[mythtv-users] Reserving an encoder for an external program?

[chris at cpr.homelinux.net]

On Sun, Aug 20, 2006 at 02:33:23PM -0400, Michael T. Dean wrote:
> On 08/20/06 09:08, Lars Kellogg-Stedman wrote:
> >I'm hoping that there's some way to schedule "idle time" for an
> >encoder

> You can tell Myth not to use it by not configuring it in mythtv-setup.  

You've missed his point.  This is similar to the FAQ "my cable will 
be disconnected for a few hours and I want to stop Myth from 
recording static from that tuner during that time".  Stopping Myth 
entirely would cause other non-cable (or in this case, non-radio) 
tuners to be unavailable and would kill all the frontends.  
Similarly, setting all the recording rules to "this schedule is 
inactive" is a lot of work for a short outage and affects all 
tuners.  The "do not record" overrides apply to the show, not the 
tuner.

Currently the only way to free up a tuner is to manually insert "do 
not record this showing" overrides for every show that falls into 
that time period for which the desired tuner would be a candidate.  
If multiple tuners are candidates for recording then they *ALL* 
have to be disabled because Myth doesn't allow us to direct 
recordings to a specific tuner.

The solution we really need is two-fold:

Part 1- A way to specify a specific tuner in a recording rule that 
overrides the normal allocation of shows to tuners.

Part 2- A special kind of recording rule (or a recording 
profile/codec for a normal rule) that allows Myth to schedule a 
recording but then not actually record anything when the time 
comes.  That would allow the tuner to be forced to an idle state.

Incidentally, why does the frontend's "Setup | TV Settings | 
Recording Profiles" page have a "(Create new profile group)" option 
when you can only associate the profile with a video source in the 
mythtv-setup program?  I can understand having an editor for 
adjusting the bit-rates in the frontend, but would have expected to 
see the creation and deletion of profile groups in the mythtv-setup 
program.