[mythtv-users] Cardinput

[Bruce Markey]

Michael T. Dean wrote:
> On 08/30/2007 02:43 PM, Lonnie Borntreger wrote:
>> I have 4 tuners, one which is slightly worse quality than the others.
>> What field in "cardinput" do I change to make so that MythTV will use
>> the other three first.  I adjusted the "preference" field, but it seems
>> to make no difference.... plus I don't know if it prefers a higher
>> number or lower.  Is it the "recpriority" field?  If so, does it prefer
>> higher or lower values there?
> 
> You want to add the lowest-quality capture card to mythtv-setup last. 
> Delete all capture cards (not Delete all capture cards on <hostname>)
> and then re-add them in the proper order, then configure input connections.

This is what I'd recommend. Do not delete videosources, channels,
rules, don't scan for channels or anything else, just Delete all
capture cards (not Delete all capture cards on <hostname>). This
will empty your card and input tables and reset the counters to
zero so that the first card you enter will be "1". Enter the
first card and its input then the second card then its input
and so on. This only takes a minute or two and I do this from
time to time with no problem.

You can use mythtv-setup Input connections to set the "Input
priority:". In current versions this is stored in recpriority
and is just another priority factor. Positive numbers are more
preferred, negative is less preferred. These only need to
differ by 1 to break the tie so in most cases you would only
need to use -1, 0 or 1. Setting a priority has a different
effect than the simple ordering of input numbers. See:

http://www.mythtv.org/docs/mythtv-HOWTO-12.html#ss12.6

Even if you have a good reason to use Input priority, it is
still best to enter your card in your order of preference.

If you are using SVN HEAD, there is now Custom Priority. One
of many things you can do with this is to mark which channels
have poor signal quality on a particular input.

Priority Rule Name: Card 2 signal
Priority Value: -1

cardinput.cardinputid = 2 AND
channel.channum IN (3, 6, 95)

This says to lower the priority by one for showings on these
channels for this input. A show on channel 6 with a priority of
0 would have priority -1 for card 2. Any showing on card 1 or
card 3 would be chosen first even if it has to be as a later
time. Card 2 would only be used if there was no other choice.

However, if it isn't just a few channels but all recordings
aren't as good from that card, I'd recommend reordering your
cards so that this card is 4 and set the Input priority to -1.
If there are four shows on at the same time the scheduler may
"later" one of the shows to fit everything on the three good
cards but could still use card 4 when necessary.

--  bjm