[mythtv-users] Frontend as cable settop box--using Live-TV

[lists.md301]

On Thu, Aug 8, 2013 at 12:20 PM, Kenni Lund <kenni at kelu.dk> wrote:

>
> Den 08/08/2013 16.23 skrev "lists.md301" <lists.md301 at gmail.com>:
>
> >
> > I throw this out as food for thought:
> >
> > I realize (and understand) that Live-TV has been of late a somewhat
> buggy/neglected feature, for good reasons.  Occasionally people question
> its value, and I have generally agreed with that.  I will offer a contrary
> point of view now, and this is not a plea for any current "issues" to be
> fixed soon, but just a reason for developers not to abandon it entirely.
> >
> > Because of the relatively recent FCC decision which allows cable
> providers to encrypt even basic cable, those of us who use clear QAM are
> losing basic functionality with minimal equipment setup (built-in TV
> tuners).  To maintain what we have, we're eventually going to have to pay
> for it, one way or the other.  But even the status quo doesn't give me all
> the channels I pay for on all my TV's.  I've been thinking about this more,
> as I just picked up an LG 22" LED-TV for the bedroom, to replace the last
> old CRT, connected to (currently free) SD DTA.
> >
> > If I'm eventually going to have to go to the trouble of running a second
> coax drop (and installing an attic antenna to go with it), I'll might as
> well run Cat6 while I'm at it and put a new MythTV frontend there to use as
> a set-top box.  But for that to work optimally, LiveTV functionality
> (sourced from my HDHR Prime) that doesn't crash my system would be helpful.
> >
>
> Out of curiosity, what is the ticket number of the bug report for this
> live TV crash? I don't remember seeing such a report recently.
>
> Best regards
> Kenni
>
>
Really, you're going to mock me?  I like to think I follow the mailing list
(and IRC) pretty closely.  I didn't think there was any secret that there
are issues with LiveTV.  I'm sorry if you took offense that I used a short
hand "crash", which may not be technically accurate--but I don't think it's
a far off characterization that using LiveTV can be problematic, maybe
ultimately requiring a frontend or backend restart.

I happen to heed the suggestion of several developers I have seen here on
the list over the years, to NOT use LiveTV but instead schedule a recording
and watch it in-progress.  I do this for pretty much all of my MythTV
viewing.  I only use LiveTV when I'm testing my setup after some kind of
change (usually channel lineup and/or tuner modification), so I have never
personally witnessed a crash--hence no ticket opportunity from me.

I asked the question several weeks about the state of MythTV anticipating
0.27, as I am on still on 0.24-fixes, because it is stable enough for me
and I have seen issues (from reading the mailing list and then looking at
the open tickets) that have made me unwilling to upgrade (because I don't
have the time to experiment properly and be prepared to revert if it
doesn't work well for me).  The one thing I have noticed, from reading the
list, is that "flakiness" has gotten worse (for various reasons) since
0.24, and pretty consistently no developers have had the inclination to
dive deep and investigate because none of them use it.  Stuff like only a
couple of channel changes before LiveTV gets stuck, or not properly
switching between tuners after a while.

If you or anyone is willing to say I'm mistaken about all the stability of
LiveTV, I would be happy to hear that.  Part of the difficulty of searching
the mailing list archives is knowing when something is truly resolved.
Sometimes people are silent because of success, but also because they have
given up in frustration.

I just hope I don't see myself being mocked on IRC for sharing my scenario
and opinion, and now asking a question.  I'm most not definitely asking for
my pet issue to be fixed now or soon, just suggesting that there may be a
user base for an existing feature that has historically had issues and for
a variety of reasons, hasn't gotten much attention.  If in a subsequent
release the developers decided to remove LiveTV entirely, I wouldn't
complain about that decision.
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