I believe this basically boils down to how many tuners are included in the product, since if I am not mistaken one tuner is required for each video stream. The desired application of course is to be able to view one channel while another is being recorded in the background. The OS will be MCE 2005 which definitely supports multiple video channels, but can the hardware do it? If not, what is the recommended method to add a second TV tuner?

 

And while we're on this overall subject, does anyone have experience using the ATI E-Home Wnder TV Tuner with Nvidia graphics cards? The reason I am asking is that I want to pair two digital monitors with the PC. One will be a LCD TV and the second will be a standard flat display monitor. The ATI cards Dell offers with its MCE 2005 PCs only support 1 digital + 1 analog output. The reason I want two displays is that I want one (the flat panel) to show the Win desktop full time. I have seen reviews that indicate that if the UI is switched between the Win desktop and the TV UI, all processes (including video recorded in the background) will pause for a few seconds. This is undesirable for my intended application, ergo the need for a second monitor for the user to run non-TV tasks. From my reading of the WCE 2005, I could accomplish this objective by getting a Windows Media Extender, but I'd rather directly hang two monitors off the video card...