4 simultaneous DVB-T/S stream transcodes + two immediate capture/play

Thank-you, that's "all" I wanted to know, coming from someone who's already tinkered a lot. Sounds as though it should be sufficient for my needs, will continue moving ahead... all the best

yep as i suspected, distributing the load, I have 3 core2duo-based machines & 1 AMD...

BTW, there is a standalone that can record 4 streams at once (even 4 HD streams at once) while playing a 5th one (even HD). It's called Humax iCord HD (SAT only, no DVB-C or -T yet). The transcoding you still need to do it on another machine :)