[mythtv] Dual tuners, LiveTV, why must LiveTV always be interrupted?

[Joe Votour]

Bruce,

This is another interesting idea, and I'll try to hack
it up.  I guess in the end, it defers to Isaac, since
it is his program.

Mainly (as I've explained), I'm looking to be able to
watch LiveTV on one card (for instance, the baseball
playoffs are on), and be able to have recordings at
the same time get sent to another card (I really like
Married With Children, but I'd rather have that record
than the baseball game).  Whether this is automatic,
or I get the dialog box telling me the recording is
starting, I honestly don't care, as long as there is a
way to have it record on another card, so that I can
watch the baseball game uninterrupted (i.e. without
having to drop back to the main menu, waiting 30
seconds and then entering LiveTV mode).

But yes, logically, you are correct - the scheduler
seems to want to start recordings with cardid 1, so
moving LiveTV to cardid 2 (in my case, since I have
two tuners) would free up cardid 1 for recording. 
Also, then I'm not adding round-robin scheduling for
tuners, and it also prevents the conflicts that were
brought to my attention.

I think I'll keep a copy of what I have, go back to my
CVS pull and try implementing this.  At the very
least, if I get it to work, then I have two possible
ways of doing things.

The only thing that I can think of with your
suggestion that doesn't seem right is ignoring the
hostname details (I haven't looked at this code, so I
might be wrong here) - I don't use multple backends
myself (I have everything on one PC), but I can see a
situation where somebody might prefer one backend over
another for LiveTV.

Certainly anybody with thoughts on this matter is more
than willing to make suggestions.

-- Joe

--- Bruce Markey <bjm at lvcm.com> wrote:
> Joe Votour wrote:
> > Isaac,
> > 
> > Thanks for the pointer in the right direction. 
> Just
> > by messing around with the value of
> > nextRecording->cardid (just set it to 2, rather
> than
> > 1), I've been able to watch LiveTV while recording
> > another program (well, something recorded, I need
> to
> > make sure it's the right thing), without being
> asked
> > to change the channel.
> > 
> > This is up for debate, but I'd like some ideas
> (from
> > you, and other people on the list) as to how this
> > situation should be handled...  Should it be
> automatic
> > that in a multi-tuner system that the recording be
> > done on the second tuner when watching LiveTV?  Or
> > would people like to have this seen as a
> configuration
> > option?
> 
> Perhaps you should think about this the other way
> around.
> Rather than forcing the scheduler to rework things
> at the
> last second (you haven't scratched the surface on
> all the
> intricacies of this ;-) you can simply choose the
> last
> available card for LiveTV so that the first card is
> available
> for the scheduled recording.
> 
> In other words, if you have three cardinputs, watch
> LiveTV
> on 3 so that 1 and 2 are free to record scheduled
> shows.
> You would only be prompted when there are three to
> record
> and you would be prompted to not record a lower
> ranked show
> (your highest ranked show will be recorded on 1).
> 
> You could modify this for yourself in
> HandleGetFreeRecorder
> by ignoring the host stuff and returning the last
> available
> encoder.
> 
> That being said, I wouldn't want it to behave any
> differently
> than it does right now. I've used DVRs for over two
> years
> and haven't intended to watch "Live TV" for nearly
> two years.
> If my list of recorded shows isn't more appealing
> than the
> things that just happen to be on now, then I know
> I'm not
> using the DVR properly.
> 
> If I do find something currently showing that I want
> to see, I
> mark it to record then watch the recording. This has
> several
> advantages. First, it won't timeout if you are
> called away or
> distracted for longer than the ringbuffer time. You
> won't lose
> the recorded portion if you want to go back to the
> menu or if
> you inadvertently change channels. The show may
> contain something
> that you want to keep or show to someone else later.
> 
> For MythTV with multiple cards, if you really feel
> the need to
> channel surf ;-) you can mark an interesting show
> for record then
> go back to Live TV to continue channel surfing on
> another card.
> 
> This also addresses the problem you are trying to
> solve. Once
> you mark a show to record, the scheduler knows which
> card is
> busy, and more importantly, when it will stop being
> busy, so
> that it can update the schedule correctly.
> 
> The way the cardinput for Live TV is selected now is
> that it
> looks for an available card that matches the
> hostname of the
> frontend. If there isn't one then use the first
> available card.
> I like this because I can go to a host and test that
> card's audio
> and video without having to start dummy recording to
> make the
> card I'm interested in the next available.
> 
> For me, I would not be interested in silently moving
> recordings
> to other cards or always using the last available
> card. However,
> I would say that the best way for you to get the
> behavior you
> are suggesting would be by defaulting to always
> choosing the
> last available card to use for Live TV.
> 
> --  bjm
> 
> 
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>
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> 


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