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

[Joe Votour]

Well, okay, I guess I'm using the PVR capabilities
wrong then.  I'm pretty much using it as a VCR on
steroids (and the integrated DVD playback, MAME
frontend, etc.).  I find LiveTV more convenient for
when I'm watching so-called "regular TV", but then I
record things during the day and while I'm sleeping,
and skip the commercials in them.

That aside...

Your suggestion of using the last card for recording
makes sense for me, using a simple setup of two bttv
cards, both hooked up to analog cable.  According to
what you say though, the logic is complex enough that
selecting the last card will work only in simplistic
situations (like mine, for example).

I'd like to come up with a solution that works in such
a way that it doesn't break existing functionality, or
cause people grief...  But of course, at the same
time, I'm kind of greedy, and I don't want to have to
patch MythTV with every new release to make it work
for me.

I'll think about it for a bit, and consider more
suggestions.  But, right now, it's looking like it's
not possible without breaking something else.

-- Joe

--- Bruce Markey <bjm at lvcm.com> wrote:
> Joe Votour wrote:
> ...
> > 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).
> 
> In the baseball game, hit "M" then "R". "M" brings
> up the
> EPG with the current show selected and the video
> running in
> the corner. "R" instantly starts single record of
> the selected
> show.
> 
> A three hour sporting event is something I
> definitely don't
> want to watch from the ringbuffer! If you schedule
> the
> baseball game ahead of time, you'll have a chance to
> look
> at the conflicts page make decisions and know what
> to expect.
> If you discover a game is on after it has started,
> start
> recording ASAP. Once it is recording you are free to
> go to
> menus and start watching from the "Watch Recordings"
> page
> whenever you please. I like to be 20 or 30 minutes
> behind
> for baseball games so I can skip commercials, FF
> thru mound
> visits and foul balls, etc. If I get caught up, I
> exit, go
> watch something else and come back to the game
> later. Assuming
> that "Married With Children" starts at a later time,
> you can
> even channel surf while the ballgame records.
> 
> Any way you cut it, one tuner is used for baseball
> and one
> for the Bundys. What I'm suggesting is that you're
> better
> off recording both rather than thinking you need to
> watch
> one of them as Live TV.
> 
> > 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. 
> 
> More specifically, the scheduler picks the first
> available
> cardinputid for the sourceid of the channel of the
> show.
> Assuming you have one video source and one input per
> card
> then input 1 is on card 1 and input 2 is on card 2
> and all the
> channels are on sourceid 1. It gets a little more
> complex if
> there are two sources and both the s-video and coax
> inputs are
> used on the same card(s).
> 
> Note that I suggested "last available card".
> Consider if you
> have a recording from 8:00-9:00 and a movie from
> 8:30-11:00 on
> the second card. At 9:00, card 2 is busy but card 1
> is free.
> 
> > 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.
> 
> It used to simply choose the first available card,
> normally on
> the master. A few months ago people complained that
> it should
> use the local tuner if there was a backend on the
> same machine
> as the remote frontend where the user wanted to
> watch Live TV.
> I added this hostname check so that it will try to
> use a local
> tuner if possible and this is the way it currently
> works. All
> I'm saying is, for what you want, it should skip the
> hostname
> comparison and always use the last available tuner
> so that it
> will only prompt you when the very last tuner is
> needed.
> 
> --  bjm
> 
> > _______________________________________________
> mythtv-dev mailing list
> mythtv-dev at mythtv.org
>
http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-dev
> 


__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
http://shopping.yahoo.com