Petri Helin wrote:

Simon Baxter wrote:

...

Simple question, do you need a separate CAM for every DVB device you add?

I'm receiving a cable service from a single provider and want to decode up to 2 boquets at once. Do both DVB cards need to have their own CI/CAM?

AFAIK, that is exactly the case. If there are any exceptions, I have not heard of them. CAMs that I have tried didn't even allow multiple stream decryption.

Perhaps the new USB port CI models, like Hauppauge's WinTV-CI, can be used with several cards at the same time? Although the support for them on Linux side is unknown to me.

My DreamBox (a linux-based digital television receiver, which has a smartcard reader and uses a software CAM for conax decoding) is able to decode multiple Conax-coded channels simultaneously. There is also an option to set the DreamBox to have a "card server" process which is available on a port of the device, which can be telnet'ed to by this and other boxes needing to decode channels (I've seen this done with a satellite system). As a test I've had the DreamBox record five channels simultaneously from two different bouquets (mine has two cable tuners, so this is the limit for bouquets).

So, at least with Conax cards, this is doable. It'd be nice to be able to use a separate "pluggable" decoder / card reader with vdr, so that my vdr could ask for the decoding card from my DreamBox, or vice versa?

Have software cams or card readers been ported to vdr?