On Jan 23, 2012, at 10:00 AM, Doug Reed <n0nas at amsat.org> wrote: > The specific model Mike linked to is for cable TV subscription service. The $130 HDHomeRun Dual looks like a better option to me. It even sounds like it is cheaper than two of the older HDTV tuner cards. I wasn't aware of this option but it is very interesting..... $100 from Newegg. I use this. > > Yes, Dual tuner means you should be able to receive two channels at the same time. Add another box and receive two more channels. Since it is already Ethernet output, it sounds like it should integrate into a home network pretty easily. You still need a fast server to store the programs for later viewing. Fast? Nope. 25Mbit/sec OTA TV is about 3 MB/sec to the hard drive. Modern SATA discs can do 20x this without breaking a sweat. Very little CPU is required for a backed server; an Atom will do easily. A HD front end either needs 2.5+ gigahertz dual core w/out a good video card, or less with one. I have a 5 year old ATI card in a box that has a 4 year old dual core Pentium and HD playback is flawless. > I haven't read the docs but I'd expect it simply outputs the MPEG data stream to the user computer which then must display it or encode it for storage. The stream is already encoded for storage. That said, I do use a quad core box on the backend and a Myth "user job" there to transcode everything into a smaller space for long term storage and so that I can play the shows on my phone & tablet.