[mythtv-users] LiveTV and Recording

[Bruce Markey]

Ryan Rawson wrote:
> Hey,
> 
> I have a sweet MythTV setup now, but I only have one PVR card.  Much to 
> my unhappy surprise earlier tonight it appears that mythtv will pre-empt 
> recordings in favour of live TV.  With 2 tuners and encoders this would 
> be no biggie, but it caused me to miss a recording (luckly Sealab is 
> replayed again at 3am).
> 
> Is there a way to cause liveTV viewers to be pre-empted by a recording 
> if there are no free recording devices?  Maybe have it being a setting, 
> or make live TV viewing recpriority 0.

Thanks for the suggestion but what you say "appears" to happen
is not correct although your show may not have recorded for some
other reason. You, or anyone else who replied on this assumption
could have found out for a fact in 30 minutes or less with less
than a minute or two of effort 8-).

If a show is scheduled to record ("Will Record") and that card
is being used for a ringbuffer, an OSD menu will appear 35 seconds
before the scheduled record time. The default choice is to watch
while it records. You can also choose to exit TV and let it record
or continue watching the ringbuffer and cancel the recording. What
you describe would only happen if the user consciously chose the
last option. If no keys are touched, it will start recording and
play the recording in progress regardless of record type, dup
matching or anything else.

The scheduler may choose a later showing for a few reasons but
not as a result of the card being used for live TV. If you set
a record rule other than Single for a show in progress and there
is another showing of the same episode, the scheduler will prefer
to record the full episode later. If there isn't another showing
then it has to record the remaining portion of the show in progress.
If the backend is started after a show has begun, it would again
try to record the full episode later.  A variation of this happens
if the server crashes during an episode with multiple showings. When
the server is restarted it would normally try to record the remaining
portion but if there is a later showing then it prefers to record
the whole episode at a later time and doesn't restart the current
showing.

Of course, none of this applies to the situation as you described
it if you were watching live TV straight through the start time.
My best guess is that the first showing of Sealab was not marked to
be recorded as you'd expected.

--  bjm