[jmooremcc]

I have a dual tuner Hauppauge card in my back end server. Normally if two TVs are using both tuners to display live TV and a recording starts on the back end server, one of the TVs will lose its tuner. However, the other day it didn't happen that way. Not only were we able to watch separate channels on our TVs, but the scheduled HD recording also took place as planned.

At first I was puzzled how three live events could take place at the same time with only two tuners. But then I realized that one TV was tuned to a sub channel while the backend was recording the main channel. Specifically, one TV was tuned to HD Channel 6.1, the other TV was tuned to SD channel 4.2 and the back end was recording HD Channel 4.1.

So how could this happen? The answer would have to be that both channels, 4.1 and 4.2, are multiplexed onto the same physical RF channel. The NextPVR server running on the back end was able to demultiplex both streams and route them to the appropriate clients - the final result being three simultaneous live events. I'm totally amazed and impressed with the sophistication of the nextPVR software running on the back end server!

[sub3]

Glad you like it. This is NextPVR's "multi-record" functionality. It allow multiple channels to be recorded simultaneously from a single tuner. This even more useful in DVB countries, where you often get up to 8 channels per frequency.

In the past I tested recording 16 channels, and a couple of live tv streams, using a dual tuner device.

[PaulTMC]

That seems massively clever. Does it work with ANY tuner card or just the Hauppage cards mentioned ?

[majorsl]

I think anything that supports it. I have a HDHomeRun and this regularly happens for me.

[sub3]

Yep, should work with all digital tuners.

For other types of tuners (like analog, HDPVR, etc), the same functionality at least allows you to be watching a channel while also recording it, and to have overlapping padding on back-to-back recordings on the same channel.