[mythtv-users] PVR 250

[Nick]

On 17/01/06, Mike Richardson <doctor at mcc.ac.uk> wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 17, 2006 at 08:50:15AM +0000, Mike Richardson wrote:
> > Currently I have the channel table populated with 32 channels as generated
> > from a scan of the DVB card. Is there a way to get mythtv to update this
> > table with the freqids for the PVR-250 card or should I just update the
> > table manually with the correct channel numbers?
> >
> > I'm keen to try to do as much as possible 'by the book', despite having
> > spent a fair amount of time hacking around with the database out of
> > curiosity.
>
> I backed up the DB and decided to have a go manually and it worked. I put
> the channel number in the freqid fields for the corresponding entries in the
> channel table and now the PVR card switches channels properly. Yay!
>
> Now for a followup. The PVR 250 can only record analogue terrestrial
> channels. The DVB card can record a lot more. If I use the same source for
> both DVB and PVR the scheduler tries to handle clashes by asking the PVR250
> to record from channels it can't possibly do. I'd assumed that MythTV would
> check to see if there was an entry in the freqid field before trying to make
> a card use that source.

The scheduler uses the sourceid field to determine which channels are
available on which source. All of your analogue channels need to have
a different sourceid from the DVB channels. You should also ensure
your DVB input/channels have higher priority to ensure they are used
first for recordings.

The freqid is solely used for tuning. I don't think it plays any part
in scheduling.

I created 3 separate sources - analogue, DVB, and NTL - as I have 3
different 'types' of input. I run mythfilldatabase against each
sourceid in turn (with an xmltv file for each source containing only
the channel available on that source)

(I would like to be able to configure a single grabber file to
download a superset of all listings into a single file, and then feed
that to mythfilldatabase once (but updating each source specified).
However, if you do that MFDB will recreate any channels it finds in
the XML that are not present in the database (which without a run time
option, is not a feature in my book...))

>
> Unless there is a way to tell MythTV to limit a card to a subset of channels
> then it would seem that I have to use a different mythtv source for the
> PVR250 but collecting data from the same data source (Radio times) for a
> subset of the channels. I've done this and it appears to work but is this
> the best way? (Ignore the other discussion about the DVB card's EPG for
> now.)

See above. Create one source for analogue channels containing an xmltv
file with the 5 channels, and another for DVB containing the DVB
channels (its xmltv file should contain the channels available from
uk_rt, the remainder will be set up to use the EPG for listings).

Note that channels available on more than one source (e.g. BBC1/2,
ITV1, C4, five) need to be present in the channel table with a
separate entry for each source. If using the

If in the future you add another DVB card, it should have the same
sourceid as the existing DVB source. You do not have to add another
copy of the DVB channels to the DB - your channels table should
contain the channels available for each sourceid (think type of
source). When you add another card, you allocate it against one of the
source types available.

Duplicating the download of data is a direct result of MFDB being
unable (I've looked and can't find a way to do this) to reuse
downloaded listings for multiple sources. It is possible though to use
uk_rt through a Perl cache, so that listings are only downloaded once
and the second time it comes from the cache (info on this is in the
archives)

Nick