[mythtv-users] LiveTV and Recording

[Michael T. Dean]

Ryan Rawson wrote:

> I have a sweet MythTV setup now, but I only have one PVR card.  Much 
> to my unhappy surprise earlier tonight it appears that mythtv will 
> pre-empt recordings in favour of live TV.  With 2 tuners and encoders 
> this would be no biggie, but it caused me to miss a recording (luckly 
> Sealab is replayed again at 3am).

Perhaps that is the key.

> Is there a way to cause liveTV viewers to be pre-empted by a recording 
> if there are no free recording devices?  Maybe have it being a 
> setting, or make live TV viewing recpriority 0.

My guess is that you had set the recording as, "Always record this 
program on channel X" or "Always record this program on any channel" or 
"Record one showing of this program at any time."   If you chose any of 
these, it's quite possible (and, note that this is a guess) that when it 
came time to record, the scheduler noticed that LiveTV was in use, saw 
that the episode was repeated at a time when you had nothing else 
scheduled, so it chose to defer recording to the later episode.  If this 
is true, you should see messages to that effect in your backend log file 
(assuming you're logging backend output).

If you don't see anything in the logs and don't hear from someone more 
knowledgeable (i.e. David Engel, Bruce Markey, or just about anyone 
besides me ;), it wouldn't be too difficult to test this theory.  For 
example, if  you specify "Record only this showing" or "Record this 
program in this timeslot every day/week" and have LiveTV running when it 
starts, you should get a reminder/question/boot out of LiveTV.

> Rock on.
> (Headless linux rules too)

Linux 2.6 true headless (no keyboard, mouse, or monitor and no support 
for them in the kernel)?  If so, did you have to do anything to get 
around a BIOS that won't boot without them (i.e. VGA dummy 
(http://www.modasylum.com/guides.php?guide=18 ) or keyboard dummy 
(anyone know of a good design for one)) or are you lucky enough to have 
a smart (or should I say complacent) BIOS?

Mike