I have this problem in Windows 7 and I also had it in Vista.  Not sure why it works for some but not for others, but this has frustrated me for years.  I will make sure to record one show on one media center, and the second show on a second media center.  Then it will get it right  My fear is that they will go to a media server that does all the recording and not fix the issue there.  Then it will be an even worse issue.

How ever and what ever, someone might have something working but, I can tell you this.... This has not worked correctly in any version of Windows Media Center. I posted about it here...

http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/t/81665.aspx

The problem is on back to back recordings, Media Center will only use 1 tuner to do this, so it will cut off one of the shows and if you do...Back to back to back (like I do sometimes), 2 shows get cut off.

This does not change if you have even more tuners...for example, 2 shows recording back to back, 4 tuners (in my case exactly), No other shows scheduled and no one is watching Live TV. It will still do this, even though there is 3 tuners doing nothing at all, Media Center will STILL only use 1 tuner to do back to back recordings...

I know this is an old post but I have this problem and this is where most of the discussion is that describes the problem. 

Ok I have Vista Ultimate 32bit and it does back to back recordings of the same channel. If I go crazy and add say 1 hour hard padding to the end of some short shows on one channel it will even use all 4 tuners.

Windows 7 64bit has the problem described, if you add hard padding and record on the same channel one show after the other then it refuses to use any of the other three spare tuners. There are people in Australia that say they have no problems. This was a clean install.

I wonder if this is a driver issue, or certain tuner brands. I have not tried installing Windows 7 in 32 bit mode yet.

I boot back into Windows Vista no issues with this tuner.

I would not have thought it was too hard to just keep using the one tuner and Windows could use the tuner data stream to create a new recording and not even need a second tuner. The only reason I have 4 tuners is that I pad everything, particularly in Australia where programs start up to 20 min late if you don't do that you end up missing out the end of programs and if you watch out of order then you have a bunch of movies missing the end if recorded without padding if the shows are consecutive.

 Thanks

This behaviour is unrelated to drivers or hardware. You need to set the earlier recording to have at least 10 minutes of "hard" post-padding. The "hard" padding options are the ones that don't end in "when possible". This should force the other recording onto a different tuner if available. If this isn't working for you, please let me know.

And yes, using one tuner would be ideal. Believe me, we've heard the feedback, many times over :)

Thanks for the info but I have tried 15 minuites which is my standard hard padding (I don't accpet the default soft padding but go into advanced recording settins) . I even tried 1 hour on a channel that had short shows and it just did not record them. I have tried many ways with no success at all. I am back on Vista and 4 tuners working fine with it, it does not respect soft padding back to back but Vista does not either.

Willing to accept other suggestions though. I have had conversations with quite a few people and it works for some and not others with identical recording scenarios.

I believe I have burnt 20 hours at least over the weeks trying to sort it particularly as Windows 7 supports 4 tuners and I had to hack Windows Vista to get it to work.

I was having these same issues.  It would cut off the next show if i did hard padding.  Never had that problem in Vista.  A couple of weeks ago I upgraded from the the RC to the RTM.  And for now everything is working beautiful.  Last week I noticed I had recorded 2 shows back to back on the same channel and it used 2 different tuners to record them.  So I got 3 minutes into the second show with the first recording and the last 2 minutes of the first show at the beginning of the second.  I hadn't changed any settings or anything.  I hope it keeps working this way.  It sure didn't before.  So maybe the upgrade install helped or something triggers it to act up at some point and it never recovers.  I'll keep on eye on it.

Does not work for me. Shows get cut off with 4 tuners.... :(

Lorcan

This behaviour is unrelated to drivers or hardware. You need to set the earlier recording to have at least 10 minutes of "hard" post-padding. The "hard" padding options are the ones that don't end in "when possible". This should force the other recording onto a different tuner if available. If this isn't working for you, please let me know.

And yes, using one tuner would be ideal. Believe me, we've heard the feedback, many times over :)

Hi Lorcan,

does this also apply to pre padding?  My wife keeps missing the start of her programs, so if we could get it sorted, my life would be much simpler!

 Thanks
Tony

It would (with one caveat), if you could actually set hard pre-padding for a show. It's been a while since I worked on Media Center, but I don't think there's any way to control this through the standard UI. There are probably some third party apps out there which give you access to the setting, but I can't think of any right now.

The caveat that I mentioned above is that the first five minutes of most shows is actually considered soft pre-padding, and not content (don't ask why, it's a long, complicated and unsatisfying story). I'm fairly sure this can be reduced to about a minute with the right registry entries, so let me know if you want to try it out, and I'll go find them.