How many tuners does SageTV support?

[chrishallowell]

Hi all,
(1st post and many more to come...)
How many tuners does SageTV 6.3 support out-of-the-box?
Are there options to expand on this?
Thanks,
Chris

[sleonard]

No limit in the Sage software at all. The only limiting factors are how many you can connect to your PC and how many concurrent streams your disc subsystem can read/write. IOW, the only limits is the hardware you purchase to run Sage on.

S

[chrishallowell]

Excellent. That is what I wanted to hear!
Thanks.

[ke6guj]

Yup, no limts AFAIK. I've run 8 tuners at once with no problems, and if I wanted even more tuners than my box could hold, I could install additional tuners in another PC in a networked tuner installation, or install some external tuners via USB or ethernet.

And those tuners can be a mix of different content providers. Mix some OTA, cable and satellite inputs, no problem.

[SHS]

SageTV it self has no limts
But getting them in one box that a diff story
The Max number analog tuner is up 12 or 6 PVR 500 PCI but todays newer motherboard no longer have that min slot so an older motherboard is needed and newer board they usely only have up to 5 slot and there very few of them so there for your 2nd option is adding USB2 device which I'm not sure just how can be done at time or 3rd option is PCI expansion or PCIe to PCI expansion soon we see PCIe to PCIe expansion but beware some Bus Expansion used PCIe host interface card that used x4 PCI Express Lane slot.

[QueOnda]

+ Don't forget about the HDhomerun is an option also. You can only record clear (unencrypted QAM) or OTA.

[frontlinegeek]

If you use firewire like I do, then the sky is the limit!!!

I could string together as many as my cable company would allow me to run in one house!!!

That would be one terrifying stack of STBs...

[dcardellini]

Seven tuners for me. I have given up on limitations of internal PCI/PCIe slots. microATX motherboard, three Firewire to Cable STB's, and four USB OTA-HD tuners (Haupp HVR-950's).

After five simultaneous tuners streams to my internal Hardware RAID 5 card (3Ware 9500S-12), I would start to get drop-outs on some of these shows. Rectified by recording shows to one separate disk in computer with 64k blocks.

Batch file once per day transfers recorded shows to my RAID array (this could also be a remote NAS). No need to shut Sage down on transfer, and no problems if batch file runs in middle of recordings....it works flawlessly.

I suspect that at some point we would reach a limit on number of streams to one hard drive, but I think that Sage may have a way to direct one or more tuners to different hard drives if you begin to hit that limit.

[carlgar]

Originally Posted by dcardellini

Seven tuners for me. I have given up on limitations of internal PCI/PCIe slots. microATX motherboard, three Firewire to Cable STB's, and four USB OTA-HD tuners (Haupp HVR-950's).

Did you have any problems getting the Haupp HVR-950's setup? I am trying to help a friend get a HVR-950 setup using OTA digital. He says the Haugpauge software works fine but Sage shows 0 channels after doing a channel scan. Did you have to do anything special for the HVR-950?

[dcardellini]

Originally Posted by carlgar

Did you have any problems getting the Haupp HVR-950's setup? I am trying to help a friend get a HVR-950 setup using OTA digital. He says the Haugpauge software works fine but Sage shows 0 channels after doing a channel scan. Did you have to do anything special for the HVR-950?

I had major problems the first time I tried because I installed all of the Hauppauge drivers, middleware, and applications.....it was very unstable with SageTV.

I gave it another shot with a fresh OS build. This time, all I did was unzip the HVR-950 zip file off the Haupp web site. When I plugged in the usb 950, new hardware wizard came up, and I simply pointed to the driver directory from this unzipped folder. Worked flawlessly. Bought three more, and just plugged them in one at a time.....(no need to point to drivers again).

[dcardellini]

p.s. never did a channel scan in Sagetv. Disabled all channels, and just added back the seven major networks that I know are available in my area. (the preview did not work, I remember....so maybe the channel scan is not working properly). Just a thought, and easy to try.

[carlgar]

dcardellini, thanks for the info. I suspect he did get the latest drivers from the Hauppauge site. Did you need to use the MCE software encoder? When you entered the channel numbers, what format were they in? That is one thing that I could not figure out. It appears that only the major channel number is in the lineup. I don't know how Sage gets the minor sub-channel number.

[dcardellini]

I am using XP. No....not using MCEencoder. Doesn't sound like the right channel lineup was selected if no sub-channels show up.

[ybrew]

I've *only* got 7 tuners active right now. I've got 3 additional tuners available if I need them. 10 tuners seems to be plenty for me.

[carlgar]

Originally Posted by dcardellini

I am using XP. No....not using MCEencoder. Doesn't sound like the right channel lineup was selected if no sub-channels show up.

What I was trying to find out is if a station is on channel 53-3, what did you enter as the physical channel? Would you have entered 53 or 53-3? Maybe you did not enter anything, did you just enable the stations? It looks to me like Sage just uses 53 as the default physical channel and that is why I am confused as to how it gets to a specific subchannel.
It looks like progress is being made. After he updated the driver Sage does find 10 of 21 stations when he does a channel scan. However, he is static unable to view them. He says he just sees static and horizonal lines.
Thank you for any more information you can provide.

BTW: I confused my VISTA and MCE systems. He is running on a XP system.

[dcardellini]

It always helps to know what HD channels your current antenna is capable of receiving before delving into the HTPC world. A TV with an ATSC tuner (all new ones by law for past 9 months) may help isolate the fundamentals here.

Maybe he has a VHF antenna.....and most HD stations are on UHF band.

Static and horizontal lines are reminiscent of analog TV.....when I can't receive a digital station, it is usually just black. Sounds like his channel scan is picking up weak analog UHF stations only.

As you suspected, I don't enter any physical channel numbers. When you choose a channel line-up, choose digital antenna stations for your area, and the channel list will be populated with all major and sub channel station info for your area.

Hope this helps.