Multiple cable tvs / thin clients

[newbie455]

Say I were to have multiple cable TVs and I wanted to be able to watch different channels on different ones simultaneously. Is this possible by simply attaching a thin client to each tv? It doesn't seem possible to me, so if it isn't, what would be necessary to be able to have different channels playing on different tvs?

[trossman]

If you have more than one tv tuner card then you can watch two different things on two different tvs or you can record one thing while watching another.  Of course if you need a set top box to get to your provider's content, then you'll need a STB for each tuner along with an IR blaster to control the STB

[newbie455]

So there are absolutely no workarounds? Even if I were to use some other service (such as at&t uverse), I would need a set-top box and tuner card for each TV that I wanted to run simultaneously?

[skerit]

Well, as trossman kinda said, every tuner can only catch 1 signal at a time! So multiple tuners are the only way to go, I fear...

I don't know how this works with DVB tuner cards, though, they can also catch only 1 channel at a time, I believe, but how does it work? DVB, as the name says so itself, is a broadcast and, since it's digital, why does it need to "tune" to anything? Isn't all the data there already? Shouldn't that be able to watch more channels at once?

I believe set top boxes are pure evil, you have no control over *anything* whatsoever! They're the only kind you can find in backwater Belgium, though. Every digital tv provider makes you use their box (except TV Vlaanderen, but it's a satellite provider, and I don't want to put a dish in my bakyard.)

[fibres]

Well you are correct and not over dvb.

DVB is digital but it is still transmitted over an analogue frequency if you like. Each frequency has more than one dvb stream multiplxed onto it.
If you run linuxmce with vdr which is designed to work here in europe with dvb you can watch any channels that are on the same multiplex. Therefore you need a tuner per multiplex. However 2 users can watch 2 channels if there on the same multix with only one tuner.
However vdr integration is very beta at the moment and not recommended for anyone without a lot of patience and willing to accept that it is not all running as it should be.

Regards