Multi-Tuner with a twist?

[Lester Jacobs]

This is reaching a bit as a feature request but here goes...

In my setup I have a Creative VCR card which I'll be using SageTV with. However I also have an ATI All in Wonder 8500 video/tuner card which has no hardware encoding abilities whatsoever.

Previous to Sage TV I was using my ATI card as live TV replacement and the Creative card as my VCR replacement. However, this meant I had to keep switching between the ATI software and the Creative software. I really want to use only one piece of software to control both watching and recording TV and hence the reason for the following request:

Any chance that SageTV can be enhanced to support a dual tuner configuration where only one of the tuners has hardware encoding capabilites? The way I envision this working is as follows:

If nothing is being recorded then SageTV will use the hardware encoding card by default and all the usual features of SageTV (timeshifting, etc) are active.
If, however, something needs to be recorded then SageTV will use the hardware encoding card to do the recording and will use the non-hardware encoding card for live TV viewing. Of course, when the non-hardware encoding card is being used to view TV then timeshifting and other features which require hardware encoding would not be active.

This way I would need to use only one piece of software (Sage) to manage both my cards and avoid switching between apps. I would imagine that there would be a fair number of other people in my position.

Any chance of this happening?

Cheers
Lester

[robertmcox]

that would be very awesome.

[Lester Jacobs]

So is this something that is architecturally hard to do, not in the SageTV roadmap or just not worth supporting since there's not enough people in my situation? Is it an absolute no-no?

Just wondering. I'm planning on adding either a Wintv PVR-250 or another Creative card (if I get conclusive proof that that two cards will work). However, I still have my ATI All-In-Wonder and it just seems a bit of a waste that I cannot integrate it into the SageTV solution.

The only reason I'm pursuing this point is that if this feature is an absolute no-no then I might consider getting rid of the ATI AIW and replacing it with a cheaper video card since I'd like to have all my TV/PVR cards controlled by only one app (SageTV).

Cheers
Lester

[JasonJoel]

Although I wouldn't hold my breath on this one, it would be neat.

Since I have an ATI AIW in my HTPC machine too, so I could use this feature (at least in theory, doubt I would in practice).

Jason

Originally posted by Lester Jacobs
So is this something that is architecturally hard to do, not in the SageTV roadmap or just not worth supporting since there's not enough people in my situation? Is it an absolute no-no?

Just wondering. I'm planning on adding either a Wintv PVR-250 or another Creative card (if I get conclusive proof that that two cards will work). However, I still have my ATI All-In-Wonder and it just seems a bit of a waste that I cannot integrate it into the SageTV solution.

The only reason I'm pursuing this point is that if this feature is an absolute no-no then I might consider getting rid of the ATI AIW and replacing it with a cheaper video card since I'd like to have all my TV/PVR cards controlled by only one app (SageTV).

Cheers
Lester

[sshapiro63]

OfficeMax has the PVR 250 for $130 with a $30 rebate. I believe the offer is good until the end of the month.