Using multiple pcHDTV 3000 cards in one box

[David Liontooth <liontooth@cogweb.net>]

We're just starting a project where we need to grab television footage 
from several channels simultaneously.

The pcHDTV information says it's technically possible to put four cards 
in one computer.

The pchdtvr project claims to support multiple cards -- 
http://www.nop.org/inkling/dtv/pchdtvr.FEATURES

Is this a good long-term solution? What kind of hardware would we need?

Here are a couple of candidates:

 *  Abit AV8 K8T800

This one has five regular 32-bit PCI slots.  Are these fast enough -- 
are there other limitations if you use several cards?

 *  Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe

This has 3 PCI slots, 2 PCI-E x16 slots, 2 PCI-E slots.  I imagine the 
PCI-E x16 cannot be used by the pcHDTV cards, but can the PCI-E slots be 
used?
That would give the cards a faster bus. Or is the PCI bus speed not an 
issue with the pcHDTV cards, as the data is already digital and compressed?

Both of these are 64-bit CPU boards -- is that a bad idea in this case? 
I already run a bttv card on a dual opteron and it is rock stable.

Sound issues

On my current framegrabber (AverMedia TV Stereo), I use an audio cable 
to pipe sound from the grabber card to a sound card.
Will I have to do this with the pcHDTV cards too? Or can you record the 
audio directly from the card?

Obviously, if I have to pipe the sound to a separate sound card, that 
takes up slots.

In principle I could then put three pcHDTV cards and two sound cards on 
the AV8, using the built-in sound-card for the third.

We need to capture between 12 and 16 channels, so it would be a great 
help if we could put four cards in a single system.

Cheers,
Dave




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