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

Max Barry mythtv at maxbarry.com
Wed Apr 12 23:03:27 UTC 2006


Peter Schachte wrote:
> It sounds like your fix is to give users some global
> control over when the pre- and post-roll are ignored. 

That's what my (8-month-old) patch did, yes. But we need something
different, since I don't think devs will accept changes to existing
pre-roll/post-roll code.

> But there's a
> lot to be said for the direct control of start early and end late
> settings. For one thing, they can be explicitly overriden. That's
> how I resolve conflicts now, and I like being able to decide for one
> program to risk not recording late, but for another to decide to
> simply not record a conflicting program rather than risk a WAF crisis
> if the end of a favourite program is missed. 

Right.

> So perhaps the nicest/simplest solution would be to:
> 
> 1) Allow configuration of global default start early and end
> late values. Newly scheduled recordings would get these values
> by default, but of course they would be changable.
> 
> 2) In the "upcoming recordins" list, highlight programs that are
> conflicting only because of start early and end late settings
> in some way that distinguishes then from conflicts of the
> programs themselves. Provide a key binding and menu item that
> will immediately override the schedule removing enough of the
> start early and end late values so the recordings do not
> conflict. Also have a different highlight for programs that
> are scheduled to record, but have had their start early/end
> late settings overridden, and have a key/menu item to remove
> those overrides. This would make it easy to see the state and
> to toggle the override on and off.
> 
> 3) Provide a global configuration setting that would allow
> automatic (no user intervention) overriding of start early and
> end late values with the same options you provided in your
> earlier patch, but implemented by automatically generating
> program overrides as needed. 
> 
> Each of these changes is independent of the others, and all of them
> leave users in full control over each program's start early and end
> late settings. They all just make it a bit more convenient to do what
> they can already do. 

That's excellent! It would certainly give me everything I need.

If I was using this, I'd set a global start-early of 2 minutes and
end-late of 10 minutes, and tell MythTV to rearrange programs and/or use
idle tuners to honor these. For particularly important shows, I'd use
program-specific overrides to make that end-late buffer never be dropped
(i.e. make it a hard buffer, i.e. generate a conflict), and maybe make
the end-late a little longer. And that'd be perfect.

> there's no reason that the signal coming in
> from a tuner can't be recorded into *two* files at once. 

That would be nice, but, as you say, it's a completely separate issue.
The very fact that your system would allow otherwise idle tuners to be
used in order to honor buffer settings would eliminate much of the
current problem.

> I'm happy to work on any of these ideas, with a little coaching
> on where to look. 

Fantastic! I think the first step would be to post on the -dev list, to
see what they make of the concept, and possibly get some help.

Max.


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