[mythtv-users] Live TV channel restrictions

[Ian Oliver]

In article <71798b431002231447s37173807laa3b8cf7724ed773 at mail.gmail.com>, 
Andrew Herron wrote:
> I totally agree with your perspective on this issue.

Thanks, that's good to know! But can I repeat that I'm not the one who needs 
to be happy: the target audience is my wife and daughter. They want to turn on 
the TV, select a channel, and it just to happen. They (grudgingly) accept that 
there are at times good reasons why things aren't possible, but I sold mythtv 
to them as a "just add tuners until it works" solution.

> 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.

That sounds perfect.

> This means that there is never a situation where you can
> have two physical tuners tuned to the same MUX.

I'm guessing that one exception to this is when recordings+live exceed the 
number of virtual tuners on that 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.

It's now sounding even better! I've currently set 4 virtual tuners per DVB-T 
USB stick, but this is really because I just don't understand the 
software/system limitations yet.

> 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.

I'm hoping that recordings are prioritised over Live TV and will boot it off 
the tuner if required?

> 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.

Excellent, many thanks. Mythtv is close to perfect as a PVR and getting Live 
TV to the same level will be the icing on the cake. I'm looking forwards to 
retiring all the gubbins in our stair cupboard, and my a/v and remote 
distribution systems, and having mythtv as the "one true solution"

Regards

Ian