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

[Rich West]

On 08/08/2013 12:42 PM, lists.md301 wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 8, 2013 at 12:20 PM, Kenni Lund <kenni at kelu.dk
> <mailto:kenni at kelu.dk>> wrote:
>
>
>     Den 08/08/2013 16.23 skrev "lists.md301" <lists.md301 at gmail.com
>     <mailto: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.
>     >
>     ><..snip..>
>
> 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.

Maybe I missed something in the thread, but I don't think he was trying
to mock you at all.  I think he was trying to make sure the problem was
reported somewhere and not lost here on the list.

I'm running Mythtv 0.26 with 4 frontends and one overworked backend with
three PVR-150's connected to three directTv receivers, and a HDHomeRun
connected to a crappy OTA antenna.  I've had some problems with livetv
(usually when the in-laws are over, grumbling about not being able to
easily watch a game or channel surf), but not enough to report.

Aside from other recordings taking over when someone is watching livetv
(I have yet to look for the option to have it NOT change the channel),
I've seen my share of video buffer errors or bizarrely worded errors
which kicks the user back to the main menu.  It got a lot better from
0.24 to 0.25.

-Rich
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