[mythtv-users] Fwd: Scheduling Conflicts?

[Yeechang Lee]

I, too, noticed some oddities with the scheduler this week. Below I
describe my experiences and posit a possible cause and solution.

Jon <jon.the.wise.gdrive at gmail.com> says:
> I have some scheduling conflicts I need to understand. My priorities
> are set appropriately. I had Heroes set to record (find weekly,
> priority +25) and instead myth decided it wanted to record Amercian
> Bodyshop (find whenever, priority -2)
> 
> Tonight it was set to record House, (weekly, priority +20) and
> instead wanted to record Eureeka (anytime, priority -3). I have
> overridden this, but would like to understand why it is scheduling
> things all funky. I missed heroes, and have to wait til the end of
> the week when it airs again (or download it)

During a two-hour block on Monday evening, these were the shows I had
set rules to record, all with the same priority and with no hard
padding:

* How I Met Your Mother, CBS, 8-8:30
* Chuck, NBC, 8-9pm
* Life After Film School, Fox Movie Channel, 8:30-9pm
* The Big Bang Theory, CBS, 8:30-9
* Heroes, NBC, 9-10pm (rerun Saturday 8-9pm)
* Rules of Engagement, CBS, 9:31pm-10pm
* The War, PBS, 8-10pm (rerun 10:30-12pm)

I have four tuners; two OTA and two cable. All of the above programs
except Life After Film School can be captured on any tuner, and I
long, long ago made sure that identical channels on different lineups
share the same callsign
(<URL:http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/204438#204438>). So,
the scheduler should've been smart enough to plan something like the
following:

Tuner 1 (cable)
* Life After Film School, 8:30-9pm
* Heroes, 9-10pm

Tuner 2 (cable)
* The War, 8-10pm

Tuner 3 (OTA)
* How I Met Your Mother, 8-8:30pm
* The Big Bang Theory, 8:30-9pm
* Rules of Engagement, 9:31-10pm

Tuner 4 (OTA)
* Chuck, 8-9pm

Instead, I got something like this in Upcoming Recordings:

Tuner 1 (cable)
* The War, 8-10pm

Tuner 2 (cable)
* Life After Film School, 8:30-9pm

Tuner 3 (OTA)
* How I Met Your Mother, 8-8:30pm
* The Big Bang Theory, 8:30-9pm
* Rules of Engagement, 9:31-10pm

Tuner 4 (OTA)
* Chuck, 8-9pm

with Heroes scheduled for the Saturday rerun. When I tried raising the
priority for Heroes to one step higher than the other rules', I got

Tuner 1 (cable)
* Life After Film School, 8:30-9pm

Tuner 2 (cable)
Unused

Tuner 3 (OTA)
* How I Met Your Mother, 8-8:30pm
* The Big Bang Theory, 8:30-9pm
* Rules of Engagement, 9:31-10pm

Tuner 4 (OTA)
* Chuck, 8-9pm
* Heroes, 9-10pm

With The War scheduled for the 10:30pm rerun on one of the OTA
tuners.

I didn't try manually instructing MythTV to not record either the
Saturday Heroes rerun or the 10:30pm The War rerun. I suspect, based
on my experience with a somewhat-similar situation
(<URL:http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/241521#241521>,
that in either case MythTV would then optimally schedule the
program. More evidence of this is from a similar, looming
situation. Between 8-10pm tonight (Wednesday) I have rules for the
following programs:

* Back to You, FOX, 8-8:30pm
* The War, PBS, 8-10:30pm
* Gossip Girl, The CW, 9-10pm
* Bionic Woman, NBC, 9-10pm (rerun Saturday 9-10pm)

It should be easy for the scheduler to schedule all four programs
across my four tuners. Instead, by default, it decided on the
following:

Tuner 1 and Tuner 2 (cable)
Unused

Tuner 3 (OTA)
* Back to You, 8-8:30pm
* Gossip Girl, 9-10pm

Tuner 4 (OTA)
* The War, 8-10:30pm

With Bionic Woman scheduled for the Saturday rerun. If I manually tell
the scheduler to not record the Saturday rerun, I get what it should
have figured out in the first place:

Tuner 1 (cable)
* Bionic Woman, 9-10pm

Tuner 2 (cable)
Unused

Tuner 3 (OTA)
* Back to You, 8-8:30pm
* Gossip Girl, 9-10pm

Tuner 4 (OTA)
* The War, 8-10:30pm

Hmm. While writing the above, I realized something that may be causing
this issue: Of my four channels, the two OTA tuners (3 and 4) have +2
priority in mythtv-setup versus 0 for the two cable tuners (1 and
2). I set the tuner priorities this way long, long ago not because of
relative video quality, but because the cable tuners carry a superset
(excepting one channel) of the OTA tuners' lineup. I thus wanted the
OTA tuners to always be used first whenever possible when recording in
order to keep the cable tuners free for something the OTA tuners can't
get.

However, since the scheduler of course doesn't realize this, I suspect
that it instead thinks that the OTA tuners are listed with a higher
priority because their recordings are of higher quality than the cable
tuners'. Thus, when the scheduler sees that Heroes is going to be
rerun Saturday *and* a higher-priority OTA tuner will be free then, it
decides that it is better to record it then instead of using the
"lower-quality" cable tuner that is free tonight.

Perhaps the moral of the story is that I haven't been trusting the
scheduler *enough*. I now suspect that were I to, before 8pm tonight,
adjust the OTA tuners' priority back to 0, the scheduler would then
intelligently rearrange recordings, with all four tuners now on an
even playing field. I also suspect that the reason I haven't noticed
this issue before (with the exception I referenced in that message
above) is that, generally speaking, the programs I'm interested in
haven't been rerun that same week, thus forcing the scheduler to use
all available tuners regardless of the tuner priorities I've set. I'll
find out tonight.

-- 
Yeechang Lee <ylee at pobox.com> | +1 650 776 7763 | San Francisco CA US