HTPC Questions: UEFI & 4 Channel Recording

[ykaeric]

I'm looking into building a dedicate HTPC and have two questions.

1. Is it worth waiting until UEFI motherboards come out (in Q1 2011, I think) to leverage faster boot times with the device? Or is it a moot point given the nominal power consumption and fast wake times when using S3 or S4 sleep/hibernate capabilities with a current MB using standard BIOS?

2. I know that Ceton offers a tuner card that offers 4 channel simultaneous recording capabilities (Ceton InfiniTV 4); but the card costs $400. I'm looking to use either or both OTA input and cable. I'd like to able to record up to 4 shows simultaneously and am curious how to set this up. If I use two dual channel TV tuner cards, does each need to have its own dedicated input (the coax connection)?

Thanks!

 

[rwpritchett]

1. You must use S3 to enable wake-up for the HTPC for recording duties, so BIOS is good enough for that.

2. If you want to record 4 shows simultaneously, you will need at a minimum 2 coax inputs, as all ATSC tuners are either single, hybrid, or dual tuners. I suggest you look into either gettting dual HVR-2250 or Duet A188 cards, or look at getting two SicliconDust HDHomeRuns. All three have dual ATSC/QAM tuners and pairing up any two of them will result in 4 tuners available for recording. If you get single or hybrid tuners, you will need 4 cards, so the dual tuners are what you are looking for and you'll need a minimum of 2 for what you want.

 

[Wolfshadw]

Just a quick note:

If you're intending to record decrypted cable channels from your cable set top box (STB), you will need one STB for each channel you're wanting to record simultaneously.

-Wolf sends