So how many multiple tuners could you have on a Sage TV setup?

[greg_mucino]

I own a two tuner tivo and my thought has been this is great but what I need is more tuners and more hours to record of course. What caught my attention to this site was a link from a radio station web site (KROQ) saying how I could tape up to 8 channels at once with Sage TV. 8 would be great but even better would be to add as many tuners as I wanted to capture network, cable network and pay channels like HBO, Showtime, etc. Why not a twenty tuner Sage TV? Is there a limit?

[sshapiro63]

I think the limit is imposed by your wallet. Each encoder will probably cost you $100-$150. Of course you also have to deal with the heat created by your "system". If you use a series of PVR 250 or PVR 350 units with the ITVC15 chip you might also need to install a new air conditioner. But at least you won't have to run your heater in the winter ;-)

[Narflex]

There is no limit to how many tuners SageTV can theoretically support in the software.

[mlar]

Well, the limit will be your wallet. You can only have (I believe) 4 PVR cards per machine (driver limitation), but you can have network encoders in addition to the SageTV server. There would be other factors, such as making sure you have fast enough ethernet and disks to support them, but ultimately, it would be your wallet. There has to be some limit as to how much you can WATCH in 24 hours though And you'll need to sleep now and then. Of course, you could hire people to watch TV for you, again, the wallet is limiting you.

[sshapiro63]

I have not heard about a 4 tuner limit per system. If this is true, I would like to know about it. I have a 4 tuner system now and would like to add 1 more tuner into the pc.

[mlar]

The four tuner limit is something I picked up when reading forums somewhere, most likely here or at shspvr. This particular limit would only apply to the number of PVR-xxx cards you could have though. I would assume you could add creative DVCR, etc to the same system.

It might just be that the "limit" was someone mentioning that they had only tried up to 4 tuners, not that it was the actual limit. From what I remember though, it is supposedly a limit in the Hauppauge drivers for the PVR cards. The only way to find out is try.

I'd hate to see what SageTV does with IR enabled on 5 tuners though And I thought IR with 3 tuners was unusable...

[mlar]

2000GB? That's more like 1000 hours of recording isn't it.. or 41 days.

You gotta have some pretty darn good cable provider as well to provide quality programming for 16 tuners..

I'd hate to see what a system like that does to the electricity bill though.. and the cable bill (if I need 16 digital cable boxes)

[greg_mucino]

Kool. I am please with the response on this subject. EncoderHouse has thought this idea thru. I would need to have the option for a cable box or dish with the addicted Sage Tv system. More research to be done. I like the idea of being able to watch a season or half a season of Frasier or ER on a weekend. Like reading a good book. I can use the time that I would normally have to watch tv to do other things.

Narflex ... how about more custom options like EncoderHouse suggested along with the triple tuner you sell now?

LAters