[mythtv-users] 3 Mux but recording schedule indicating using 4 tuners?

[Ronald Frazier]

Well, it looks like you've got your tuners all configured correctly in
the right order, so I don't see any problem there. Your schedule was a
bit difficult to imagine in my head, so I diagrammed it out:

http://ronfrazier.net/mythtv/schedule.png

OK, what I think happened is as follows:

1) even though ONE news at 6 starts first, myth determined that
Flintstones was more important, and thus gave it a higher tuner (D1)
2) ONE news at 6 then gets D2
3) the news ended, freeing up D2
4) Fuzion and Rugby came on and grabbed the first tuner available. D2
5) Bloodlines now comes on and grabs the first available tuner - D3
6) Fuzion and Rugby ended, freeing up D2

So now you have Goldfinger that needs to be scheduled. The scheduler
can't use D1, because it's still on Atonement, so it grabs D2...the
first available. I think your complaint here is that it should grab
D3, since it can reuse that multiplex.

Unfortunately, myth doesn't have the ability to prefer a tuner that's
already tuned to the same multiplex. Multirec is a relatively new
feature (only arrived in the last few years), and it's implementation
was sort of wedged into a lot of existing code. As a result, some
sacrifices were made just to get it working with what's already there.
I'm pretty sure everyone would agree that favoring a recorder on the
same multiplex (assuming equal priority) would be the preferable way
to do it, and if the scheduler were to be redesigned from the ground
up, I'm sure that would be taken into account. However, as was
discussed in other recent threads, rewriting the scheduler is an
enormously complex task, with so many variables to take into account,
and a ton of optimization logic needing to take place to ensure that
in doesn't perform extremely poorly under busy schedules. In short,
it's a huge task, and I think a lot of people feel that, although not
optimal, it works well enough in most cases that it doesn't justify
the huge investment of effort that would be needed to significantly
rewrite it. That effort could be better spent elsewhere.

-- 
Ron Frazier