Dual PVR250, how difficulty to set up?

[MHoffesommer]

Hi,

right now I'm testing SageTV at home with a single PVR250 (after failing to get it to work with an Adaptec Videoh, but that's a different thread). I am now thinking about adding a second PVR250 to that machine.

Here's how I'd like it to work:
PVR250 #1: attached to a cable box (Motorola, with external IR switch)
PVR250 #2: attached to analog cable

Now my questions
- how much work is it to get it to run under SageTV?
- are there any stability issues with the drivers (besides the fact that Hauppage drivers are usually, well, brittle)
- which of the cards is used for LiveTV watching?
- PVR#2 will have only some of the channels PVR#1 can receive, how will SaveTV deal with that?

... plus anything else anybody things might be important

Thx in advance!

Martin

[jptaz]

I have multiple PVR 250 Cards in my box and it was pretty easy to setup.

Install the new card. install the drivers.

I recommend backing up the properties and database files for SageTV to a seperate directory...maybe even the whole SageTV directory if you are
really paranoid. delete the sage properties file, but not the db files. this will
force you to reconfigure both cards and setup the EPG data again. I found
SageTV didn't like having a new card installed on my setup.

When setting up the cable box make sure to use a unique provider from the analog cable. I am guessing it is a digital cable box so this is probably not an
issue.

I have 3 PVR 250s configured as analog cable and then one as digital.
The only glitch is that in 1.4.10 if you schedule a recording make sure that
it is being scheduled on the right card. They have promised that this will
be fixed in the next release, but the work around for now is to record a dummy
program in the other card(s) to force the recording to the correct card.

In terms of watching Live TV since you have two different sources for watching it will use the correct tuner based on the channel it needs to watch, the glitch in scheduling recordings do not apply to watching tv fortunately. i have found that
typically SageTV schedules recording on the first pvr and watches live TV on last or second in your case. Having said that it may schedule more recordings on the analog card since as it will try and leave the card that has unique channels available as long as possible.

So basically for the most part SageTV is very smart when it comes to dealing with 2 different sources ( Digital Cable/ Satelite or Analog/Antanae ). The only issue is with recording and it may not be an issue for you since the cable box is the first card.

John

[mlbdude]

jptaz check out this thread......

http://forums.sage.tv/forums/showthr...&threadid=1687

[jmeeks]

MHoffesommer,I didn't even have to install the drivers for the second card. It was an identical pvr250 (same version) to the first, and Windows recognized the card. No re-installing drivers needed.

I then just setup the 2nd card in SageTV and the process was complete.

Can't get much easier than that.

[Narflex]

I've got a patch for the bug jptaz is talking about where it won't always pick the right tuner if you've got different lineups. Anyone that wants it can email support@freytechnologies.com for it.