[mythtv-users] Adding HD tuner : Scheduling issues & playback profiles

[Simon Waldman]

Hi; I'm running 0.24-fixes on Mythbuntu, using terrestrial Freeview in
the UK. Things have been working nicely with a dual tuner DVB-T USB
stick. I've just installed a DVB-T2 stick as well to get access to
Freeview HD, and this raises a couple of issues that I hope this list
can help with.

1. Scheduling:
The HD channels available to me are not exact duplicates of any SD
channels. However, they show many of the same shows. This means that
the scheduler has SD and HD versions of many programmes available, on
different channels. With a near-default setup, Myth seems to choose
the HD broadcasts in preference to SD ones that start at the same
time, but if an SD broadcast starts first it is the SD one that will
be recorded.
Is there any way that I can say "Look ahead, and if there's an HD
broadcast of this episode in the known future wait for it; if there
isn't an HD broadcast, or if conflicts mean that no HD one would be
recorded, then grab an SD one instead"?
I've seen the channel priority settings, but I've also seen the
endless warnings on this list to never touch them, so I haven't ;-)
I have tried searching for this issue in the list archives, but I've
mostly seen shouty arguments about priority settings.....

2. Performance:
I've had some stuttering when trying out HD channels on LiveTV, which
I have assumed to mean that my ageing Athlon64 was struggling with
software decoding. There may be an nVidia video card somewhere in my
future ;-)
In the mean time, things were improved when I turned off the
deblocking filter and OSD fade in playback settings. BUT, to get this
change to take effect I had to change it in the SD playback profile.
The HD one is set to >= 1210x710, but doesn't seem to get applied to
HD programmes. Am I doing something silly?
I was testing this using LiveTV - I don't think that's relevant, but
just in case LiveTV uses different settings and I haven't noticed...

Thanks for any advice. Please let me know if I can usefully provide
any more information.