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[lhwidget]

I've been away too long, It's nice to see some familiar faces still here

I've used a "tuner farm" (8 tuners) with Beyond TV (BTV) running on a server for about 10 years now.  I've used JRiver for my music and movies almost as long.  This server serves Home Theater computers in my study, bedroom and living room. 

Now Cox is encrypting everything soon and I'll need cable card tuners.  They call this going "All Digital".  I call it self-serving and a monumental pain in my butt.  I really wish they would wait till I die to do this, but no such luck (I may have another 20-30 years in me)

Since I had BTV and it was basically bullet-proof, I never switched to JRiver for my TV viewing.   BTV is completely dead now and the diehards like me will be coming here as their cable companies move to encrypted content and we need to switch to cable card tuners (not supported by BTV) for even their non-premium viewing and recording.

Here's my thought, please correct/critique as needed:
1) The server is a reasonably quick i3 machine running Server 2012 R2 with a 1TB HD free for nothing but TV recordings
2) Two HD Homeruns (cable card type) with three tuners each (these just sit on the network)
3) Run JRiver on the server 24/7 to handle recording duties
4) Run JRiver on the clients to watch live or recorded TV as desired

I'm not worried about recording premium content, I don't subscribe to it.
I am wondering how JRiver will bump a live viewer if a tuner is needed for a recording (unlikely with 6 tuners).
This is a hardwired network with gigabit switches, capable of streaming Blu-ray movies, bandwidth shouldn't be a problem.

I'm working my way through the posts, but I haven't really seen anything about this kind of usage yet.

Thanks in advance,
Jay

[Yaobing]

One big question you have to find an answer is, when your cable company switch to "all digital", are they going to put DRM restriction copy-once on most channels or only on premium channels.  If it is only the premium channels, and since you do not care about premium channels, then it will work.

MC does put recording at higher priority than viewing live.  It should warn/ask the live view about switch channel due to recording (it is our intention that it works this way anyway).

[lhwidget]

Excellent, thanks Yaobing.

[RoderickGI]

My understanding is that this type of usage of MC TV is pretty common, although not by me as my requirements are simpler, with most work done on one HTPC and some other viewing on my Workstation Client. The only potential issue I see is;

1) Server versions of Windows are not technically supported, as far as I understand. Since it sounds like you already have MC running on it, that shouldn't be a problem for you. But be aware if issues start coming up.

Software Requirements
## Windows XP (SP3) and newer
## Please Note: Server editions of Windows are not officially supported.

I guess also;
2) Some people have had issues with getting these working well, but I think it has been mostly configuration and network issues. Should be fine, but read up!

Welcome to the world of JRiver MC TV. It is pretty good in here these days.  

[lhwidget]

Thanks for the encouraging words.

Actually, I only pull data off the server with freestanding installs of MC, but I do run BTV on the server.  You have to set the server's role to run BTV.  This will probably be all that's necessary for JRiver Server to run also.

I'm definitely not looking forward to getting two cable card machines working on a COX Cable system, but I think I'm getting a  handle on it.  From what I've seen, you get the machines set up and running on your network, then call Cox and have a tech guy come out and install the cards and verify their initialization (it's worth the $40).  It almost isn't worth trying to do it on your own, level one support probably won't even know what a cable card is, much less how to initialize one...

Thanks,
Jay

[Yaobing]

I thought of one thing that could be a potential gotcha. 

MC does not have the utility to help with pairing of CableCARD and CableCARD tuners.  It is on my to-do list, but I have not figured out how to do it yet.

So you will need to run Windows Media Center, or some other software that can do it, in order to help cable company technicians do the pairing.

[Castius]

I live in southern CA. Cox is my provider.
I did the self install for the cable card. I was very impressed with the phone in service call they have setup.
HD homerun software is all you need to do the pairing. Just make sure you use the Tuning Adapter and the POE filter. (They forgot to include the filter when i picked it up)
http://media.cox.com/support/print_media/tv/equipment/user_guides/cable_box/InstallingYourMotoTA.pdf

Good luck have fun

[muzicman0]

The HDHomeRun Prime webpage will have all the information that is needed to activate the Cable Cards - you will just have to figure out it's IP address from your DHCP server (typically part of your home WiFi router).  The self install kit for the cable cards is fairly simple if you know how to access the info (again, it's all in the web page for the prime), but for sure update the firmware of the HDHomeRun Primes to the latest, and make sure that you get the tuning adapter (actually, 2 of them - one for each prime) as well.  On my first attempt, they didn't send me the tuning adapter, and I didn't know I needed one.  The tuning adapter plugs into the prime as a USB device.

My concern would be DRM.  Cox uses DRM in almost every market (I'm one of the lucky ones in Orange County - but my understanding is that only 2 markets are copy freely), on everything, including premium channels.  If you live in an area that uses DRM, then you will have to use Windows Media Center, or the Silicon Dust DVR (when it is ready - getting close, but not there yet).

I will re-iterate to update the firmware to the latest, I had a friend who bought a prime, and it turned out that the firmware installed was having issues interfacing with the tuning adapter, which caused a lot of channels to not work.  It was 4 weeks before we figured out what the problem was.

[lhwidget]

Thanks for the information, this is super useful and very much appreciated!

Jay