[mythtv] Avoiding conflicts with LiveTV/Scheduling questions

Nick knowledgejunkie at gmail.com
Fri Jul 7 01:39:22 UTC 2006


1) Could someone quickly explain the algorithm (or point me to the
source file) for selecting a card (and the next card etc) for LiveTV
when 'Avoid conflicts with LiveTV' is selected please?

On my master backend installation I have 3 DVB-T and 1 PVR-150 cards,
ranked 6,5,4,2 in terms of priority respectively (no cards have equal
priority). My slave machine has a further DVB-T card and PVR-350 card,
with priorities 3 and 1. This hopefully means the 4 DVB-T cards are
chosen first in the likelihood of conflict resolution, and the PVR
cards second, with MBE cards taking priority over SBE cards.

When selecting LiveTV mode on the slave machine, it brings up the
PVR-350 with priority 1 (the lowest priority card) which I would
expect. Changing tuner then cycles through the cards from highest
priority (even if there are recordings on that card coming up in an
hour or so) to lowest priority. I would ideally like the next card
chosen to be the DVB-T card on the slave machine - not just because of
the increased picture quality, but because it is the next lowest
priority card available (less chance of a clash) and importantly is
local to the frontend watching LiveTV.

Similarly with the main backend, I would like the third DVB card
chosen after card 4 (the PVR-150) for the same reasons - less
likelihood of interrupted LiveTV viewing.

I have observed in the cardinput table a new 'recpriority' column
which I have configured in the same order as 'preference' - can this
be configured differently to get the desired behaviour?

2) Is there any desire for a 'Last Viewed LiveTV channel' setting for
each cardinput? If a recording takes place after watching TV on an
input it wipes out the last viewed TV channel and sets it to the
recorded channel instead.

3) A related scheduling question is the following scenario:

- I have 1 scheduled recording (daily/channel) on DVB card 1 (highest
prio) leaving all other cards available
- there is a conflicting recording (also daily/channel) that will also
be shown later, and is scheduled for a Later recording on DVB card 1.
- DVB card 2 is left unused, but could make the recording even with
priority differences.

By selecting the 'Prefer Input' option in newish SVN for the second
conflicting recording to a spare tuner, the issue was/is resolved.

My question - should the scheduler use available inputs to record
earlier showings in preference to using a slightly higher preference
input for a later showing? Should I set the preference of the DVB
cards as equal instead of 6,5,4 as I have them set now?

4) When using an externally controlled source (in my case a cable box
using an IR blaster) mythbackend at startup tunes the input to the
last used source. As mythbackend also tunes when firing up LiveTV and
when making a recording, is this startup behaviour required, or could
it be made an option? It's slightly annoying when using the cable box
outside of MythTV!

Many thanks,
Nick

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