[mythtv-users] scheduler settling with conflicts where they are resolvable

[Ronald Frazier]

On Thu, Sep 8, 2011 at 5:00 PM, Brian J. Murrell <brian at interlinx.bc.ca> wrote:
> On 11-09-08 04:52 PM, Michael T. Dean wrote:
>>
>> What he said applies to (was meant to refer to?) recording rules, too.

Yeah, I meant that. It applies to everything. Programs, recorders,
rules, channels, and whatever other resources it might have to
consider in the process.


> Sure, but I don't think it changes the fact that the scheduler gave up
> too soon.  Ultimately it gave up when there were still conflicts that
> could be resolved by either changing recording channels or scheduling on
> additional tuners.  Neither was done.

But you see, it DIDN'T give up too soon from it's point of view. You
see all of those things as being equal, but when all else is equal,
the scheduler has to favor one of them. You say all it has to do is
choose the other channel and everything works out. But from its point
of view that's the wrong thing to do.

When I posted before and said it was preferring one recorder over the
other, that's just a guess based on only partial info. I don't know
the complete contents of your cardinput table, your channel table,
your program table, or your record table. I'm just speculating without
knowing the full details (and please, no, don't try to provide the
full details....I won't look at it). So let me try speculating another
way, and maybe this will make more sense to you.

So you think choosing channel 84-* instead of 109-* will fix it? But
the thing is, myth may be looking at those channels, seeing a tie, and
(since one of them has to win the tiebreaker) deciding that 109-* is
slightly higher priority. Maybe it's deciding that based on a lower
chanid, or it sorting the channum first alphabetically, or sorting the
callsign first....whatever. Then it looks at all your programs. The
Office, Grey's Anatomy, and  The Mentalist all tie for top priority.
Then it has to pick the tiebreaker. Since the end result left The
Mentalist in a conflict, and put Grey's Anatomy on a higher number
tuner, I'm going to assume The Office won that tie (my guess is it has
the smallest record id, but who knows what criteria it used). So now
we have The Office being the most important show, and 109-3 being
favored over 84-11. So it makes it's decision and then goes from
there.


I'm not saying it's the right or ideal way to handle this. Indeed, it
would be better if the scheduler could someday be redesigned to better
understand that when there's a tie it shouldn't show preference to one
arrangement at the expense of missing another recording. However, I'm
just trying to help you understand why (I think) myth did what it
did....what it was "thinking" when it made that less-than-optimal
decision.


-- 
Ron Frazier