Extending the TV Server
Much to our surprise, we didn’t think of many variations on this project, which probably reflects how well the version we describe turned out. The ones we came up with are:
Play DVDs from a remote drive. The SageTV software only plays DVDs from a local drive. If you used the Media Portal software, you could make whatever modifications required so it would play from a remote drive shared on another PC, too.
Use multiple tuners. You might do this on multiple PCs. Recording multiple streams at once is relatively simple — the only real complexity is that you’ll need the SageTV Recorder software to control remote tuners on other PCs. The biggest issues in the entire effort will be getting the video signal to all the tuners and making sure you have your network equipped with switches and enough bandwidth.
Set up IR remote transmitters so SageTV can control set top boxes. You can get many more channels on cable TV or satellite, but (because the data streams are encrypted and must be decrypted against data stored in a smart card) digital cable TV and satellite require you to use the provider’s set top box. SageTV can control those boxes using infrared signaling through a transceiver you attach to the corresponding PC.We suggest using the USB-UIRT infrared transceiver