[mythtv-users] LiveTV conflicts with scheduled recording - despite unused tuners on the same box!
Michael T. Dean
mtdean at thirdcontact.com
Thu Jul 2 05:16:05 UTC 2009
On 07/01/2009 11:15 PM, Jean-Yves Avenard wrote:
> 2009/7/2 Michael T. Dean:
>
>> Because Myth is meant to record TV, and LiveTV is for people who haven't
>> figured out how to use a DVR. :)
>>
> I think that view of MythTV is very restrictive for no real reasons
> other than LiveTV is really lacking there.
>
> LiveTV isn't implicitly bad, there are many channels where recordings
> make no sense other than watching it live: sport and news channel
> being the 2 most obvious categories.
>
I completely disagree. Sport and news broadcasts should also be
recorded. "But," people say, "It makes no sense to record the
news--it's not like I'll care about it next week." Well, do you
schedule your life so that you can start LiveTV exactly when the news
show you like comes on? Then why not schedule MythTV to record your
favorite news show(s). "But then I'll have to delete the old shows!"
No, that's why Myth has the options allowing you to specify, "Delete
oldest if this would exceed the max episodes," and, "Keep only one
episode," or, "Keep at most <#> episodes." And, with proper
prioritization, you can also ensure that the recording won't prevent
your seeing that great summer made-for-TV movie everyone's talking about.
"But," you may be thinking, "In this fast-paced world, the news is
/constantly/ changing, so watching the news show I like with the anchor
I like that started an hour ago means that I'll miss out on the latest
breaking news." So, why not schedule a news rule that records /every/
show on your favorite news channel (or every show between some specified
hours--like 6pm to midnight). Using the same, "Delete oldest..." and,
"Keep at most..." settings and an extremely low priority, you basically
have Myth always recording the most-current news for you--just in case
you decide you want to watch it.
Oh, and, you'll be able to say, "I've seen no evidence that this type of
scheduling causes mythbackend to eat memory," when people on the list
try to tell you otherwise.
And, as for sports, schedule them to record, too. /If/ you happen to be
home when the game starts /and/ you happen to have all your snacks ready
to go and all your friends showed up on time and ..., then go ahead and
watch it as it records. But, if you're running late at work and you
realize that you still need to stop by the market to pick up some
crudités and Vitamin water for the gang, you can send a quick text to
your friends that they should show up 20-minutes later but not to worry
because the game's recording so you can still watch it from the
beginning (and skip some of the commercials).
To make it easier, think of LiveTV as, "Manual TV," whereas scheduled
recordings are, "Automatic TV." I.e. Myth takes care of starting
scheduled recordings /for/ you, but /you/ have to go to the trouble of
starting LiveTV when you want and tuning to the channel you want. Used
properly, LiveTV becomes, "Test your input connections TV."
Oh, and as for, "Channel surfers," try to convince them that the chances
of them accidentally sitting down at exactly the right time to stumble
upon the start of a show that's actually better than the couple hundred
recorded shows they've told MythTV they actually /want/ to watch is
probably close to the chances of their winning the lottery. Usually,
channel surfing ends with someone's starting to watch something that's
"good enough" about 10-20 minutes after it started airing.
If those channel surfers spent that same channel-surfing time (or,
likely a tiny percentage of that channel-surfing time) setting up
recording schedules (i.e. do a movie search or a keyword search or a
genre search--or even just browse the EPG), then watching some
recording, they'd be able to sit down next time and watch /all/ of that
show whose end they would have accidentally stumbled upon while channel
surfing.
Once you learn to use a DVR, you'll be amazed at how freeing it is. The
point of a DVR is /not/ to record those shows that are so good you
/know/ you'll watch them (or so good that you /know/ you want to keep
them forever). The point of a DVR is to record /every/ show you might
/possibly/ want to watch so that you can watch it if you decide to. The
hardest part of getting to that point is learning not to feel guilty
when you delete some show (or 50 episodes of a show--been there; done
that; sorry DirecTV) when you decide you don't want to watch it.
Recordings, they're not just for great shows, anymore.
>> If you want to ensure that Myth always chooses the
>> least-likely-to-be-used-for-recordings capture card for LiveTV, enable the
>> setting:
>>
>> Avoid conflicts between live TV and scheduled shows
>> f enabled, live TV will choose a tuner card that is less likely to have
>> scheduled recordings rather than the best card available.
>>
> Unfortunately, this just doesn't seem work as expected in many cases.
>
> My backend has 5 tuners (DVB-T).
> I could be watching LiveTV on tuner 1, and the 4 others are free.
>
If you're watching LiveTV on input 1 with inputs on 4 other cards free
and a recording starts on input 1, you did not check that box. The,
"Avoid conflicts between live TV and scheduled shows," setting selects
the least-preferred input for LiveTV (which, if you have 5 inputs,
/should/ be the 5th one if you have your system properly
configured***). Recordings, however, will take the most-preferred
capture card in all cases (regardless of the, "Avoid conflicts..."
setting). Therefore, if you're watching LiveTV on an input on card 1
and a recording starts with 4 other cards free, you're either not using
that setting or
a) you entered LiveTV when 1 scheduled recording (that was on input 1)
had finished but 4 others that ran concurrently with the
recently-finished recording that was on input 1 are still in progress
(i.e. all 4 other inputs are in use), or
b) you've manually switched to another input. For example, you may
have switched inputs because only input 1 can pull the channel you're
currently watching--in which case you probably should reorganize your
cards so that the cards that can pull the largest subset of channels are
most preferred, otherwise you're telling MythTV not to record some shows
you want (as your most-preferred shows will record on the most-preferred
inputs, so you may actually have conflicts due to the fact that it's
recording a show that could be recorded on any of the 5 inputs but it's
using the only input that's capable of pulling the channel that's airing
a lower priority show).
*** Properly configured means that the most-preferred input has the
lowest input ID and /none/ of the inputs have input priorities. Note
that no one should /ever/ mess with card/input priorities without first
reading http://www.mythtv.org/docs/mythtv-HOWTO-12.html#ss12.6 , and,
really, without reading all of section 12, to find out how messing with
input priorities may actually mean you're telling MythTV not to record
some shows you want to see. Of course, after reading section 12, people
would realize that there is /never/ a good reason to mess with input
priorities and things actually work better when you just configure your
system properly, so they'd instead configure their systems properly.
But, regardless, the first step is reading section 12.
> One recording is now due on another channel and I get a message about
> either exit, record later or switch to that channel.
> This happens even with that particular configuration is set.
>
> So maybe, I'm just missing the logic behind "Avoid conflicts between
> live TV and scheduled shows", but it certainly doesn't seem to work
> sometimes: it asked me to change channels, when 4 other decoders were
> available.
>
With, "Avoid conflicts between live TV and scheduled shows," Myth
/always/ chooses the least-preferred input that's available when you
start LiveTV. So, if at the point that you enter LiveTV no other inputs
are in use (by either other users' LiveTV sessions or scheduled
recordings), you will get the least-preferred input. If you have 5
inputs connected, that means you won't get "kicked" from LiveTV until
the 5th concurrent scheduled recording begins.
Without, "Avoid conflicts between live TV and scheduled shows," Myth
will attempt to choose the most-preferred (assumed to be the
highest-quality) available input that's local to the frontend in use for
LiveTV. If there are no available inputs locally, it will choose to use
the most-preferred input available on some other system's backend. In
the simplest configurations, this means that /both/ LiveTV /and/
recordings try to use the best input, so /every/ recording that starts
when you're watching LiveTV would get you kicked from LiveTV.
> The concept of "best recorder" is also a bit flawed I believe in what
> I believe is the most common mythtv setup: people with a dual tuner
> card, all tuners have the same priority ...
>
Myth was not designed to only allow simplistic configurations. Ask all
the people in the US who have inputs (on dual-tuner or single-tuner
cards) that record high-definition, digital ClearQAM and other inputs
that record the S-Video (standard-definition, analog) output from cable
set-top-boxes, if they believe some of their inputs are better than others.
> The "record later" is also a very US thing I believe. Very few
> channels I know actual do re-broadcast a program at a later stage,
> certainly not in Australia or France where I'm most familiar
Even in the US, a large number of shows (often the best shows--as those
are the ones the networks tend to hate the most :) are never re-aired.
"Record later," really means, "I'd rather miss the scheduled recording
so I can see the end of this show that I started watching 20-minutes
after it started and during which I'm wasting my life watching
commercials all because I can't be bothered to choose to schedule
recordings so I can watch TV on /my/ schedule--and, even though I have 4
free inputs--I can't be bothered to exit LiveTV and re-enter it, which I
wouldn't have to do if I had only enabled the setting, 'Avoid conflicts
between live TV and scheduled shows'." If the show MythTV is trying to
record never re-airs, you /will/ miss the show if you choose, "Record
later." With a proper configuration and sufficient inputs, you
shouldn't ever be faced with this dilemma, but the only way to be
sure--in the face of multiple concurrent recordings--is to abstain from
LiveTV completely.
Mike
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