Normally if you want to watch digital TV in more than one room, you need to pay for multiple set-top boxes or build multiple media center PCs each with their own separate TV cards.
More hardware is usually needed if you want to stream live TV to another location or to your phone. With DVBlink you can not only add these capabilities and more, but better still, it only costs 40 Euros.
With DVBlink, one Windows 7 media center PC can act as a server and any TV tuners in this machine can be shared with other Windows 7 PCs either via Windows 7 Media Center or Windows Media player, and the live TV stream can also be viewed by any web browser, including mobile phone browsers. The diagram below best shows how DVBlogic works:
In my DVBlogic setup, I have my main W7MC (depicted on the left) connected to my main TV. Inside I have 4 DVB S2 cards (Hauppauge WinTV-Nova-HD-S2) cards, that allow me to watch and record up to four channels at a time (in the latest version of DVBlogic, W7MC’s limit of 4 tv cards is removed and up to 8 cards can be utilised by one machine).
DVBlogic allows me to share these cards with the devices on the right i.e. other PCs, mobiles, tablets, UPNP enabled devices like Playstation 3s – whatever. Virtual tuners are also created for other PCs, so they can schedule their own recordings. The software uses smart tuner sharing, so if two or more devices are watching say the Discovery HD channel, then only one tuner is used rather than two or more.
Adding DVBlink has allowed me to significantly reduce my satellite TV costs. In my home I have 4 media center PCs and using DVBlink has allowed me to do away with 3 additional set-top boxs and also the additional Sky multi-room fee – that’s nearly £600 for the extra 3 set-top boxes and £125/pa for the multiroom service. For just over £300 I have 4 TV cards and the ability to watch TV wherever I want at anytime.
If you’re a Windows Phone 7 user, yopu can also download TW TeeVee that allows you to watch live TV on your handset.
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Hi Everton,
Thanks for great article!
There is no slot for the subscriber card on those Hauppauge tuners so how can you decode encrypted channels?
Could you share some details about your MC PCs hardware spec, please?
Czaki