[mythtv-users] LiveTV conflicts with scheduled recording - despite unused tuners on the same box!

[Mark Buechler]

On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 1:16 AM, Michael T. Dean <mtdean at thirdcontact.com>wrote:

> On 07/01/2009 11:15 PM, Jean-Yves Avenard wrote:
>
>> 2009/7/2 Michael T. Dean:
>>
>
<edited>

>
>>
>>
>>> 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.
>>
>>
>
> 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.
>

<edited>


> Mike


I hate to disagree with you here, however, I think you're wrong. I too have
this issue, but I've managed to track down half the problem. Take a look at,
in 0.21-fixes, all incarnations of TV::GetValidRecorderList(). You'll notice
there's no "ORDER BY" clause, and there really should be. Now, the ORDER BY
clause doesn't matter if you've created your cards in order and have never
recreated any cards and messed up the internal mysql ordering of those rows.
However, if you have, you could end up on cardid 2 instead if cardid 1 when
you enter LiveTV. Since you've enabled the "Avoid Conflicts..." option, Myth
will always want to pick cardid 2 to record on (assuming equal priorities),
thus taking your LiveTV tuner.

As I said, I believe this is only half the issue. I've not yet bothered
figuring out the rest yet.

- Mark.
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