One Sage PC serving two televisions?

[lotus298]

Does anyone have experience having a single PC running SageTV serving multiple TVs?

What I would like to have is a single PC, multiple tuner cards, and 2 IR remotes sitting in a closet wirelessly transmitting to two different TVs. I'm not concerned with running two instances of SageTV as I've got plenty of horsepower, but I do have a few other concerns.

I'm not sure if I would have trouble connecting two remotes (maybe ATI remote wonder?). I would like to think it's fully supported, but who knows. Does anyone have experience with this?

My main concern is having SageTV send full screen video to each of the displays. Obviously, I would need two video cards, each capable of putting out s-video or composite. I'm not sure if it's even possible to dictate which Sage display would be sent to which video card.

I'd really appreciate some input on how to make this work.

[Opus4]

I don't know what to say about the wireless part & it (edit: it = this dual-tv system) would probably be a pain to configure, but here are a few comments on some considerations:

• You can run SageTV & SageTVClient and be able to send Windows messages to each one separately, because they use different Windows Class names as the message targets. I wrote a utility a while back to rename the names of each sageTVClient instance, but it has to be done after both instances have been started & there is no guarantee what each will get renamed to, so there would be trial & error after restarting to decide which window uses which remote. So, SageTV + SageTVClient would work better.
  
  Then, you could have Girder control things, since it could know which code goes with which instance & sned appropriate commands.
  
  
• Two video cards would be best if each were to use VMR9, but it might be possible to do Overlay using a single card w/dual monitor output... if that one card can output to 2 TVs instead of 2 monitors. Simply drag each window to the proper monitor/display.
  
  
• You may need 2 sound cards to be able to fully control the volume for each instance separately; otherwise, changing the volume on one will change the volume on the other.

- Andy

[lotus298]

I don't know what to say about the wireless part & it would probably be a pain to configure

I've been looking at wireless AV transmitters. They seem simple enough and I know people who have had good experience with them.

Two video cards would be best if each were to use VMR9, but it might be possible to do Overlay using a single card w/dual monitor output... if that one card can output to 2 TVs instead of 2 monitors. Simply drag each window to the proper monitor/display.

Is there a good reference on the different display types (VMR vs. overlay)?

The type of behavior I would like is what ATI calls "theater mode," the mode where video is played in a window of the primary monitor and appears full screen on the secondary monitor. In this mode, the mouse cursor doesn't appear on the TV and I can run other programs without disturbing what appears on the TV. I don't believe this can be achieved by simply dragging the windows to whichever screen.

You may need 2 sound cards

Good point. I hadn't thought of that.