[mythtv] Re: [PATCH] Soft padding proof of concept

[Max Barry]

David Engel wrote:
> Would the proponents of adding soft padding to the scheduler please
> try this patch and provide feedback.

It works great. That is, it works like the current soft buffer, but also:
(a) bumps showings to an idle tuner if necessary to capture the buffer; and
(b) displays in "Upcoming Recordings" exactly when MythTV will be recording.

Point (a) addresses the niggling issue that started this whole
discussion, and means we would no longer have tuners sitting idle while
the soft buffer gets unexpectedly dumped. That's very good.

Point (b) I'm ambivalent about. From a technical point of view it makes
sense, but as a user I'm not that interested in exactly which minute
MythTV will be recording. I just want to know roughly when to expect my
programs, and whether there are any conflicts. This might make it
slightly harder to resolve conflicts because it's not immediately
obvious which bits of the recording are causing the conflict and which
are soft buffers that would be dropped anyway. (To work it out, you need
to know the scheduled times, the length of any manual hard buffers, the
length of the soft buffer, and then you have to do some arithmetic.)
That is, it can look like there's a (say) 5-minute overlap, and that
therefore you need to trim this much from a recording, when there's
really a 1-minute overlap plus a 4-minute soft buffer.

It would also be helpful if you could see in "Upcoming Recordings" when
MythTV was planning to dump the soft buffer. Maybe the programs could be
displayed in a different color, or maybe there could be a symbol, or
maybe it should just list the scheduled time and the buffer time
separately. Such advance warning could be very handy.

Since there's no associated UI, I'm not sure if it's planned that users
will be able to specify whether they want MythTV to use idle tuners
and/or switch to earlier/later showings in order to preserve the soft
buffers. Personally, I'd always take the buffers, but I know quite a few
people have said they want different options.

Hope this feedback helps.

Max.