[mythtv-users] Multiple cable providers cause duplicate channels in guide

Derek Atkins warlord at MIT.EDU
Mon Sep 15 15:57:41 EDT 2003


Hi,

I've got MythTV 0.11 setup with a PVR-250 (soon to be three PVR-250s).
I've been really impressed so far, but I'm trying to figure out how
to set up my system.

First some background.

My cable provider is RCN, and I subcribe to their Digital Cable
service.  What this really means is that I get channels 2-97 via a
normal, analog "us-cable" mechanism which the PVR-250 can tune
directly, but I also get "digital" channels which require tuning
through my DCT2444 cable box.

I've already verified that I can auto-tune the DCT2444 via a serial
cable and the changechannel.sh script (see the posting to this list at
http://lists.snowman.net/pipermail/mythtv-users/2003-July/010241.html
for the scripts).  So, I'm not at all worried about that.

My first problem is how do I set up the system so it can use all three
PVR cards to their fullest potential?  My initial idea was to make
cards 1 and 2 be pure analog, and card 3 "pure digital".  To
accomplish this I tried creating two cable providers in the mythtv
setup, "RCN Cable" and "RCN Digital Cable".  The problem with this
approach (as pointed out in numerous other postings to this list) is
that you get duplicate entries in the channel guide because channels
2-97 are duplicated.

So I'm trying to figure out if there is any good way to work around
this problem, or if I'm going to have to do something like:

/dev/video0 (Tuner0) -> RCN Cable
/dev/video1 (Tuner1) -> RCN Cable
/dev/video2 (Tuner2) -> RCN Cable
/dev/video2 (Composite0) -> RCN Digital Cable

So, my second problem is what to do about the channel guide?  Is my
only option editing the Digital Cable xmltv file and setting 'not ...'
in front of all the analog channels?

Third, if I do go this route, how well would mythtv cope with livetv
changing from one input type to another?  What happens if I'm watching
livetv (I'll assume that mythtv would prefer to tune from video0) and
there are two other (analog) programs to be recorded?  It would
probably record from tuners 1 and 2 (as 0 is in use for livetv) -- but
then what happens if I try to change channels in livetv to a Digital
channel?  /dev/video2 would already be "in use" recording...  Is
mythtv smart enough to switch the recording to video0 and livetv to
video2?  Or is there some way to get it to "prefer" livetv from video2
and auto-swap to another input when it needs to record from the
digital channel suite?

Thanks for any insights,

-derek
-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available


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