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[Cal777]

I currently have Windows Media Center on a Win7 PC with 4 tuners:  (3) SD HDHR4-2US (OTA), and (1) SD HDHR3-CC (Cable).  Will MC 23 be able to work with that quantity/mix of OTA/Cable tuners, and integrate proper EPG data for both OTA and Cable?

P.S. Tunersalad is allowing the increase in the number of tuners on Windows Media Center.

[tzr916]

Quantity yes (no limit).
Mix of OTA & Cable Card guide, I think yes (but no personal experience).

[Yaobing]

There are two approaches regarding integration of OTA and cable.  One is to group all OTA channels with their corresponding cable channels if each OTA channel does have a corresponding cable channel.  Then only the cable channels will appear in the guide, but MC will load up the OTA tuner when needed (you can prioritize which tuner to be used first).  This way you only need to setup online EPG once.  The second approach is to leave both types of channels as they are, and setup two EPG profiles.  Once setup, everything is repeated in the background everyday.

[Cal777]

Thanks tzr916 and Yaobing.

Yaobing:
Unfortunately, some of our local channels are not available from the Comcast cable feed.  If the second approach is used, and the OTA and cable channels have their own EPG profile, will there be two separate channel guide pages in MC?  If so, is switching between the two easily done with a remote in Theater View?  Are you able to schedule recordings on both guide pages?  Are there any extra costs when using 2 EPG profiles?

[Yaobing]

All programs will be presented in one place.  The OTA channels and the cable channels are just part of your channels.  You will treat them as separate channels, even though they carry the same programming.  Considering that your source of EPG data will be the same, the program info for OTA and cable channels should be identical too.

Usually there are both SD and HD channels for each local channel on cable.  So you will have three channels (SD cable, HD cable, and OTA) for each program.  I would suggest that you hide the SD cable channels and only leave OTA channels and HD cable channels.

By the way,  even if some OTA channels are not carried on cable, you can still group those channels that are carried.  That way you will not have to deal with multiple entries of the same program.

[Cal777]

Thank you for clarifying.

Among both OTA and Cable, I only have about 40 channels, that I like to watch, so the guide setup should be fairly easy, and similar, to WMC.

[muzicman0]

I have 2 Primes (Cable Card), and to HDHomeRun (OTA).  I only use the OTA for major networks such as NBC, CW, CBS, etc.  So what I did is grouped the OTA tuners for those channels with the corresponding channels on my cable feed, and set the OTA channels as a higher priority.  That way, if I run out of OTA tuners, it will still fall back to the cable card for recording.

Been doing it this way for years with JRiver, and it works great.  Of course, I am one of the lucky ones where my cable is 'copy freely'.  If your cable is Copy Once, then JRiver won't support your Cable Card.