[mythtv-users] scheduling not using all three tuners?

Steven Adeff adeffs.mythtv at gmail.com
Mon Apr 10 18:29:46 UTC 2006


On 4/10/06, Michael T. Dean <mtdean at thirdcontact.com> wrote:
> On 04/10/2006 12:02 PM, Steven Adeff wrote:
> > I need to see where that per-show hard pre-roll is,
>
> It's the start-early and end-late settings on the recording rule.
>
> >  though I'd much
> > rather have that as an option by default for any recording on any of
> > my HD tuners, as they take about 10seconds to tune, lock and begin
> > sending data, and many shows start right at the hour/half change or
> > sometimes even before.
>
> So, would you give up a high-def recording (and record on your NTSC
> cards) just so you could get the 10-sec pre-roll on your HDTV card?  How
> should Myth determine which show should be bumped to an NTSC card or
> when not to bump shows?

Ok, I'm clearly not understanding some of your definitions for
things(even after reading the soft buffer thread it seems). So I'm
going to write up what I'm experiencing, and what I'd like to happen.
You tell me how this relates to Myth's functioning...

I've noticed that HD tuner cards take a set amount of time between
being told to change channels and begin streaming data and when the
data actually begins being sent. It turns out I occasionally miss a
few seconds from the beginning of a show, 1-2 maybe. This I assume is
caused by two things. 1) the card takes a while to being sending a
stream so it needs to be asked to do its thing earlier than it
currently is. 2) the show is starting right on the timeslot time
change

Now, In this regard I have two priority levels for shows. A) Shows I
DEMAND start recording early enough to not miss the beginning; B)
shows that it would be nice to start recording early enough to not
miss shows, but for which it is not required.

So, I've gathered that this pre-roll and post-roll define the amount
of time to adjust the start/stop process for recording/stopping from
the time obtained from the guide.

A) So for the shows I demand to start early (say 1 min), I set in the
record rule to begin recording 1 min early. I realise this will
conflict with a show in the previous time slot. Unless I have a tuner
that is free at the proper time to record the show in this next time
slot.

B) I'd like to be able to tell Myth, that given the ability (ie the
available tuner) I would like to begin all recordings 30 seconds (for
example) early.  But that if all three tuners are being used that it
should go ahead and record without this pre-roll.

So I have three HD tuners all with the same priority level. The only
difference between them is that I *had* to add one before the other
two, and similarly the second one *had* to be added before the last
one.
If I'm recording 2 shows in HD followed by another single show in HD I
would expect all three tuners to be used: two for the first two shows
and the third for the last show so that my 30second pre-roll option is
adhered to.
But what I saw was that tuner 1 and 2 were being used for the first
two shows and tuner 1 was being used for the third show. tuner 3 never
shows up.


> IMHO, the user should tell Myth...  If you look at your schedule and see
> that you have back-to-back recordings on an HDTV card, one of "That
> Movie I Remember Watching as a Kid That Wasn't Too Bad" and one of "My
> Favorite Show, Ever!", you would know that "My Favorite..." often starts
> exactly on time and that "That Movie..." will have several minutes of
> credits at the end.  Therefore, you could create an override for each
> schedule with a negative one minute "end late" for the movie and a
> positive one minute "start early" for the good show, thereby (and I know
> this is a hard concept to grasp) telling Myth what /you want/.  ;)

which I used when I only had 1xHD tuner for "My Favorite...." (ok, u
got me, its Veronica Mars... and a few others, ok, ok, The OC... sue
me I love my teen soaps...).


> Once you've had a schedule in place for a while, you may determine that
> the show often requires an offset (or, if it really is your favorite
> show ever, you may want to record a bit more just in case).  If so, you
> can modify the recording rule to always start one-minute early and/or
> end one minute late.  Doing so _will_ bump other recordings (to other
> cards, if you have enough; or off the schedule, if you don't).  You
> could then adjust the schedule /the way you want/ with overrides to
> resolve the conflicts (which is still your responsibility, not Myth's).
>
> As I'm sure you'll agree, trying to program the kind of logic described
> above (whether the start or end of a show is important--and, more
> importantly, what you want) into Myth is not worthwhile.  On the other
> hand, it takes little effort on your part to do overrides when your
> schedule isn't perfect (or to fix your schedule once you've identified a
> discrepancy--such as a show that always needs a start-early).


Now this thread also got me thinking about this whole post roll thing.
I could probably end recordings early as well, since most don't end
right on the timeslot change, and if they do its the credits. But I
now I want to make sure I'm making this change a default for anything
recorded on my HD tuners....

--
Steve


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