[mythtv-users] schedule and soft roll-in roll-out

Michael T. Dean mtdean at thirdcontact.com
Thu Nov 7 20:04:40 UTC 2013


On 11/07/2013 02:12 PM, Raymond Wagner wrote:
> On Nov 7, 2013, at 7:38, blind Pete wrote:
>
>> With hard padding it uses three virtual tuners where it only needs
>> two.
>>
>> More surprising, leading soft padding has gone missing in both
>> 0.27 and 0.28, although not for the first recording in a batch.
> Hard padding is for software issues, faulty scheduling data.  Soft padding is for hardware issues, tuners that need some amount of lead time to spool up of their first recording.  If you're trying to use soft padding for scheduling issues, it's not going to work as you expect or as the developers intend.

And feel free to read (the entire 5 pages of) the thread at 
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/dev/195124#195124 for more 
about the very-long, and very-detailed experiment with soft padding in 
MythTV and why it didn't work (and, in the end, was no better than just 
using hard padding to tell the scheduler, "I /need/ this extra time on 
the beginning and/or end").

The only argument against hard padding is that it causes conflicts.  
However, without conflicts--or more hardware--you *will* miss something 
(padding on one or more sides of one or more recordings, which may mean 
missing some part of the show you were trying to get in spite of 
listings/broadcast schedule issues).  The huge benefit of hard padding 
is that MythTV tells you, "Someone needs to decide which is more 
important," and you get to manually specify whether you'd prefer the end 
padding on the earlier show or the start padding on the later show or no 
padding on either show or ...  Until someone successfully codes 
MythMindReader, that's the best way to ensure you get what you want.

(Though, again, you won't have conflicts--even with hard padding--if you 
have sufficient hardware for your needs.  I realize that this may mean 
additional cable/satellite box rentals or similar, but you'll have to 
decide if not having those conflicts (and not having to manually fix 
them) is worth the cost of the additional hardware, or know that you've 
chosen to make do with insufficient hardware by way of manually fixing 
conflicts.)

Mike


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