[mythtv-users] Switching between backends?

[Eni Gma]

Eni Gma wrote:

> I have 2 backend servers.  One of them (the master) has a WinTV-Go 
> tuner card with a full lineup of channels and the slave has a bt848 
> capture card, with a single channel.  Is there any way to select which 
> backend I get when I start a frontend?  For the first frontend it will 
> always go to the master server and then the next frontend will get the 
> slave server with a single channel.  If there is not already a 
> frontend watching TV, the only way I can access the slave backend is 
> if I schedule a recording on the slave, then watch the recording.  
> There seems to be no way to switch between backends.
>
> Also, is there a way to set different encoding parameters for each 
> backend?  My slave backend has less power, and I would like to use 
> more conservative settings for it, both for live TV and recordings.  
> All my recordings get generated with a recording profile of 0, do I 
> have the means to change in the interface or must I manually change it 
> in the DB? How does the backend decide which recording profile to use 
> for Live TV-does it simply look for the name or does it have a hard 
> coded ID?
>

For the latter problem, I ended up changing the source code on the slave 
to use the "Live TV2" profile rather than "Live TV" and it is working 
like a charm.  I will probably eventually change it to load which 
profile to use for Live TV from the settings table.  I would imagine 
this capability is already under development (I seem to remember 
something about a per-recording profile setting, I would imagine this 
goes hand-in-hand with that) so I doubt I will go very far with it. 
 Next up will be seamless (yeah, right ;-}) switching between backends 
while I switch channels.  

p.s. On a related note, it is a bad idea to change the name of the 
"Default" profile.  If the application does not find the profile, you 
can't change what settings to use for recording without a manual DB 
update.  I found out the hard way :)