Back in Media Center 2005 (XP) and Vista Media Center (Pre-TV Pack) days, users of either system where limited in many ways, one of which were how many tuners you could use, as well as the the TV sources you could use. In MCE 2005 as well as VMC you couldn’t have one tuner on NTSC cable tv and have the other one connected to a cable box via svideo and IR blasters. Both MCE 2005 and Vista Media Center, out of the box, were limited to two NTSC tuners, and both tuners either needed to be setup as NTSC for OTA or cable tv, or both needed to be composite/svideo for use with a cable box or satellite tv box. You could not have a combination of the setup, it was one or the other, but not both.
In MCE 2005 as well as VMC you also couldn’t have cable TV and Satellite TV at the same time. In fact I haven’t tested or confirmed if that has changed in 7MC yet, which is what this post is about, the theory behind the possibility of 7MC with it’s tuner pooling capabilities to support multiple sources, and still retain the single guide source.
A few months ago I had the privilege to join Adam on the Entertainment 2.0 Podcast, episode 17 and one of the topics we covered was about Media Center its guide course, and Tuners. I talked about a friend of mine who I regularly talk with on IRC who is an avid SageTV user, and one of his biggest grips about Media Center is the tuner card and guide source limitations. This friend, because of where he lives (and because of greedy local broadcast stations) can not get his local channels via Direct TV or Dish Network, and because of the location of his home he can not get OTA broadcast tv signals strong enough to give him a decent picture quality, and his wife refuses to let him put up an antenna big enough on their home to pull in OTA signals effectively.
So with this limitation he signed up for local only cable tv, meaning he only gets the local stations and a few public access channels. So for his main TV service he has Direct TV, and for locals he has cable tv. Being an avid HTPC and technology fan he found that he couldn’t get Media Center (at that time MCE 2005) to use two different guide data sources (for him cable tv and satellite tv). Basically he wanted to have one tuner setup with guide data for his local channels, then a second guide data with a second tuner setup for his Direct TV channels. Media Center would all him to setup either or, but not both at the same time. Eventually he did some research, found some alternative HTPC interfaces and moved over to MythTV. He quickly found the hard ships with Linux and user support was non-existent at the time, if you were not proficient in Linux in was nearly impossible (at the time) to setup MythTV. Because of the hardships with MythTV and the frustations he has with the treatment “noobs” got in the community with MythTV, he moved and and eventually found SageTV and though he didn’t like the user interface and lack of Media support for digital videos and photos and music (like you get with Media Center), he overlooked those issues and has been using the SageTV platform ever since.
Now fast forward to last year when TV Pack was “released” for Vista Media Center. When Fiji aka the TV Pack was released, it added some nice features that were badly needed for VMC, one of which was native clear QAM tuning. Before to get QAM in VMC you had to do some hacks which only worked with a few tuners, after the TV Pack you could natively tune clear QAM channels which in most cases was huge. TV Pack also increased the number of native tuner card support. Before you could only have two NTSC tuners and two ATSC tuners, or two cable card tuners and two ATSC tuners. After the TV Pack you could now have four tuners per tuner type, meaning you could now have a total of eight tuner cards natively. Four NTSC, four ATSC, four QAM, and four cable card. With 7MC coming out and the possibility of Dish and/or Direct TV satellite tuner support that could turn into 12 tuner cards, and then on top of that you have the HD-PVR which no one really knows how that will come into play. Another big feature was Tuner pooling, and guide source adjusting.
Tuner pooling you ask? What we mean by tuner pooling is where you can give priority to tuners, and channels.
As quoted from a PC Mag article by Jeremy A. Kaplan “Two tuners may receive the same channel, but display it differently and list content from a separate source in the guide. For example, you may receive FOX as both station 5.1 and 705. TV Pack allows you to pool the two channels, so the contents show only once in the guide, and it lets you select which tuner you’d prefer to use for viewing and recording. Pool the high-def and low-def versions of a station and you can set a show to record on high-def if possible, but fall back to the standard-def tuner in a pinch. You’ll never again miss CSI because the high-def tuner is already recording, and you won’t have to set a standard-def recording manually.”
Basically you can take 4 NTSC tuners, and 4 ATSC tuners, and now 4 QAM tuners which which all can tune your local affiliates ABC, NBC, and CBS. For me here in Minneapolis area, CBS is channel 4, ABC is channel 5, and NBC is channel 11 for my NTSC tuners. CBS is 4.1 (or 1041 in MCE and VMC pre-tv pack), ABC is 5.1 (or 1051), and NBC is 11.1 (or 1011) for my ATSC tuners. CBS is 75.1, ABC is 79.1, and NBC is 75.2 for my QAM tuners.
So with tuner pooling and guide source changes made in TV Pack and migrated into 7MC I can now pool all the guide data, tuners, all together. So for example I can take channels 4, 1041, and 75.1 and since they all have the same guide data, I can group them together so that if say I had 4 NTSC, 4 ATSC, and 4 QAM tuners, I can point all 12 tuners to channel 4. Then when I set a recording on channel 4, I would give the 4 ATSC tuners priority 1 – 4, they would record via OTA on channel 4.1/1041 but to me via the guide it is channel 4. Same goes for the 4 QAM tuners, If the 4 ATSC tuners were being used to record shows on other channels, the QAM tuners would then come into play and they would record on channel 75.1 but again it is still channel 4 to me. Finally if the 4 ATSC and 4 QAM tuners were then all used up, they would do a final roll over to the 4 NTSC tuners. So in theory no matter what the original source is, what tuner is being used, to the end user it really doesn’t matter as long as the priorities are set, and the show gets recorded no matter what.
Now with the advent of possible HD-PVR and the fact that Hauppauge has announced they are in fact working on 7MC drivers for the HD-PVR, this takes tuner pooling to a whole new level. With Dish and/or Direct TV that really is a whole new ball of wax because you have IR blasters to deal with when it takes into consideration the HD-PVR, as the HD-PVR also has an IR blaster and the MCE USB IR receiver has two IR blasters we are now looking at a situation where you could possibly have a setup where you could have two cable boxes hooked up to two NTSC tuners via svideo, and controlled with the MCE IR blaster, then you could have a third STB hooked up via the HD-PVR, and you could then also have ATSC tuners or QAM tuners. So now we are looking at having multiple sources, different guide data, and effectively have a cable tv, satellite tv, and ATSC DVR all in one box. Only time will tell when the HD-PVR drivers are officially released, and people take the time to test something like this out, but imagining the possibilities puts a smile on my face.
