[mythtv-users] Configuring multiple video sources?

[Michael T. Dean]

On 02/24/2009 07:32 AM, Fredrik Hallgarde wrote:
>>> I think I've understood that Video Sources are really program 
>>> listing sources (strange name). But it seems very limited to only be 
>>> able to point only one Video Source per capture card.
>> No, actually a video source is a source of video programming 
>> content.  Therefore, since you can only plug one source of content 
>> into a single input of a card, you can point only one video source 
>> per (/input/ of a) capture card.
>>
>> The program listings source is the source of listings data describing 
>> the content available through a video source.  What you actually want 
>> is a way to associate multiple listings sources with a single video 
>> source--but it's completely unnecessary functionality in Myth...
> <snip>
>>> . If I make the means to fetch the listings for the other channels, 
>>> how can I connect the new source to the DVB-S card in MythTV?
>>>
>>> Do I need to create a video source wrapper, e.g. my own XMLTv 
>>> grabber, which would make MythTV think that it's still getting data 
>>> from one source?
>> Kind of, but actually xmltv provides all the tools you need.  See 
>> tv_cat (and the info about it/other XMLTV tools on the xmltv 
>> lists/fora/wikis/...).
> It is possible, there is a Combiner grabber available in XMLTV. It is 
> a bit interesting to configure as it concatenates all configuration 
> files to one, making small updates to the configuration harder.
>
> Whether the functionality should be left to XMLTV (as it is now) or be 
> integrated in MythTV could be open for debate but I find the 
> functionality very necessary as I would expect most people able to 
> receive programming from multiple sources on a single capture card  
> (e.g. nearby countries OTA/DVB-T). With the XMLTV-listings typically 
> organized by country this require combining multiple listings for a 
> single video source. 

Feel free to write the patch to add the support for multiple listings 
sources being connected to a single video source.  (It's actually not 
that terrible a project as some work has been done on it--you'd just 
have to "turn things around".)

I'll say that I won't be doing it, though, as it wouldn't help me, and I 
think the existing tools in XMLTV work fine (as they /already/ exist and 
I'm guessing the number of people who need this capability is 
small--considering how seldom we get questions about this--or perhaps 
you guys just do a very good job of reading the wiki/archives before 
asking ;).

See:
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/commits/263352#263352
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/dev/264755#264755

http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/commits/263171#263171
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/263214#263214
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/264746#264746

as well as

http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/283031#283031

Mike