Author Topic: # of users  (Read 10330 times)

dsk

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# of users
« on: January 10, 2008, 10:37:34 pm »
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« Last Edit: January 15, 2008, 02:40:29 am by dsk »

colinjones

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Re: # of users
« Reply #1 on: January 10, 2008, 10:46:56 pm »
What are you capturing? Why not buy twin tuner cards - digital TV? There are even 3 tuner cards now...

In any case, you needn't put them all in the same PC (core or MD) you can spread them around your MDs as well - plenty of space! Makes no difference to LMCE where the cards are.

rnmixon

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Re: # of users
« Reply #2 on: January 10, 2008, 10:47:15 pm »
You can use the Hauppauge PVR-500, each PCI card has two separate capture "cards" on it, that way you only need 3 slots for six capture devices/cards.

But I would ask do you really need 5 separate capture cards? Normally you can share sources across the various MD's - unless you have 5 users strapped to their chair watching TV at the same time.

I have an HD HomeRun with two OTA HD signals, and two cable box signals on a PVR-500. Have never  been maxed out yet - but we only have 3 users that watch at the same time.

Do you also an independent sources/signal for each capture card to work with?

I believe you also have the option of putting the capture cards in each MD.

Hope this helps.
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1audio

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Re: # of users
« Reply #3 on: January 10, 2008, 10:48:03 pm »
Do you expect to support 5 different live programs at the same time? I think that is more than you need (unless you have a B&B). You could get dual tuner cards if you really ned it unside. I would also consider the HDHomeRun for that type of application. It gives two tuners (which could be as many as 10 program streams) in one box. Also consider that most TiVo users watch only programs recorded, not live, so they are not trapped by the commercials.

cirion

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Re: # of users
« Reply #4 on: January 10, 2008, 10:49:35 pm »
If you have the possibility to receive DVB, VDR will come to your rescue....

From the info posted in the 0710 thread, VDR in LinuxMCE could receive up to 12 channels simultaneously if they are on the same mux. That with a single DVB card...

Add 3xDVB cards to your core, and it could support 3 different muxes and up to 36 channels, and if there is DVB-T in your area there are dual cards...

If you can not receive DVB, you could use USB tuners and all your MD's can also have their own cards. They do not all have to be in the Core.

Whatever solution you go for, your Core has to be a powerful one...

colinjones

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Re: # of users
« Reply #5 on: January 11, 2008, 02:13:07 am »
If you have the possibility to receive DVB, VDR will come to your rescue....

From the info posted in the 0710 thread, VDR in LinuxMCE could receive up to 12 channels simultaneously if they are on the same mux. That with a single DVB card...

Add 3xDVB cards to your core, and it could support 3 different muxes and up to 36 channels, and if there is DVB-T in your area there are dual cards...

If you can not receive DVB, you could use USB tuners and all your MD's can also have their own cards. They do not all have to be in the Core.

Whatever solution you go for, your Core has to be a powerful one...

Cirion - judging by dsk's message, (s)he is either US or Canada, I'm guessing, so DVB-T muxing won't help here, they use ATSC for terrestrial - looks like (s)he is looking for satelite FTA anyway.

BTW - the muxing that you have read about on DVB-T was about the UK. They use muxing extensively there and share the mux's among stations/networks. I believe that is fairly unusual - most countries don't share the mux's like that, and either transmit nothing on the other bandwidth for the mux, fill it with HD content, or retransmit the same or slightly different channels. The UK solution seems to be very complex and contrived in terms of broadcasting - BUT very nice side effects for totallymaxed's solution of recording many channels simultenously!!

cirion

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Re: # of users
« Reply #6 on: January 11, 2008, 08:03:49 am »
Cirion - judging by dsk's message, (s)he is either US or Canada, I'm guessing, so DVB-T muxing won't help here, they use ATSC for terrestrial - looks like (s)he is looking for satelite FTA anyway.

BTW - the muxing that you have read about on DVB-T was about the UK. They use muxing extensively there and share the mux's among stations/networks. I believe that is fairly unusual - most countries don't share the mux's like that, and either transmit nothing on the other bandwidth for the mux, fill it with HD content, or retransmit the same or slightly different channels. The UK solution seems to be very complex and contrived in terms of broadcasting - BUT very nice side effects for totallymaxed's solution of recording many channels simultenously!!

I don't live in the UK but I use am still able to recieve multiple channels pr. card on both my digital cable (DVB-C) and my digital sattelite (DVB-S). Take a look here. http://www.dvbdream.org/

Looking at this ATSC box, it uses both VDR and ATSC. I can not say if it supports receiving multiple channels on a single tuner.

DVB-S (Digital Sattelite) is available all over the world... Just look here: http://www.lyngsat.com/
I use a Diseqc rotor on my Dish, which gives me access to 24 satellites from 43w 39e. No matter what channel I tune too, there is always other channels available.

Not sure, but I think the channels only need to be on the same transponder, to be viewed/recorded simultaneously on DVB-S.

1audio

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Re: # of users
« Reply #7 on: January 11, 2008, 09:42:25 am »
Quote
3 pcHDTV-3000, 2 pcHDTV-2000 on a Athlon 2400XP with 512MB ram.  Ran on a myth backend.

Thats 5 HD sources so my 6000XPx2 with 4 gig ram (viva la 64bit) should be okay.  I just need to make sure I put my Raid5 SATAII NAS on a giga lan.

However that would be either ATSC broadcast or unencrypted cable sources.  Both of which work well with the  HDHomeRun. But they cannot capture analog HD signals let alone HDMI. You won't get much benefit from the 4 GB of RAM with LMCE. It doesn't use it for some reason. What you need is IO throughput. For 5 ATSC HD streams you need 100 Mbps total. Cable and Sat use less. If you have 4 streams going back out then you need 200 Mbps throughput. One NAS may be at its limit to support that. 

totallymaxed

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Re: # of users
« Reply #8 on: January 11, 2008, 09:56:16 am »
If you have the possibility to receive DVB, VDR will come to your rescue....

From the info posted in the 0710 thread, VDR in LinuxMCE could receive up to 12 channels simultaneously if they are on the same mux. That with a single DVB card...

Add 3xDVB cards to your core, and it could support 3 different muxes and up to 36 channels, and if there is DVB-T in your area there are dual cards...

If you can not receive DVB, you could use USB tuners and all your MD's can also have their own cards. They do not all have to be in the Core.

Whatever solution you go for, your Core has to be a powerful one...

You basically right about the vdr & MUX's... except there could be more than 12 channels on a MUX in reality. It depends on how the bandwidth gets used/chopped up... and all those channels given adequate hardware in the Core can be streamed/recorded concurrently.

The standard install will not support local DVB cards in MD's (vdr will certainly support this though) this may come later as we add more capabilities/features.
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colinjones

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Re: # of users
« Reply #9 on: January 11, 2008, 01:33:03 pm »
Cirion - judging by dsk's message, (s)he is either US or Canada, I'm guessing, so DVB-T muxing won't help here, they use ATSC for terrestrial - looks like (s)he is looking for satelite FTA anyway.

BTW - the muxing that you have read about on DVB-T was about the UK. They use muxing extensively there and share the mux's among stations/networks. I believe that is fairly unusual - most countries don't share the mux's like that, and either transmit nothing on the other bandwidth for the mux, fill it with HD content, or retransmit the same or slightly different channels. The UK solution seems to be very complex and contrived in terms of broadcasting - BUT very nice side effects for totallymaxed's solution of recording many channels simultenously!!

I don't live in the UK but I use am still able to recieve multiple channels pr. card on both my digital cable (DVB-C) and my digital sattelite (DVB-S). Take a look here. http://www.dvbdream.org/

Looking at this ATSC box, it uses both VDR and ATSC. I can not say if it supports receiving multiple channels on a single tuner.

DVB-S (Digital Sattelite) is available all over the world... Just look here: http://www.lyngsat.com/
I use a Diseqc rotor on my Dish, which gives me access to 24 satellites from 43w 39e. No matter what channel I tune too, there is always other channels available.

Not sure, but I think the channels only need to be on the same transponder, to be viewed/recorded simultaneously on DVB-S.

Cirion - I think you missed my point, receiving multiple channels is one thing. Mux'ing is like receiving multiple TV stations on the same channel (frequency) - like tuning your analogue TV to a single frequency but still being able to get multiple TV stations from that channel. This is completely different from DVB-S or C, they use a completely different modulation system, so they can't be compared directly. I wasn't talking about those because they are really comparable. DVB-S is probably closest because you point it a a transponder and receive multiple channels, but because you can only point it at one transponder at a time, it isn't the same thing. DVB-C is not analagous at all.

My point was that with DVB-T, most of the time, different TV stations are carried on different frequencies and therefore different mux's - this is how it is different from either C or S. Different stations on the same frequency(mux) are usually variations or alternate offering from the same TV station. But in the UK, this is not the case, they share the mux's as a public spectrum resource, and then different companies transmit over the same mux.  Which means they pack the content in much more efficiently, and therefore allow for LMCE to capture far more, with far less hardware. The point I was making was, don't translate this into a general arrangement globally, because from what I understand, this arrangement is fairly uncommon (more's the pity!)
Col.

hari

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Re: # of users
« Reply #10 on: January 11, 2008, 02:55:36 pm »
This is completely different from DVB-S or C, they use a completely different modulation system, so they can't be compared directly. I wasn't talking about those because they are really comparable. DVB-S is probably closest because you point it a a transponder and receive multiple channels, but because you can only point it at one transponder at a time, it isn't the same thing. DVB-C is not analagous at all.

My point was that with DVB-T, most of the time, different TV stations are carried on different frequencies and therefore different mux's - this is how it is different from either C or S.
that's not correct. You can compare DVB-S transponders to DVB-T/C channels. Every frequency (either channel or transponder) can hold multiple "program streams". They are muxed to a "transport stream". The program streams are identified by their "PID". A "tv channel" consists of multiple PID's (video, audio, ..). The number of "tv channels" with their PIDs on the real frequencies depends on the bandwith. A DVB-S transponder can deliver more data than an DVB-T or DVB-S channel. But the distribution of "tv channels" from a "bouquet" over the channels/transponder muxes has no technical constraints. It's only more cluttered on DVB-C/T because there are less channels available. You can also rent a whole DVB-S transponder from ASTRA & Co.

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tkmedia

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Re: # of users
« Reply #11 on: January 11, 2008, 08:23:21 pm »
I have an HD HomeRun with two OTA HD signals, and two cable box signals on a PVR-500.

I believe you also have the option of putting the capture cards in each MD.

So you have two cable boxes connected to the inputs of your PVR500 on your core right??

How are you changing the channels ??
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rnmixon

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Re: # of users
« Reply #12 on: January 12, 2008, 07:47:20 am »
Quote
So you have two cable boxes connected to the inputs of your PVR500 on your core right??

How are you changing the channels ??

Uhh - scratch that, my bad. Actually I was using antenna-in on half of the PVR-500 and cable box to the other half of the S-Video, plus the two HD HomeRun tuners for a total of four sources.

Is there a reason that two independent cable-boxes will not work, each into half of the PVR-500?
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