[mythtv-users] Why 2 cards for PIP?

Brad Templeton brad+myth at templetons.com
Tue Apr 12 02:17:45 UTC 2005


On Mon, Apr 11, 2005 at 08:00:55PM -0400, Khanh Tran wrote:
> > > I was wondering why would I need more than 1 card to have PIP 
> > > capabilities especailly if my card under other oses is capable of 
> > > running PIP?
> > >
> > You need 2 tuners. Does your card have 2 tuners? If so, you may not 
> > need a second card. I say "may" because you still need to make it work
> 
> > with both tuners.
> > 
> How would you tell if I have more than one tuner in the card? I know
> that before I up graded my machine to the latest drivers and latest
> version of mythtv I was capable of watching tv on 2 machines and record
> a show. Now I can't the recent versions of drivers or mythtv tells me
> that the card is in use.

I can understand why this user would be confused.  That you need 2 tuners
is an artifact of Myth's particular implementation of PiP -- watching two
different live broadcasts at once.  An odd interpretation for a program
where the whole idea is not to watch live broadcasts at all.

Original PiP in TV sets, in fact, was single-tuner.   You used it to watch
a live broadcast in a box while watching a signal from something else like
a VCR.  (If the VCR had a tuner you could watch 2 live broadcasts.)
"2 tuner PiP" was the 2nd generation of PiP.

I don't think you should ever need PiP once you embrace the DVR vision,
or if you need it, it would be extremely rare.  Almost all TVs made recently
have it anyway, so I have never felt it should be a priority in Myth, 2 tuners
or not.  


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