[mythtv-users] how to resolve a suboptimal scheduling situation

Brian J. Murrell brian at interlinx.bc.ca
Fri Sep 10 13:49:47 UTC 2010


On Thu, 2010-09-09 at 18:16 -0500, David Engel wrote: 
> 
> First off, please turn off the "Complex Prioritization" setting.

Which menu can I find this in?  Is it something different than
"Reschedule Higher Priorities"?  That's currently off.

> No, it doesn't.

Does it seem unreasonable?  Let's say you had 3 things to record and
they all had equal "per record rule" priority and there were two options
to record them: 2 on "digital" channels and 1 on analog or 1 on digital
and 2 on analog.  But let's say that the priority of the digital
channels was higher.  In isolation, either of the two combinations 2xD
+1xA or 2xA+1xD could fit the schedule, but obviously the 2xD+1xA is
more desirable.  That produces an overall higher total priority for the
two combinations.  I wonder if this evaluating of the total priority for
two otherwise equal combinations should be a scheduler test/goal.

> If you really know what you're doing, though, power
> priorities cna help in these situations.

Where are they?  Is that the same as "Custom Priority"?  Hrm.  Lots of
choices there.  Not really sure how to express the concept of "increase
priority when multiple shows can be recorded on higher priority
channels" though.

> Actually, it might not do as you expect depending on the value of
> SchedMoveHigher.  The reason is the scheduler has an implicit
> preference for CIII over WWNY because of its lower chanid,

Ahhhh.  That explains why, even with setting the priority of each of the
shows equal (they were not previously) it's still giving the one
Survivor showing channel "3 CIII" at the expense of multiple recordings
on digital channels which would yield a higher "total priority" (as I
describe above):

The Middle - "Back to School"         9 WWTI    22 20:00-20:30  1 4 4  A 4 -2/-1
Survivor: Nicaragua                   3 CIII    22 20:00-21:00  2 1 1  A 1 -1
Undercovers - "Pilot"                40 CITY    22 20:00-21:00  1 0 0  A E -2
Undercovers - "Pilot"                 5 WGRZ    22 20:00-21:00  1 5 5  A 5 -2/-1
Survivor: Nicaragua                   7 WWNY    22 20:00-21:00  1 6 6  A 6 -2/-1
Better With You - "Pilot"             9 WWTI    22 20:30-21:00  1 4 4  A 4 -2/-1

(full output at the usual location:
http://brian.interlinx.bc.ca/schedule.txt)

Given the above, to further demonstrate my "total priority" idea, the
above total priority is -2 + -1 + -2 + -2 + -2 == -9.  However given an
alternate scheduling (which might happen if this "channel 3 is given
preference over 9" were not the case) [mocked up by hand, so I hope it's
correct]:

The Middle - "Back to School"         9 WWTI    22 20:00-20:30  2 4 4  A 1 -1/-1
Survivor: Nicaragua                   3 CIII    22 20:00-21:00  1 1 1  A 4 -2
Undercovers - "Pilot"                40 CITY    22 20:00-21:00  1 0 0  A E -2
Undercovers - "Pilot"                 5 WGRZ    22 20:00-21:00  2 5 5  A 2 -1/-1
Survivor: Nicaragua                   7 WWNY    22 20:00-21:00  2 6 6  A 3 -1/-1
Better With You - "Pilot"             9 WWTI    22 20:30-21:00  2 4 4  A 1 -1/-1

The total priority is -1 + -2 + -1 + -1 + -1 == -6, which is an overall
better score and reflects recording the most things with the highest
priorities and thus a better selection than the "-9" total score
combination.

> so it might
> still choose to record Survivor on CIII.  If this happens, please let
> me know, so I can have you test a change I might want ot make.

Well, I have not yet disabled "Complex Prioritization" because I cannot
figure out where that's done, so I cannot be sure yet.

Cheers, and much, much thanx for humouring me through all of this.

b.

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