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

David Engel david at istwok.net
Fri Sep 10 15:24:18 UTC 2010


On Fri, Sep 10, 2010 at 09:49:47AM -0400, Brian J. Murrell wrote:
> 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.

It should be on the same screen with "Reschedule Higher Priorities".
I don't have access to a MythTV frontend to double check, but it should
be something like Setup / TV / Recording Priorities /... .

> 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.  

Unreasonable, no. not if the priorities are equal.  As I recall in
yuor cases yesterday, they weren't.  Anyway, the scheduler actually
has code to do try to accomplish this IFF the priorities are equal.
FWIW, that's the questionalbe code I mentioned yesterday.  My thinking
is the code should be a slightly more liberal in moving things around.

> I wonder if this evaluating of the total priority for
> two otherwise equal combinations should be a scheduler test/goal.

In an ideal world, this might be a good idea.  In our current reality,
it will probably not happen.  The scheduler follows the adage "The
perfect is the enemy of the good."  Scheduling times are already long
enough for some people, we can't afford to exhaustively try every
combination to find the absolute best one.

> > 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.

Same thing.  You can't really directly do things with multiple shows.
You have to impart your own a priori knowledge into rules for single
shows.  For example, you could say when Survivor is on WWNY, give it a
little boost so it will be fovered over Survivor on CIII.

> > 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.

Please do.  It will probably have a positive effect on your equal
priority case.

David
-- 
David Engel
david at istwok.net


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