Can this setup work??

[rlwinter]

Hi,

I'm jumping in the deep end first....

I have a pvr-250, a pvr-350, and two machines - a p4 2.4 ghz and a P3 600 mhz mini. I want to put the pvr-250 in the p4 and run linux with SageTV-linux on it, and I want to put the 350 in the p3, run windows 2000 and SageTV on it, and drive a tv with the decoder TV-out.

I have one Actisys 200 IR device and two Dish Network machines - a 522 and a 322. (Yeah, I know, I can't control the UHF tuners of either one.) Can I have the Actisys on one machine and have both Sage boxes control both Satellite boxes? Can Sage allow the remote machine to control the satellite boxes too via the remote Actisys IR?

Will this work (and how painful to setup)?
Thanks,
-Robert

[GKusnick]

Putting the capture cards in separate machines is possible, but more expensive, because you need two full SageTV licenses. One of the machines needs to be set up as a network encoder as described in the manual.

I don't quite follow the part about having both machines control both STBs. Each STB will be connected to a specific machine, right? In which case that machine will be the one that controls it. So you would need two IR blasters to accomplish this, one on each machine.

But the real question is why do you want to do it that way? It's generally simpler to put all your STBs, capture cards, and video storage in one place, connected to one machine running the full version of SageTV. You can then use SageTVClient or Placeshifter on your other machine to watch live TV or recorded shows over a LAN. Or you can buy a Media Extender to use as a low-cost thin client.

Also, I don't own a PVR-350, but my impression is that the people who do generally come to regret trying to use the 350's decoder output. A decent graphics card with TV-Out seems to be a better way to go.