[mythtv-users] Tuner Schedules

[Michael T. Dean]

On 03/16/2011 10:50 PM, Spencer Herzberg wrote:
> Hi, is there a way to easily setup schedules for tuners? So that say 
> Tuner A can't record anything from 5pm to 1am, and Tuner B from 10am 
> to 12pm?
>
> My setup has my master backend in the bedroom and the hd receiver is 
> hooked up to my tv through my hdpvr. We watch tv at night and the Miss 
> doesn't like to use the Mythtv frontend for live tv (yet). If I could 
> just schedule that tuner to not be available between 5pm and 1am, that 
> would be a perfect fix until I can get her to use the mythtv frontend.
>
> I have tried cron jobs with mythbackend --nosched but it seems that 
> this will need to rebuild the recording schedules at the time the 
> command is called which is not quite ideal. I want the tuner to not be 
> available during certain time slots and this to be reflected in the 
> "Upcoming Recordings" displays.
>
> Thanks for the help!

Don't do any of the things suggested in the thread, so far.  Instead 
"check out" one or more tuners from the mythbackend, so it knows that 
tuner is not available.  It will then automatically reschedule 
everything properly, according to the specified recording rule 
priorities, etc. and ensure that the showings that occur while the tuner 
is locked are marked as not recorded because the tuner was not available.

You can do this via a menu command with EXECTV--see 
defaultmenu/tvmenu.xml the default menu theme for details/example (and 
will need to keep whatever program you start with EXECTV running until 
you're done with the tuner--and one program/menu/frontend per tuner).  
With this, you could actually set up the system so that the menu entry 
kicks off xawtv or tvtime or kdetv or whatever "passthrough" TV viewer 
application you like.

Or, you can write your own script that can be run at the command-line or 
through cron, using the Python bindings.

http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/0.24_Python_bindings/Connection_Handlers#lockTuner

(Description isn't complete, yet, but if you pass a capture card ID, you 
can tell it  to lock a specific tuner--tell mythbackend that tuner is 
not available, so it won't be used for scheduling.  You'll need to keep 
the connection from the python script to the backend open as long as you 
want the tuner locked--the destructor will unlock anything prior to 
closing the connection.  So, if done on a cron job, the first script 
could lock the tuner and keep it open and the second could )

Mike