Hi,

It is my understanding that if you have two recordings scheduled at the same time on the same mutex the hummy will record both programs on that mutex using the first tuner allowing you to view any other channel at the same using the second tuner.

If this is the case, it occurred to me that the only reason that the 9200T cannot record 4 channels (from 2 mutexes) simultaneously whilst watching a fifth (from those two mutexes) is limitations imposed by the hardware. Is this the case? I can certainly understand this restriction as the processing power to handle video streaming must be high.

The only reason I thought of this is that I regularly record programs between 22:00 to 24:00 and, mid way through watching Newsnight I often get the message 'channel restricted due to recordings' or some such message.

Bring on the 9400T quad tuner PVR please!

They have a new PVR on their web site that can record 4 channels at the same time now for satellite, so you never know...

I have a suspicion that disk throughput might be a problem with the 9200. Several times recently I have been watching a recording when the playback has stopped unexpectedly (version 1.00.08 microcode). I can restart it and there is no visible datastream error at the stop point. So what caused it?

Well. I was recording two other programmes at the same time, and I had previously fitted a larger disk, and it is nearly full, and (no doubt) severely fragmented. So I think that occasionally the disk cannot respond quickly enough to the demands of simultaneously playing one and recording two.

Bit rates suggest that there ought not to be a problem. A BBC channel is about 4 Mbits/sec, so three simultaneously would be 12 Mbits/sec, roughly 1.5 MBytes/sec. Modern ATA100 disks can do around 50 MBytes/sec sustained (or better), so there ought to be plenty of performance to spare.

Actually, this behaviour is a bit irritating because the 9200 does not remember where it was when the playback stops unexpectedly. But since I am using the 9200 outside its design parameters (i.e. I fitted a bigger disk), the fault is mine!

-- from CyberSimian in the UK