Multiple, simultaneous TV recording?

[neil.b]

My good lady is doing a research project for her degree. For this particular bit, she needs to record all 5 terrestrial channels for 2 hours at the same time, every day for 2 weeks. Quality is not that important, its the programme content that she needs to examine.

Does anyone know a way of doing it? I was thinking the simplest would be to buy a distribution box, feeding it with the aerial signal and then into 5 cheap video recorders but I was wondering (a) would splitting the signal 5 ways degrade it too much (and does such a box exist) and (b) if there must be a cooler, slicker way of doing it via computer, as I really don't want to have to buy 5 VHS recorders, in this day and age

Cheers,

Neil

[Fish]

Neil.

You can buy splitters at most up to eight and alot have booster amps. At home I split it into four with no boost and it is good enough for digital. To record a channel you need a receiver either in a PCI card or VHS etc. PCI TV cards at the cheapest are about £30 so you would need 5x then you have the issues of whether you can stream and store enough data on the hard drives. I have a harddrive digital box which has two receivers but at TV quality you are looking at about 1hr per Gig of data unless you compressed it more.

Hope that helps..It won't be that cheap either way.

[GregE240]

Er, you could always ask 4 friends to video a channel each for you, Neil?!!

Sorry, best I could do....

[neil.b]

GregE240 said:

Er, you could always ask 4 friends to video a channel each for you, Neil?!! Sorry, best I could do....

So that's one channel sorted. Which one do you want Greg, C5?



We thought about that but if one person was to balls it up, the whole process would need repeating so we were wanting to rely on trusty electronic brains to remember to record the programmes.

[Don]

GregE240 said:

Er, you could always ask 4 friends to video a channel each for you, Neil?!! Sorry, best I could do....

Yep. But highly practical. All you need is four/five people willing to help, with a media-center/DVDrecorder/VCR each. Post each of 'em a DVD+R/VHS Cassette you'd like filled with TV from time A to time B on the such and so of whenever. Send with it an SAE. Job done.

If you pursue the idea I'd be happy to do burn a couple of hours of utter crap onto a DVD for you...

[neil.b]

Fish said:

Neil. You can buy splitters at most up to eight and alot have booster amps. At home I split it into four with no boost and it is good enough for digital. To record a channel you need a receiver either in a PCI card or VHS etc. PCI TV cards at the cheapest are about £30 so you would need 5x then you have the issues of whether you can stream and store enough data on the hard drives. I have a harddrive digital box which has two receivers but at TV quality you are looking at about 1hr per Gig of data unless you compressed it more. Hope that helps..It won't be that cheap either way.

Bugger, i thought as much - I was rather hoping to avoid the "5 x video card/pc" problem, thinking that there might be one card that could record several channels at the same time. Hard drive space is not an issue though.

>> Edited by neil.b on Thursday 12th January 08:38

[neil.b]

Don said:

GregE240 said: Er, you could always ask 4 friends to video a channel each for you, Neil?!! Sorry, best I could do.... Yep. But highly practical. All you need is four/five people willing to help, with a media-center/DVDrecorder/VCR each. Post each of 'em a DVD+R/VHS Cassette you'd like filled with TV from time A to time B on the such and so of whenever. Send with it an SAE. Job done. If you pursue the idea I'd be happy to do burn a couple of hours of utter crap onto a DVD for you...

That's mighty kind of you to offer Don, thank you.

If all else fails (and it looks like it might), I may just take you up on the offer. I just need a few more volunteers.

[GregE240]

neil.b said:

GregE240 said: Er, you could always ask 4 friends to video a channel each for you, Neil?!! Sorry, best I could do.... So that's one channel sorted. Which one do you want Greg, C5? We thought about that but if one person was to balls it up, the whole process would need repeating so we were wanting to rely on trusty electronic brains to remember to record the programmes.

Mate, I'm a dab hand at recording programmes, and I can get all 5 channels. If you lived nearer, it would be no problem!!!

[Plotloss]

Three twin tuner graphics cards and a 6 way coaxial amp.

[JonRB]

Low tech option? Pick up 5 VCRs off eBay - they must be virtually giving them away these days - and use a splitter as previously discussed. If you have (or can borrow) one of more VCRs then the number of additional ones you need to buy obviously falls.

[catretriever]

JonRB said:

Low tech option? Pick up 5 VCRs off eBay - they must be virtually giving them away these days - and use a splitter as previously discussed. If you have (or can borrow) one of more VCRs then the number of additional ones you need to buy obviously falls.

Surely most VCR's have an RF pass through, which means you shouldn't need a splitter at all but can simply daisy chain the recorders.
In addition to that, if you set each VCR to output on a diffenet channel then you should be able to monitor them all with a single TV.

[scared but happy]

I agree, find a load of video recorders and just use the tuners and interface them with some security cctv system like this

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/4-Ch-CCTV-PC-CARD-VIDEO-RECORD
(I have one of these and they are quite good)

and either use the CCTV bit as a recorder or monitor for the VCR's if using tapes that will save havin 4 tellys


>> Edited by scared but happy on Thursday 12th January 11:47

[catretriever]

4 identical sanyo recorders for £120 inc delivery here.... (assuming you have 1 already )

http://electronics.search.ebay.co.uk/video-recorder_

[Mikey G]

Now maybe if you could record the incoming signal as whole?
What i mean is if you could set up a device that would record the signal the aerial is receiving as one and not split down into seperate frequencies, then you could play it back into the TV and choose whatever channel you want.....

Am i being to ambitious?

[scared but happy]

^^^ I think thats how the SKY+ box works, by recording the transport stream rather than each MPEG signal.

>> Edited by scared but happy on Thursday 12th January 15:20

[JonRB]

scared but happy said:

I think thats how the SKY+ box works, by recording the transport stream rather than each MPEG signal.

I beleive you are wrong there. When you have Sky+ installed your existing dish is converted to twin feed and the Sky+ box has two receivers. If it could just record the transport stream then there would be no need for twin feeds.

[neil.b]

Mikey G said:

Now maybe if you could record the incoming signal as whole? What i mean is if you could set up a device that would record the signal the aerial is receiving as one and not split down into seperate frequencies, then you could play it back into the TV and choose whatever channel you want..... Am i being to ambitious?

Is this possible? That's a f-ing genius idea if it is. I suppose it's going to depend on the frequencies that terrestrial TV broadcats operates at?

[annodomini2]

JonRB said:

scared but happy said: I think thats how the SKY+ box works, by recording the transport stream rather than each MPEG signal. I beleive you are wrong there. When you have Sky+ installed your existing dish is converted to twin feed and the Sky+ box has two receivers. If it could just record the transport stream then there would be no need for twin feeds.

Not to mention, given the number of channels it would probably fill the hard drive in a matter of seconds.

[Zad]

If Sky is at all like Freeview, the system is divided into a set of multiplexes (muxes), with (say) 10 channels to a mux. It can receive all those channels at one time and can theoretically stream the data to storage, but if you want a channel off another mux, it would need another tuner. Needless to say, the 5 terrestrial channels are split across several muxes. I'm with the cheap VCR method...

Mike

[slapmatt]

An old one, I know, but I think you need something like this:

http://blogs.snapstream.com/2006/01/18/godzilla-pvr/