[mythtv-users] Live TV channel restrictions

[Andrew Herron]

On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 10:09 PM, Ian Oliver <lists at foxhill.co.uk> wrote:

> In article <4B840B51.4000309 at thirdcontact.com>, Michael T. Dean wrote:
> > If you always want LiveTV to get a separate physical
> > tuner
>
> That isn't what I want. If there is a tuner on the right mux and with a
> free
> virtual tuner, then use it. Failing that, find a free tuner and tune it to
> the
> right mux. Failing that, tell me I can't watch that channel. All PVRs I've
> met do
> pretty much exactly this.
>
> > you /are/ saying LiveTV is more important to you than recordings.
>
> It isn't. Our dual tuner PVR is shoddy in many ways but it hides tuners
> very
> well. It can do 1 or 2 recordings on one mux + live tv on any channel OR 2x
> recordings on different muxes and live TV on only available channels.
>
> > MythTV will still tell you that it needs the tuner for a recording if
> > something starts while you're watching LiveTV
>
> Telling me is OK, but if I don't respond, I hope it grabs the tuner, but
> only
> when there is no other option.
>
> > but you've told it to
> > give a preference to LiveTV by telling it to use a different physical
> tuner.
>
> How do I do that? Might I be better to buy some HDHRs an reserve these for
> Live
> TV?
>
> > The post above has a full solution for your situation that does
> > everything you want.  It's not a workaround.
>
> OK, guess I need to try and it see if there are any limitations that are
> imposed
> by the software rather than the hardware.
>
> > so that you can waste your time with LiveTV
>
> Pardon? Just because person A might not like watching news or sport live
> doesn't
> mean that person B is wasting their time by doing so.
>
> > the pain and suffering involved with hitting a key
> > (NEXTCARD)
>
> I'm starting to sense a certain attitude. :-(
>
> Wife+daughter want to select a channel. If showing this channel involves
> the
> software having to handle those mux things they don't understand, then said
> software should do it to the best of its abilities. If the software cannot
> do it
> because the underlying hardware has no resources to do it, then so be it;
> they
> accept limitations. But having four tuners, each with four virtual tuners,
> and
> having more limitations and hassle than the dual-tuner PVR we are
> replacing,
> caused consternation. Surely as software engineers we can understand that
> said
> consternation is justified?
>
> > Browse all channels
> > If enabled, browse mode will shows channels on all available recording
> > devices, instead of showing channels on just the current recorder.
>
> I'll try that, but am not sure it will help. We tried typing in channel
> numbers,
> and despite the three free tuners, Live TV would not use anything other
> than the
> first tuner, which was recording on the "wrong" mux.
>
> > is designed to allow LiveTV users who
> > are too lazy to go into the EPG
>
> Again, "lazy" is a loaded word. They aren't lazy - they just want the GUI
> to let
> them watch the channel they want to watch. If the underlying hardware can
> handle
> this, why make them jump through hoops?
>
> > So, you can decide whether you'd rather every
> > single channel change is slower in LiveTV
>
> That sounds undesirable.
>
> > or whether starting LiveTV
> > gets its own physical tuner to start with (possibly a tuner that will be
> > required for a recording while LiveTV is running)
>
> That sounds even worse, unless I add a slew of tuners just for Live TV.
>
> > or whether to just
> > use NEXTCARD
>
> That sounds hard to explain to people who just want to choose a channel.
>
> > or the EPG (which is pretty much how it's designed to be used).
>
> What do you mean by using the EPG?  We use the guide to record programs,
> but I'm
> talking about watching Live TV without recording it.
>
> Currently, we're using our sucky old dual-tuner PVR for watching Live TV as
> it
> does a better job of it than our 4xtuner+4xvirtual mythtv setup. We can
> continue
> to do this, but it does seem a shame that mythtv isn't rather more flexible
> in
> this regard.
>
> I'm happy to add more hardware if it helps, but it sounds like mythtv
> doesn't
> current make best use of available hardware, so I doubt it will help,
>
> Ian
>
>
Ian,

I totally agree with your perspective on this issue. Below i describe a fix
for this that we have in development;

We are working on a patch to MythTV 0.21 that does exactly what you are
describing for LiveTV & for scheduler recordings too - ie MythTV
automagically manages multirec tuners so that it always makes sure that if a
multirec tuner is already tuned to a channel from a given MUX that
subsequent requests from either LiveTV viewing or the scheduler for other
channels on that MUX are allocated to a Multirec tuner derived from that
same physical tuner...if no physical tuner is delivering channels from the
MUX required then a new Multirec tuner will be allocated on an unused
physical tuner. This means that there is never a situation where you can
have two physical tuners tuned to the same MUX. All of this is automatically
handled for the user and no manual tuner selection is required. Alongside
the above we have removed the limitation of only 5 multirec tuners per
physical tuner.

We have the LiveTV part of the above working well now and are just starting
working on integrating and testing the recordings scheduler so that it uses
the same logic now. As soon as we have the scheduler working we will release
a patch for MythTV 0.21 and then we hope to test and then commit a 0.22
version subsequently.

All the best


Andrew
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