lordvader

do you need a additional card and cam/card for each time you want to record/watch another channel? If so how does the v+ box work which does 3?

señor ding dong

The V+ has 3 tuners, but only 1 smartcard. Many DVB apps support more than 1 card/tuner, and I don't think you need more than 1 cam running. In DVBviewer, I can record multiple channels on the same transponder, so another card would allow me to record or watch from all the available channels while recording something else.

cafe.racer

I think that the V+ only has two tuners - it can record two programs whilst you're watching a previously recorded program

señor ding dong

How dare you?

The V+ Box has three tuners...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V+

cafe.racer

:D "Whatever"

Depends how you interpret it :D

Anyway, yes, you'd need a tuner for each channel you want to watch/record, and if you're specifically thinking about Cable, you'll need a separate source/decoder for each one too.

señor ding dong

Heh, I wasn't actually 100% sure it really was 3 and had to look to Wiki for confirmation.

Anyway, I wonder if Virgin supply a 3-way splitter for the tuners, or if the split is done internally in the hardware.

As for "homebrew" DVB-C, I suppose if you have more than one DVB card and you're using a hardcam for decoding, you'd need one for each card, but using softcams, shouldn't it be possible to just use one, or would you need multiple instances of something like Vplug running? Having 3 DVB cards in your box could be quite expensive of you need hardware decoding for all of them.

rawsy

the split is done in the box and you can record 2 channels while whatching a different live channel

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