[mythtv-users] Enabling multirec borks usability a bit.

[Michael T. Dean]

On 04/19/2010 07:51 PM, Douglas Peale wrote:
> Brian Wood wrote:
>    
>> On Monday 19 April 2010 05:10:05 pm Michael T. Dean wrote:
>>      
>>> On 04/19/2010 07:03 PM, Brian Wood wrote:
>>>        
>>>> On Monday 19 April 2010 04:47:09 pm Christopher Kerr wrote:
>>>>          
>>>>>> I'm busy for the next few days but will be looking over the source
>>>>>> after that to get a handle on what's going on and what can be done to
>>>>>> correct this.
>>>>>>              
>>>>> I'm curious: am I the only person around here who's using an antenna
>>>>> splitter with enough outputs that I can use the TVs own tuners for
>>>>> watching LiveTV?
>>>>>            
>>>> What a novel concept: Actually use the TV for what it was designed for.
>>>>
>>>> Of course the advantage of watching live TV with Myth is the ability to
>>>> just hit "R" and save the program for posterity, as well as being able to
>>>> pause things when the phone rings or another "student" selling magazine
>>>> subscriptions rings the door bell.
>>>>          
>>> Which is never necessary if you record everything you might /possibly/
>>> want to watch rather than only recording things you know you want to
>>> watch.  If you do, Live TV has absolutely no use whatsoever...
>>>        
>> Of course you never know what's going to pop up on live TV. I still have some
>> VHS tape from mid-September 2001 that I could not have anticipated.
>>
>> I think  many Myth users almost never use the live TV function (I use it
>> rarely), but it seems to be the first thing complained about by new users when
>> their systems are not set up properly. It takes new users a while to figure out
>> that eliminating live viewing is a feature, not a problem.
>>
>> One large advantage to Myth, IMHO, is that I do not have to watch live TV,
>> along with its commercials, and I can watch what I want when I want
> Live-TV is an essential tool for determining if the tuners are set up properly and for identifying channels to determine if the channels are mapped properly.
> Yes newbes will complain about it not working, but imagine trying to debug their systems without it.
>    

Actually, Live TV as a test is not testing MythTV configuration.  It's 
only testing the tuner card/drivers itself--the same as could be done 
with dd/cat/azap/...  It's extremely easy to misconfigure mythbackend 
such that LiveTV works perfectly but recordings don't work at all.

That said, it's actually good to use it as part of a test /battery/ for 
verifying configuration--just don't rely on it solely.  You need to do 
scheduled recordings to test, also, so you're testing MythTV configuration.

Mike