This might be dumb to ask or whatever, I just want to make sure I understand completely. I have two older tuner cards. A WinTV-HVR-1600 and a WinTV-HVR-1800. They both can get ATSC signals and should be supported by Windows 10 if I were to put them in my new machine. What is it about those cards that would prevent them from working with Plex for Live TV and DVR functionality? I would love to be able to replace a couple of TiVo’s I have in my house, but I really don’t want to spend any more money on it since I just bought Plex Pass recently and that was quite a bit of money in itself. If someone could please help me understand how this works, I would greatly appreciate it.
Also, I want to make sure of something. For the Plex Server to use the tv tuners, you have to have the server running on the machine that the tuners are plugged in to, right? So I wouldn’t be able to keep using my Synology for the main server functions if I had the tuners on a Windows machine, right? (This sounds like a REALLY stupid question as I’m typing it, but I figure, hey, it might help someone else out in the future if they happen to stumble upon this post and have the same question. LOL)
I have a Hauppuage Nova DVB-S satellite to USB tuner plugged into my windows pc and I’m getting live tv and recording pretty good. Small bugs but generally it’s not too bad.
@steveken said:
This might be dumb to ask or whatever, I just want to make sure I understand completely. I have two older tuner cards. A WinTV-HVR-1600 and a WinTV-HVR-1800. They both can get ATSC signals and should be supported by Windows 10 if I were to put them in my new machine. What is it about those cards that would prevent them from working with Plex for Live TV and DVR functionality? I would love to be able to replace a couple of TiVo’s I have in my house, but I really don’t want to spend any more money on it since I just bought Plex Pass recently and that was quite a bit of money in itself. If someone could please help me understand how this works, I would greatly appreciate it.
Also, I want to make sure of something. For the Plex Server to use the tv tuners, you have to have the server running on the machine that the tuners are plugged in to, right? So I wouldn’t be able to keep using my Synology for the main server functions if I had the tuners on a Windows machine, right? (This sounds like a REALLY stupid question as I’m typing it, but I figure, hey, it might help someone else out in the future if they happen to stumble upon this post and have the same question. LOL)
Not exactly, you can have the tuner plugged into a different PC than the Plex Media Server as long as it’s on the same network. The tuner needs the drivers to be installed and this basically broadcasts over the network so another pc (Plex media server) can see it via IP address of the computer the tuner is plugged into.
I would probably try to do this via a wired network though as you are pumping uncompressed mpeg2 wirelessly and could lead to choppy live t
Alright, thanks, Shane. That’s useful.
The main thing I am wanting to know and understand though is about the reason why my two older tuner cards won’t work in Plex. One would think if the host computer can see it and tune channels with other apps, what makes Plex so special that it can’t? Is it just about driver integration so that Plex doesn’t know how to talk to it?
@shaneosullivan said:
I have a Hauppuage Nova DVB-S satellite to USB tuner plugged into my windows pc and I’m getting live tv and recording pretty good. Small bugs but generally it’s not too bad.
OH! I just saw this message. Previously it looked like you had accidentally posted the same thing twice. Weird. Anyway, that makes me think that mine might work, too. I might think about trying it.
@shaneosullivan said:
Not exactly, you can have the tuner plugged into a different PC than the Plex Media Server as long as it’s on the same network. The tuner needs the drivers to be installed and this basically broadcasts over the network so another pc (Plex media server) can see it via IP address of the computer the tuner is plugged into.
I would probably try to do this via a wired network though as you are pumping uncompressed mpeg2 wirelessly and could lead to choppy live t
Well, turns out that isn’t exactly right. I put the 1800 in an old computer and told the Synology NAS to scan for the tuner. No joy there. I went ahead and installed PMS on the old computer and told it to look for tuners and it found it. Granted, it showed up as a quad tuner when it is only a single tuner, but it still works. So, just tells me that I need to figure out something else like maybe dropping some money at some point on a SiliconDust box for the network so the Synology can record from it. Don’t really wanna have two PMS servers running. May end up having to if I wanna use these old cards.
