Recorder Tuners

About

On this page, we can add, enable and disable Recorder/Tuners. If you installed ARGUS TV with its own ARGUS TV Recorder, it will be automatically configured for you, so you can immediately proceed to Pinging it or testing the shares (see below).

Can I have more than one Recorder/tuner? & Why would I?

Just as you can have multiple clients connected to the server machine, you can have multiple recorder/tuners. We'll cover why in a bit.

What is a recorder/tuner?

Basically, it is the software that controls your TV Tuner card(s), it tunes the card(s) and makes recordings as required. There are currently two main options, ARGUS TV Recorder (ARGUS TV's recorder/tuner) and the MediaPortal TV Server.

Why would I have more than one?

There are two reasons you may have more than one recorder/tuner

1. Argus does not support Analog tuner cards, so some people choose to use Argus for digital cards and MediaPortal TV Server for their Analog cards. As a result there may be two recorder tuners on the same machine.
2. You may not be able to fit all of your tuner cards in one machine. In this case you might have two or more machines with tuner cards installed, they would be separate recorder/tuners in the ARGUS TV Scheduler Console.

Information: Recorder/tuners, cannot share a tuner. Some hybrid cards are capable of receiving Digital and Analog signals with the same tuner. If you wish to use the Analog portion of the card, you must use MediaPortal TV Server for the Analog and Digital capabilities of the tuner.

Suppose I have one server with four cards in it, how many recorder/tuners do I need to add?

The answer is just one. You could consider the recorder/tuner as a bridge between ARGUS TV and another system. So you only need to add one of them for each system you want to use for recording.

Information: Remember, you do not necessarily need one tuner per channel, as it is often possible to tune more than one channel per card. ARGUS TV can record all the channels on a given transponder using just one tuner. In some cases, this can be as many as six or more channels. So with two tuners you could potentially be recording twelve channels at once. It is important to note that in case the channels are encrypted you will need to be able to decode all of them as well of course (cfr. the CAM Limit of a card). However, this should be taken as a free benefit when it happens, and not relied upon. Channels can move between transponders at the broadcaster's discretion, so suddenly you might revert to needing two tuners to record those two channels that previously only needed one.

Adding a Recorder/Tuner

To add the recorder/tuner of your choice, click the “Add” button. A popup menu will appear with all available recorder/tuner types. Your selection will be added to the list.

The name, service url and priority can be edited in the grid. We recommend you leave the service url as the default, however if the recorder/tuner is on another machine it will need to be set. In most cases, changing 'localhost' to the target machine name will be sufficient.

Using the priority, you can define which recorder/tuner is preferred by ARGUS TV when it is scheduling programs. The lower the number, the higher the priority. So 0 is highest priority, followed by 1, 2, 3... etc.

Information: When adding a MediaPortal TV Server recorder/tuner, you will first have to enable the ARGUS TV plugin in MediaPortal TV Server Configuration and make sure MediaPortal's TvService is running, otherwise the ping will fail.

Testing

Using the “Ping” button, you can test whether ARGUS TV Scheduler can communicate with the configured recorder/tuner. If the ping succeeds, you will see a message-box.

Once all your recorder/tuners are added and configured, click save to keep your configuration.

ARGUS TV Scheduler Console allows you to test the shares on each recorder/tuner. Launch the console and go to the Recorder/Tuners panel. Select the Recorder/Tuner you want to test and click the “Test Shares” button. A small dialog will pop up with information about the share.