# How many minis can connect to a Roamio Plus?



## Ckought (Nov 29, 2006)

Here's what I'm trying to set up . . .

I have an office building that has eight offices that need to watch a particular channel. Normally, I'd just put a splitter / amplifier on the incoming cable and then out to the TVs in the offices. But, since it's a business, our local cable company charges per cable outlet and they want over $1200 a month for eight outlets. What I'd like to do is have one outlet installed from the cable company, hook a Roamio up to it, and put eight minis in the offices wired through Ethernet (no cable outlets in the offices). They'd all be tuned to the same channel (business related). So, the question is, can one Roamio support eight minis if they're all watching the same channel / stream? If they're all tuned to the same channel, would they all just use the same tuner?


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

No. You can only have 5 Minis watching live TV at any given time. They can not share tuners and one tuner always belongs to the host TiVo. So at the very least you'd need two Roamios and have to pay two outlet fees.


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## tatergator1 (Mar 27, 2008)

While the two Roamios would allow Live TV on all channels, this could present it's own problems. Presumably, these TV's would simply be displaying the channel without any interaction from the those watching the TV, i.e. no one is going to be using the remote to change channel, volume, etc. When streaming Live TV from a host DVR, the Mini will time-out after 4 hours of no remote activity, so you'd have to re-initiate Live TV every 4 hours, or press a button on each remote for each Mini every 4 hours. This time out is not user configurable.

If all TV's will be tuned to the same channel, presumably for the same 8-10 hour period of the workday, I would think it would be possible to simply setup a recurring, manual recording for the entire day for that channel, and then have all 8 mini's stream the recording, instead of using distinct tuners for the Live TV option. In this setup, you'd have to select the recording from each Mini every morning, and then advance it to real-time so that you are watching nearly Live TV on all Minis. 

There are two questions for this scenario, and I'm not sure of the answers: What's the limit on concurrent data streams from the Roamio? Can it handle 8 distinct output streams? and Does the 4-hour time-out exist for streaming a recording as opposed to Live TV?

I would guess the answer to the time-out question is No, it would continue playing the recording, but I'm not sure.


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## HDRyder9 (Aug 2, 2007)

I just set up a professional office with a similar setup. They have one cable box and an 8 way HDMI over Ethernet splitter. All TVs get the same channel but they only pay for one cable box.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

Yeah actually for your situation a distribution system of some sort make much more sense. If you can run HDMI around the office that would be cheapest, but if not there are ATSC modulators that can take HDMI in and output a standard ATSC signal that you can tune via the TVs internal tuner. They're expensive ($800-$2,500 depending on model) but given the prices you were quoted per month that's a drop in the bucket.


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## Ckought (Nov 29, 2006)

I'll look in to the HDMI over Ethernet. I hadn't considered that. Any idea of what bandwidth that would take?

Another idea, though I haven't researched it yet, would be to install something like a Windows Media Center box and stream to the users' desktops as extenders. I'd prefer to not have to use part of their screen real estate for the video stream, but on a cost / benefit level it may be the least expensive option.

Another question: Is the 5 minis per Roamio a hard number? Even if I did the thing with setting the channel to just record all day and pointed the eight minis to that recording?


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## DigitalDawn (Apr 26, 2009)

This is probably the most cost effective solution. Other installers I've talked to say they work very well.

http://www.pviusa.com/HDMI_c_24.html


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

Ckought said:


> I'll look in to the HDMI over Ethernet. I hadn't considered that. Any idea of what bandwidth that would take?
> 
> Another idea, though I haven't researched it yet, would be to install something like a Windows Media Center box and stream to the users' desktops as extenders. I'd prefer to not have to use part of their screen real estate for the video stream, but on a cost / benefit level it may be the least expensive option.
> 
> Another question: Is the 5 minis per Roamio a hard number? Even if I did the thing with setting the channel to just record all day and pointed the eight minis to that recording?


Use adapters that use HDBaseT. It will convert the HDMi signal to run over Cat5e or Cat6 cable. This is all we use with clients now. They work great and only require one twisted pair cable for both 1080P video and 7.1 audio.


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## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

Dan203 said:


> No. You can only have 5 Minis watching live TV at any given time. They can not share tuners and one tuner always belongs to the host TiVo. So at the very least you'd need two Roamios and have to pay two outlet fees.


But can you connect* 6 *Minis to a single Roamio Plus, knowing that one will never be using more than 4 Minis at one time.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

Ckought said:


> Another question: Is the 5 minis per Roamio a hard number? Even if I did the thing with setting the channel to just record all day and pointed the eight minis to that recording?


The hard limit is 12 devices per account, so you could technically have 11 Minis. But only 5 could ever watch live TV at a given time because the Plus/Pro only has 6 tuners and it can only loan out 5 of those tuners. (it always needs one for itself even if you're not watching it.


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## waynomo (Nov 9, 2002)

Ckought said:


> Another idea, though I haven't researched it yet, would be to install something like a Windows Media Center box and stream to the users' desktops as extenders. I'd prefer to not have to use part of their screen real estate for the video stream, but on a cost / benefit level it may be the least expensive option.


At that point just get enough everyone a second monitor. Still seems a lot cheaper than $1200 a month.


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## paulrichjr (Nov 16, 2010)

Dan203 said:


> The hard limit is 12 devices per account, so you could technically have 11 Minis. But only 5 could ever watch live TV at a given time because the Plus/Pro only has 6 tuners and it can only loan out 5 of those tuners. (it always needs one for itself even if you're not watching it.


I am hooking a Roamio up that has 9 other TVs in the house for a total of 10 TVs. I read that one Roamio could control 11 Minis and since no more than 4 or so TVs will be used at the same time I didn't see a problem with this. So far I have not been able to get any of the minis to work (looking at replacing splitters) but while talking to TIVO support they state that only 6 minis can be used with one Roamio. I thought the number was 11 also. I told them that only 4 TVs will be used at any one time. Assuming the 11 number is correct, what would happen if 6 TVs are on and someone wanted to watch something on TV seven? Will a prompt come up and ask which channel to change on the Roamio? I just can't wrap my mind around how this will work.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

paulrichjr said:


> I am hooking a Roamio up that has 9 other TVs in the house for a total of 10 TVs. I read that one Roamio could control 11 Minis and since no more than 4 or so TVs will be used at the same time I didn't see a problem with this. So far I have not been able to get any of the minis to work (looking at replacing splitters) but while talking to TIVO support they state that only 6 minis can be used with one Roamio. I thought the number was 11 also. I told them that only 4 TVs will be used at any one time. Assuming the 11 number is correct, what would happen if 6 TVs are on and someone wanted to watch something on TV seven? Will a prompt come up and ask which channel to change on the Roamio? I just can't wrap my mind around how this will work.


It should just say that no tuners are available. Like it does now.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

paulrichjr said:


> I am hooking a Roamio up that has 9 other TVs in the house for a total of 10 TVs. I read that one Roamio could control 11 Minis and since no more than 4 or so TVs will be used at the same time I didn't see a problem with this. So far I have not been able to get any of the minis to work (looking at replacing splitters) but while talking to TIVO support they state that only 6 minis can be used with one Roamio. I thought the number was 11 also. I told them that only 4 TVs will be used at any one time. Assuming the 11 number is correct, what would happen if 6 TVs are on and someone wanted to watch something on TV seven? Will a prompt come up and ask which channel to change on the Roamio? I just can't wrap my mind around how this will work.


There are two limits at play here...

One is the limit to the number of devices you're allowed to have on your account. That number is 12. This controls which devices are given your Media Access Key which is what they use to be able to decrypt the video being streamed. If you go over 12 it gets wonky because each device is given a list of authorized devices and those lists can get mixed between boxes so it can appear sporadic day to day after each unit makes it's call.

The other limit is the number of outgoing streams the Roamio itself can support. For live TV it's 5 (or 3 for a 4 tuner unit) because it always keeps one tuner for itself. For recorded streams I don't think there is a hard limit, but you will start having issues if you tax the hardware/network too much. That's probably where the CSR got 6.

In your scenario you should be fine. A Roamio Plus/Pro can easily feed 4 TVs at any given time. Although if you try to watch live TV and all tuners are busy recording you'll simply get message saying "tuner unavailable" you wont have the option to cancel the recording to grab the tuner or kick anyone else off the tuner. You could manually go into My Shows and cancel the recording, but it's not as simple as it is on the TiVo itself where you can do it right from the pop up.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

The Roamio Pro/Plus has no problems with 12 streams if I remember correctly. It can be recording six HD channels and playing back one locally while also streaming previously recorded content to other devices. I remember testing it out with 12 or 13 HD streams and it worked fine.(seven local and five or six streaming to my four Minis, Roamio Basic and/or Premiere)


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## jwbelcher (Nov 13, 2007)

paulrichjr said:


> I am hooking a Roamio up that has 9 other TVs in the house for a total of 10 TVs. I read that one Roamio could control 11 Minis and since no more than 4 or so TVs will be used at the same time I didn't see a problem with this. So far I have not been able to get any of the minis to work (looking at replacing splitters) but while talking to TIVO support they state that only 6 minis can be used with one Roamio. I thought the number was 11 also. I told them that only 4 TVs will be used at any one time. Assuming the 11 number is correct, what would happen if 6 TVs are on and someone wanted to watch something on TV seven? Will a prompt come up and ask which channel to change on the Roamio? I just can't wrap my mind around how this will work.


I've got 10 minis (and 2 Roamios) on my account. My setup is stable with 7 minis pointing to a single Roamio as the host DVR. However, if I go above that, each mini starts to get random C501 errors and after a while the host will reboot. I am curious to hear back if your luck is any different once you get setup.


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## Davepl (Aug 27, 2002)

aaronwt said:


> Use adapters that use HDBaseT. It will convert the HDMi signal to run over Cat5e or Cat6 cable. This is all we use with clients now. They work great and only require one twisted pair cable for both 1080P video and 7.1 audio.


That's cool... I'm still using a 6x24 matrix router from Audio Authority, which works great, but is component. I honestly find the picture near perfect, even on long runs. Sadly it requires two Cat5e runs... but it was 2006 and has served me well.


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