If I attempt to watch a live broadcast that is also being recorded, how many streams does Channels use to both record the show and play back the content? In my case, I was recording an NBA game and fired up Channels to watch the live broadcast. Just curious to know how the secret sauce works. (Source could be OTA or Streaming TV.)
Depends on the client settings. There is a feature called “Tuner sharing” for this. By default it is disabled, I believe. In that case, if you are using a HDHR the client will go directly to the HDHR, using a tuner even if the DVR is recording the same channel. With the option enabled, the client will connect to the DVR and share the connection that it already has established. Note that since TVE always runs from the DVR, it always uses tuner sharing no matter what.
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This is why I ended up buying a second 4 tuner HDHR... because there isn't any way to gracefully tell it to "give me a tuner" if you want to watch Live TV while they are all recording. What I think you could do in the scenario you mentioned is just go watch the recording from the library. It will obviously be at best a few seconds behind, but you should be able to watch it without taking up a tuner that way.