[mythtv-users] disable a single tuner?

[Michael T. Dean]

On 06/21/2010 02:16 PM, Nick Morrott wrote:
> On 21 June 2010 18:58, James Orr wrote:
>    
>> Is there an easy way to disable a single tuner?
>>
>> I currently have two digital cable boxes, and I want to determine if I
>> really need both as most cable shows have multiple broadcasts and my HDHR is
>> more than sufficient to cover all the network TV I watch.  It would be
>> useful to disable one of them to see what kind of effect that would have on
>> the schedule.
>>
>> I'm using 0.23.
>>      
> Stop mythbackend, enter mythtv-setup, disconnect the relevant capture
> card input from the relevant video source on the Input Connections
> page, exit mythtv-setup and restart mythbackend.
>
> This way the capture card and video source are left untouched so you
> can quickly reconnect them in the future. There is no way at the
> moment to mark an input connection as active/inactive (as you can with
> recording rules).
>    

Note also, that you shouldn't run in this configuration long term.  
Doing it for a quick test is fine, but having configured, but unused 
capture cards (i.e. capture cards with no connected inputs) has been 
known to cause breakage at some future point (i.e. it works fine for a 
couple months, then the entire Input Connections configuration gets broken).

For anything other than a quick 5-minute test, you should always delete 
the capture card itself from the MythTV configuration (hit D on the 
highlighted capture card).  Note that doing so has absolutely no effect 
on channels and video sources--it simply clears the input connections 
and the capture card information.  Since configuring capture cards and 
connecting inputs takes 10s, it's not difficult to recreate after the fact.

That said, I would just test by deleting the capture card so I don't get 
the unfortunate "my entire Input Connections configuration got broken 
when I restarted mythbackend" on my first try.  If that happens, you'll 
have to Delete all video sources and Delete all capture cards, then 
reconfigure Video Sources, Capture Cards, Connect Inputs, then configure 
channels (with channel scan or Fetch channels from listings provider).

Mike