ATI HD650 - Setting up both tuners

[LRCasey]

I have the VisionTek pcie HD650 and I am using the trial version of SageTV and trying to decide if I should buy it. However, I would like to overcome one issue first.

I am only able to setup one tuner at a time via the "setup video sources" menu. The HD650 has both a digital and analog tuner. When I run the setup wizard and select the "ATI AVStream Analog Capture" as the device I then select "digital tv tuner" and the input. I go through all of the remaining setup steps and I am able to tune and watch Comcast HD TV on my pc (this is great).

Attempt to add the TV Tuner:
I run through the wizard again and select "add new source". I then select the "ATI AVStream Analog Capture" as the device again but this time I select "TV tuner" and the input. I go through all of the remaining setup steps and I am able to tune and watch Comcast analog TV on my pc.

The problem is that the Analog TV Tuner has REPLACED the digital tuner in my Source Summary rather than being added as an additional source. Therefore, I can only have one tuner setup in SageTV. Is this a limitation of the trial version or am I doing something wrong?

Thank you for any help you can provide.
-Larry

[btrcp2000]

Hi. I can't offer any help, but I think I'm in the same boat (and I'm not a trial user, so that's not it). I have a combo 650 pcie card, which is supposed to be able to do both simultaneously, versus the combo version which cannot. But mine only does one at a time within sage. I have done nothing to look into it as of yet, so maybe together we can sort it out with help.

I see the same thing, where it appears that only the analog tuner is set up, but with neilm's webserver (search for it, you'll want it at some point), I have confirmed that the digital tuner does record HD. So maybe part of the problem is that sage doesn't see them as two separate tuners, but rather as two inputs on one tuner called "analog tuner", even though one of those inputs is digital. I have dragged my feet on fixing this, because it seems that for testing purposes I have to disable the other tuners so they won't be used when I am trying to get just the 650 to record on both tuners simultaneously. That always seems like a recipe for a late night fixing things that weren't broken in the first place. Kind of like taking apart an entire engine piece by piece so you can replace a fifty cent part.

[Karaktu]

I just set up a multi-tuner system and am in the same boat. My PCI-E Visiontek 650 only shows up as one tuner (whereas my Saber VistaView DA-1N-I shows up as an analog and a digital).

Does anyone have the PCI-E ATI 650 tuner set up as an analog AND digital, or is this a limitation in SageTV?

Thanks!

[Karaktu]

Well, Duh! SageTV only shows one instance of the ATI 650 tuner on the "Select Source" list; however, once you select it, you can select Digital or Analog and set it up. In fact, you can set it up twice (in both cases, it refers to it as the ATI 650 analog tuner).

Once you set it up twice (one analog/one digital), it works fine and shows up twice on the tuner list.

[btrcp2000]

Have you confirmed that it can use both tuners simultaneously? I can't think of a good way to test without dismantling the others.

[Karaktu]

I'm pretty sure I did last night, but I'll retry it to confirm (probably tomorrow).

[Karaktu]

Bleh. Well, unfortunately, it appears you cannot use both tuners at the same time as it currently stands. I removed my other tuner configs and then tuned to an HD source, hit record and then tried to tune to an analog source, but Sage told me it conflicted with the HD program being recorded.



EDIT: Both tuners do work simultaneously under Vista Ultimate SP1 MCE 32-bit. Just confirmed that.