Tuners in multiple PC's?

[zryder]

Hello everyone.
Currently, my HTPC has a hauppage 2250 dual ATSC/QAM/Analog tuner, and I have a HDhomerun dual digital hooked to my network. Is it possible to add a 3rd digital tuner, into another pc, and have all 5 tuners talk to eachother? I would like to have a 3rd pc, hooked to another tv, without its own tuner be able to watch tv, and there may be rare occasions when the HTPC is recording 4 at a time, taking its own local 2 and the hdhomerun's 2 tuners. I wanted to know if it could get video from the 5th tuner in my desktop.
If I was to have a Sage 300 extender, could it pull video from any of the 5 tuners?

What would the required software be for this to work? Media Center, Placeshifter?

[GKusnick]

The simplest solution is to put all the tuners in one place, on one server running SageTV Media Center software, and use SageTV Client or Placeshifter software to watch from another PC, or an HD300 extender to watch from another TV without a PC.

If for some reason that's not practical for you, it is possible to set up tuners on multiple PCs by running the SageTV server software in network encoder mode. But logically the tuners are all still managed by one master server, which has discretion to use any of the tuners, wherever they're located, for various recording tasks. You can run a client UI on the network encoder machine, but it has no privileged access to the tuner on that machine; it's just a client like any other, and the tuner is still managed by the master server.

All clients, including software clients as well as extenders, get their video feed from the server. Clients do not communicate directly with tuners, nor do tuners communicate with each other. It's all managed by the server.

[zryder]

Ok, fantastic! let me see if I have this right.
The HTPC in the living room has its dual tuner hauppage, and access to the dual tuner hdhomerun. This machine runs the server. The desktop houses the single tuner card, and also has sage server installed, but runs only in encoder mode.

Then, if the pc in the loft, or any of the extenders wants to watch a program, it asks the server, and the server picks any one of the 5 tuners from the list, and off it goes?

This sounds like it would work perfectly. Unfortunately, I can not put the other tuner card (the single) into the HTPC, as it only has 1 PCIe 1x port, but I could put that card into my desktop without any troubles what so ever.

Thanks for your help.

[GKusnick]

Yes, that's pretty much it. The drawback of course is that you'll have to pay for a second Media Center license, unless you can find a way to put all your tuners in one box. Plus you'd need to leave the second machine powered up in order to use its tuner for scheduled recordings.

USB tuners are an option if you've run out of internal slots.

[zryder]

oh, so i would need 2 liscenses to do this?
What if I was to use the desktop as the server, wich can house both the dual and the single tuner, and of course acess the other 2 off the network. then would the HTPC be nothing more than a glorified extender, running the client software, and therefore only needing one liscense?

[jptheripper]

right, basically any pc with a card needs a media center license. IF you can get all the cards in one pc, then you only need 1 media center license, and 1 client license.

[GKusnick]

In that case you'd need one Media Center license and one Client license.

The rule is you need a Media Center license for each machine where the Media Center software is installed (i.e. server or network encoder), and a SageTV Client license for each machine where the Client software is installed.

[zryder]

$80 per server, $30 per client, but the HD300's dont need a client liscense?
I would need 2 clients at a minimum.. that sucks.. I didnt realize you had to pay for other clients in the same house.