Hello Jay,
I almost missed your response. For some reason it doesn't show up on the
news server I've been using (new.supernews.com). (I'm currently using my
ISP [Shaw] news server to respond to your message here.) I was reading
Bob's reply to you and thinking to myself, where on earth did Bob read
this!? Then I checked Google Groups (and later Shawnews) where I found your
message actually displayed. Very strange... I'll have to complain to
supernews about this. Anway, on to your message...
Six tuners seems to be a bit too much. My wife and I have been using
BeyondTV for two years or so. My PC only has one tuner. Most of the
time, one tuner is enough for my wife and I (we tend to watch totally
different TV shows). I almost never get into a situation that I want
to record two TV shows in the same time slot. In a few occasions, my
wife and I both want to record two different TV shows in the same time
lot (I give in 75% of the time); that were the only time I wanted to
have two tuners.
This means at most I would want are two tuners. I don't see any reason
why I would want 4 or 6 tuners. The reasons are very simple: (1)
There are not that many good TV shows that I want to record;
Agreed.
most are repeats anyway.
_Most_ are.
(2) Most TV shows repeat themselves after midnight or
at a different time slot in the same week; if one time slot has
conflict, I simply record it in a different time slot.
Yes, I do this too. So far in my PVR consumer experience I haven't come
across the need for more than three tuners, max. But I haven't settled into
what my viewing habits are finally going to be like with this technology.
If you haven't read yet what else I wrote on this subject earlier today (or
was it yesterday?), here it is again in different words: Having 'more than
enough' tuners is to me like my having both a landline phone (with answering
machine and all), plus my unnecesary (some would say wasteful) cell phone
which I carry around with me all the time. The latter I cannot justify
based on how _much_ use I actually make of it. But every once in a blue
moon, man, has it ever come in handy!
Now my initial decision to carry a cell phone was not based on any realistic
or predictable expectation that it _would_ eventually come in really handy
from time to time. No, I went on a reasoned hunch. Now if the cost of the
cell phone was much higher than it is, that mere reasoned hunch wouldn't
have been enough for me to justify carrying it. But the cost was not too
much to pay for the "insurance" the phone has effectively given me.
The cell phone, of course, is the analogy. The actual topic here however is
similar to this analogy in that I have a hunch that there will be, even if
only once in a blue moon , times when there are several shows I'm very eager
to record... But with murphy's law still around, having three or more tuners
on board could just 'make my evening' in that regard.
Anyway, I'm not going to continue to dissect, analyze, 'analogize' and
belabor the question any further. Apparently non-self-explanatory personal
preferences may more often than not have nothing to do with good sense. But
if and when they sometimes do, one shouldn't necessarily have to push the
envelope of his/her communication skills by taking pains to explain and
defend his/her rationale for same just because a majority of curious
onlookers, for whom it mustn't need concern after all, 'don't readily get
(3) The number
of tuners in a PC is also limited by the number of tuners in the
set-top box, and the number of set-top-boxes.
No, this is not the case at all; unless you happen to live in some remote
area where you have no choice but to turn to (encrypted) satellite.
(4) More importantly,
there is not enough time in a day to watch that many TV shows; I delete
more TV shows than I actually watch.
Oh of course! Same here! Quite often what I thought might be of interest
to me to watch some time later in the week, I just never get around to
feeling like watching as there turn out to be many other shows I decide to
watch instead. So after a little while of that, I then just
unceremoniously, without any guilt over waste of good recording media such
as DVD-Rs, fresh video tape, etc, delete that program. See this is the
beauty of PVRs, which record everything to hard disk! Provided you have
enough hard disk space to work with, and enough tuners to keep the process
as unconstrained and thoroughly "one-button-touch-record" as possible, you
can totally *over record now*, then completely at your leisure *decide
later*, perhaps according to your mood at that moment, exactly what you feel
like watching right then! It's like extreme video-on-demand!
Obviously, your viewing pattern is different from mine. But I still
have a feeling that 2 tuners should be enough for one to two persons.
I would only want to have 4 tuners if my kids also want to start
recording TV shows.
If you can limit the number of tuners in the PC, you will not need a
very powerful CPU or a very large hard disk. This in turn reduces the
cost and the cooling requirement.
The number of hardware-encoder tuners doesn't affect CPU load whatsoever.
Now the number of A/V data streams needing to simultaneously be written to
disk may, as far as my own limited knowledge on the subject suggests.
However, based on feedback from some of the others here, even this activity
may in fact NOT have a significant impact on CPU load, ostensibly because it
is the IDE bus or pipline together with the processor-circuitry in each hard
drive being written to, that shoulders most or all of this load; not the
CPU.
There is one thing that I am not sure that is how HDTV may change your
need of the number of tuners in your PC: My impression is:
"If your TV has SDTV or HDTV tuner, you will be able to watch
live-TV in TV mode instead of using the tuner in the PC to watch
live-TV. This will cut down the number of tuner that you need in the
PC. On the other hand, if your HDTV doesn't come with a HDTV tuner and
you are trying to watch live HDTV shows over the air, you will have to
reserve one tuner in the PC for watching live HDTV shows at each HDTV
TV. If you have two HDTVs that don't have HDTV tuners, you will need
two tuners for recording shows, and two more tuners for watching
live-TV in those two HDTVs."
Please correct me if my impression is wrong.
The HDTV standard should pose no such change in number of tuners needed.
But I think what you are referring to is the fact that a lot of the earlier
HDTV monitors that came out didn't come equipped with their own tuners.
Yes, then obviously if you were someone who bought an HDTV monitor that
didn't have its own tuner, you would then have to provide for that tuner
somewhere external to that monitor. Whether that tuner is to be located in
your home-theater PC, a PVR, or as a stand alone home-theater receiver, or
in some other configuration or product somewhere else in your home, is up to
your preference.
Ken
