not sure whether the bits go directly to disk or whether they get shipped across the LAN to the primary server and back again.