Networking Mediaportal (1 Viewer)

[cheesegeezer]

Hello all

I will be moving house soon and I'm already a mediaportal user. Currently i have the HTPC in the lounge running MP for my entertainment needs.

In the new house i would like to use MP to view all my media but in several rooms, 1 in Bedroom, 1 in lounge and 1 in kitchen. The idea is to have 1 main pc with ample storage and HD S2 TV Card in the loft receiving TV, this will feed the main living room for entertainment. The other pc will be in the bedroom and will feed the bedroom and kitchen and maybe later the bathroom.

Ideally I would only like 1 tv signal into the main pc and then be able to watch 1 show in the lounge and 1 show on the other 3 monitors. is this possible or are 2 tv cards required with 2 LNB feeds coming from the sat dish into each tv card.

If anyone can shed light on this for me it would be appreciated. Also if someone has a good solution that would cater for these requirements, that would be grand too

 

[zicoz]

Here is how I do it with my multi-HTPC setup




I have one computer running TV-Server serving TV-signals to all of the HTPCs at the moment it only has 1 TV card, but since there is normally only one TV used to actually watching TV (the others are mostly used for movies and other localy stored media) it's not a problem.

I have all my media stored on one file server running Solaris and ZFS.

With one TV-card I can watch two channels (have not tested with three, but how many you can watch is dependent on what TV-card you have) on the same transponder at the same time. And one transponder from my TV suplier has maybe 5-6 channels.

So since I have about 17 channels it has 3 or 4 transponders. A transponder is basically a group of channels.

If I want to be able to watch any channel I want on 4 different computers I will need 3 TV cards.

Example:

Here is a list of my channels and the --- line separates the transponders


NRK1 Møre og Romsdal
NRK2
NRK3
NRK Midtnytt
NRK tegnspråk
----------------
TV2
TV2Zebra
TV2Film
Discovery
Animal Planet
TV2 Nyhetskanalen
--------------------
TVNorge
SportN
National Geographic
FEM
BBC World News
TVSunnmøre

Since I only have one TV card atm I can not watch NRK Midtnytt and TV2 at the same time on different computers.
But I can watch NRK Midtnytt and NRK2 at the same time.

If I get one more TV card I could watch NRK1 on one computer, NRK2 on another, TV2 on a third and Discovery on a fourth computer.
But I could not watch NRK1, TV2 and TVNorge at the same time.

But If I get two more TV cards so that I have a total of three cards I can watch NRK1, NRK2, TV2, TV2 Zebra, TVNorge and SportN at the same time.

If I have 3 TV cards that can decode 6 channels at the same time I can watch all the channels on 17 different computers at the same time.

And the same rules aply for recording. If I am recording a program on NRK Møre I can only watch NRK2, NRK Midtnytt, NRK3, NRK tegnspråk as long as that recording is active.


So botomline is:

If you have 4 HTPCs and want to watch any channel you want on any of these computers you'll need 4 TV cards (or perhaps 2 with dual tuners not sure about those).

 

[cheesegeezer]

Many Thanks for your reply, it kinda clears things up for me.

I will be investing in another tv card by the sounds of things as i need to be able to watch all channels from the 2 media pc's.

 

[zicoz]

Ok, but as mentioned one card with two tuners might be able to do the same job but I am not 100% sure, also I do not know if you'll need a 2nd subscription to your satelite company.