Sky tv CAM limit?

Forums › Home Theatre (including HTPC and EPG Collector) › Sky tv CAM limit?

WilliamABradley

10 posts

Wannabe Geek

#113286 12-Jan-2013 05:05

Hi,
I was reading through some media portal info, and something was said about a cam limit, will I run into trouble here? I am planning to have four streams leading to four devices, will this work off the same card? Or will I have issues about decryption scrambling?
Thanks,
William

More info here: http://wiki.team-mediaportal.com/1_MEDIAPORTAL_1/141_Configuration/TV-Server_Configuration/02_TV_Servers

mm1352000

1149 posts

Uber Geek
Inactive user

#743674 12-Jan-2013 10:00

The CAM limit specifies the number of channels that a tuner is capable of decrypting. Each tuner can have its own limit.

Practically speaking, for a smartcard + reader setup you shouldn't have problems getting each of your four tuners to decrypt more than one channel each. Some people have issues if they use older implementations of MDAPI. Stick with MDAPI Plus and you shouldn't go wrong.

[Edit: Your CPU is responsible for the computational element of actually decrypting the channel. The smartcard + reader and server software (eg. NewCS) only has to supply valid "keys" for the decryption process. Reading the keys should not be too taxing but decrypting does use CPU compute capacity. So what I'm trying to say that your CPU needs to have a reasonable amount of grunt as well.]

GoodSync

GoodSync. Easily back up and sync your files with GoodSync. Simple and secure file backup and synchronisation software will ensure that your files are never lost (affiliate link).

Benoire

2630 posts

Uber Geek

#743752 12-Jan-2013 13:27

Hey MM, William,

As a point of reference my HTPC/Server consists of a tri core phenom II with 12GB Ram, of which 8Gb is a dedicated Ramdisk for timeshift buffers. If I attempt to tune all my tuners and max out the streams I generally use around 50% CPU time across all cores if they're all HD channels. Effectively, at present I can record ALL the HD streams Sky transmit without trouble, and that includes streaming to an XBMC client on my Galaxy TAB 2 (can't decode HD yet but CPU is still used to do the streaming), playing back a stream on the HTPC and streaming to my office PC.

Possibly too much info but hey thought I'd join in the fun :-)

P.S. Happy new year musicman! Hope that you achieve as much as you want to :-)

Chris

mcraenz

1117 posts

Uber Geek

#743792 12-Jan-2013 16:35

When I had sky I tested up to 16 channels . 4 on each tuner of a quade tuner . That was a mix of HD and SD channels on a core 2duo 3ghz. CAM limit over 4 on each tuner seemed to be a bit unstabled with MDAPI plus , arcamd, and oscam.

Help me build a new way of doing politics in Aotearoa New Zealand

OneAction.nz

WilliamABradley

10 posts

Wannabe Geek

#743844 12-Jan-2013 19:22

I was planning on using a Amd A8-5600k, would that sustain enough grunt to run 4 hd channels at the same time?
It's a quad core running at 3.6ghz each core, this is the first time I go with AMD because its cheap, will it handle the quad tuner jandal?

Benoire

2630 posts

Uber Geek

#743865 12-Jan-2013 20:53

Yup that will do fine! my Phenom II is over 4 years old now and works great!