[PerryM]

I have built a new STB type 'appliance' for my TV room based upon openELEC. It is a bit complicated but basically I want to:
1) have a local live TV and PVR service with a FreeviewHD (T2) tuner running on tvheadend. I have a small internal SSD that I can use for caching (TV pause etc) but recordings would go to my NAS box. This is also the source of my media library.
2) have a remote TV and PVR service with a FreesatHD (S2) system based upon an existing DVBViewer system in another room. This is connecting fine to XBMC via the network and the DVBViewer Add-on.

I seem to have got all the various parts working, but XBMC has simply combined both tuners outputs into a single channel list. I haven't started to look at the PVR settings but they are clearly going to be complex! Before I get really stuck in - can I have some suggestions as whether what I am trying to do is feasible? I guess the crux is can a single XBMC front end have two backend PVR systems on line at the same time?

[negge]

Technically you can use as many backends as you want but there are quite a few bugs in the implementation that tend to go unnoticed since most people only use one backend.

Any particular reason why you need to use two backends? Can't you move the SAT tuner to tvheadend?

[PerryM]

No - they are at opposite ends of the house and I don't want to run satellite cables all the way through even if my wife would put up with the backend box sitting in the TV room!

[bluenote]

I suspect that its going to be a real pain for setting up recordings. (For example, tuner conflict, series record on different channels, etc) You should look for a solution that allows distributed tuners with the same backend. I have used setups in the past that did this, I'm not aware if any current PVR backends support this though.

[negge]

@PerryM any chance you can move the DVB-T input to the same room then? If you're using tvheadend you could also get a SAT>IP tuner (a GSS.BOX 400 costs around 130 euros and it's got 4 tuners) and use that, that way the tuner is decoupled from the server running the backend software. Support for it was integrated recently in tvheadend and I've only heard good things about it so far.

[PerryM]

Thanks guys. I think I might cut back on my expectations! In fact - the only thing that I REALLY need from the DVBViewer server is a live feed of the sat signal. I sometimes lose the Freeview (T2) signal in certain weather conditions and therefore need to watch the sat. I'll carry on recording the sat signals using the DVBViewer system.
I have been previously using an old PopcornHour media box as the only media device I have that accepted the live TV signals from DVBViewer, so I was excited to see that the new XBMC box had the same feature. I just need to work out how to set it up so that the two tuner systems are clearly identified with the resultant channels.

---

Actually - another thought crosses my mind! I have an unused TBS MOI box and two unused ports on my sat aerial. I could set this up in the sat backend room and use this to feed sat signals to tvheadend in my tv room. Anybody here used this MOI box? Would it integrate OK with the two tuners in the frontend box?

[negge]

AFAIK the MOI runs tvheadend internally so you can't use its tuners from another tvheadend instance.

[negge]

On second thought, you can add a multiplex URL as an IPTV source in tvheadend, that way you'll only need to configure the muxes on your MOI box (no need to scan for services or anything, though I guess it does that automatically). This would require that you have a gigabit LAN between the two boxes (technically 100 Mbit/s is enough but I wouldn't bet on it).

[nickr]

Mythtv copes with multiple tuner types/lineups fine (although whether the xbmc frontend does I am unsure)

[produno]

So you want freeview and freesat in different EPG's? You could put them into different groups then select freeview group to watch freeview channels, then obviously freesat group to watch freesat channels.

Or do you want to be able to stream them to different devices seperately?

Im not really sure what your trying to acheive.