Dual HD PVR Help - I'm very close

[duncan1622]

New user, very first time posting. Limited Tech. knowledge. I have two DirecTV HD H20-100 receivers and two HD PVR devices; one connected to each receiver. Using Windows 7 64x, MCEir blasters and it appears that everything is very close to being correct. The blasters are working. The problem I have is when I actually start recording and then to test the system by changing the channel I get a message saying all tuners are currently in use. I've run MCE tv setup several times trying various senarios but somehow the second HD DVR device is not being recognized. Any suggestions would be great. Thanks.

[kapusta]

1) Did you configure the second HDPVR as a separate source in DVBLink server configuration? (Each source needs to be linked to a separate HDPVR)
2) Did you merge the channels?

I would have posted pictures of my setup, but I get the following message unfortunately: "Sorry, the board attachment quota has been reached" so you'll have to figure it out without my pictures. Let me know if you need more help.

[duncan1622]

Yes I did. The Source Lines look like this:
Source - HDPVR1 - Sinks - DVBLink Tuner #1
Source - HDPVR2 - Sinks - DVBLink Tuner #2

I have not done any channel merging, is this significant? Not sure how to do that. I have double channels of everything.

Whenever I close the DVBLink Source Configuration app. I get two popups in MCE stating that streaming is stable. One for each HD PVR so they're working but no recognition when it comes to two tuners.

Thanks for the help.

[kapusta]

Ah ok, Sounds like you're using 2.x. I never used HDPVR with 2.x. I started with DVBLink 3.0 and I'm now on 3.1 with the beta 3.1 HDPVR software. In 3.x you have to merge the channels in DVBLogic Server configuration, so that each channel shows up as a single channel in MCE that has has two sources. I don't know how to do it in 2.x.

[duncan1622]

O.K. I've only just purchase the DVBLogic 2.4 a few days ago... perhaps I'll upgrade to the 3.x and have better success. Thanks anyway.

[philibert]

I have not done any channel merging, is this significant? Not sure how to do that. I have double channels of everything.

This is the reason. You have double channels of everything, one for each of your HDPVR (the channels are duplicated). Even if you see two CNN you actually have CNN(tuner#1) and CNN(tuner#2). Thus, if you are recording CNN(tuner#1) and try to tune ABC(tuner#1) then Media Center will tell you that all tuners are in use. If you had tuned ABC(tuner#2) instead it would have worked fine.

Now, the bad thing is that you don't really know which tuner is set to which channel, you only see two duplicated names. You then have two options:
a) keep the list of duplicated channels, but rename them so that you know which tuner is used. Example: rename CNN & CNN to CNN-1 and CNN-2 and so forth.
b) tell media center that these duplicated channels should be dealt with as a single channel and allocate which-ever tuner is available. This is called "merging" channels.

(B) is of course probably what you would want. You can do that manually using Media Center channel options and going merging channels pairs one by one. Or you can download guidetool and have it do that automatically for you in batch. With guidetool you will also be able to rename your channels easily and also hide them (all operations that you can do within Media Center, but are more easy to do with a keyboard and a list).