Watching live while recording/ networking

[Mike]

I'm confused about being able to watch live TV if you are recording. In your examples, you mention recording three channels while watching a fourth pre recorded program, with three cards installed. I would like to use a three card system where one wuld be available for "live" viewing at all times, and the other two available to record. Is that possible?

Also, If I'm reading correctly, wireless networking is the only network solution for the client software. I would prefer to use my current (wired) network. Will that be possible?

Thanks,
Mike

[mandrake]

Wired is the preffered method for the client Wireless only works with 802.11 A and G. As far as I know there is no way right now to select a card just to view live tv but Sage will choose a non recording card before it will change the channel on one recording

[Narflex]

Why would you want to use a card only for LiveTV? If you're not using it, wouldn't you rather that SageTV made use of it?

[Lester Jacobs]

Originally posted by Narflex
Why would you want to use a card only for LiveTV? If you're not using it, wouldn't you rather that SageTV made use of it?

I have a couple of reasons why I, for one, would like this feature:

1) Better ease of use for family members. If I dedicate a card strictly for LiveTV viewing then family members never have to answer questions about interrupting ongoing recordings. This may seem trivial, but if the SageTV server is in the family room and you've got kids watching then they're bound to answer some of those "Do you want to stop recording X" the wrong way and you start losing some of your favourites. Even supposing that they were willing to answer the dialogs you could still run into problems. Say all my tuners were tied up recording, then someone watching would have to make a decision about which of the shows being recorded was least important and then interrupt that show to watch Live TV. If a tuner were dedicated solely to Live TV then none of this complexity comes into play.

2) Ability to prevent recordings on lower quality encoder cards. For instance, I have two PVR 250s which produce excellent recorded output with no a/v sync issues whereas I have a Creative DVCR which, more often than not, gives me a/v sync issues. The Creative card is fine for watching Live TV where if you change the channel you can correct the a/v sync issue. However I certainly wouldn't want any of my recordings to occur on this encoder card. The ability to identify this card to be used only for Live TV viewing would help out tremendously in my setup.

3) There may be a variety of situations which no one has currently thought of where this feature may be useful. If this feature is feasible within the current architecure of SageTV then it might be useful to implement it. You never know.

Cheers
Lester

[Mike]

Thanks for the interest,

In my case, I'm looking for ease of use. I'd like for my wife to be able to sit down and do the same thing every time to be able to watch TV. Whenever she's in a situation that she has to select inputs etc., she gets very frustrated.

Also, I would likely use a PVR 350 for the "live card" so I could tune fm radio while the other cards are recording, and two PVR 250 cards for the "recording" cards to economize a bit.



Mike

[Narflex]

Makes sense now.