[mythtv-users] 'Upcoming Recordings' screen: tuner identity

[Klaas de Waal]

On Wed, 13 Nov 2019 at 03:36, David Engel <david at istwok.net> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Nov 12, 2019 at 11:19:33PM +0000, John Pilkington wrote:
> > On 12/11/2019 22:13, David Engel wrote:
> > > For the recording status/tuner number column in Upcoming Recordings,
> > > Myth-Center-Wide uses the theme element called "card".  That element
> > > shows a single letter for non-recording statuses or the tuner number
> > > for recording statuses.  There is a similar, theme element called
> > > "input".  Instead of showing the tuner number, the input element shows
> > > the short display name for the tuner for recording statuses.  The
> > > short display name is simply the last two letters of the display name.
> > > You are also to put the full display name in your theme if you like.
> > >
> > > I use the input element in my custom, Blue Abstract theme.  My tuner
> > > display names HDHR1-A[0-2], HDHR2-B[0-2] and Ceton-C[0-5].
> > > Consequently, for recording statuses, I see A[0-2], B[0-2] or C[0-5]
> > > on my Upcoming Recordings screen.  I no longer know nor care what the
> > > actual tuner numbers are in most cases.
> > >
> > > David
> > >
> > Thank you, David, for the explanation.  I will investigate.  I had often
> > thought that letters and numbers would be better than what I currently see,
> > which is just numbers in both places.
> >
> > I was also puzzled recently on finding that what was, IIRC, a new git-based
> > installation on another box wasn't showing the editor's audio output graph,
> > and then that appeared after a let's-just-try-it theme download;  so perhaps
> > I really ought to pay more attention to theme updates.
>
> The line isn't always clear what should be a configurable setting and
> what should be controlled by the theme.  We've tended to lean toward
> the latter in recent years.  One problem with that, though, is useful
> features can more easily be missed or forgotten.  Another problem with
> short display name is that we don't currently make mythtv-setup
> require or at least warn about unique, input, display names.
>

I do agree that it is not useful to focus on the individual virtual
tuner instance. It is useful to know on which card a recording is
scheduled, as cards can have different capabilities, but it is not
relevant to know (except for debugging...) which virtual tuner
instance is used.
Therefore the display name is indeed quite useful, as it identifies
the card and it is used for all tuner instances for that card.

I suggest to put a default value in the "Display name (optional)"
field which is the cardid of the first/real tuner instance of the
card.
Because the multirec is now default and the number of instances is now
default 1 this would work as follows.
Precondition: all capture cards deleted.
1. Create capture cards (e.g. four of them). They have cardid values of 1 to 4.
2. Create input connections. Display name is automatically set to values 1 to 4.
Now when the system is running, additional tuner instances are created
as needed. They will get numbers higher than 4, and these numbers are
not really important, as David mentioned.

This does not prevent anyone from making schemes with a predefined
number of tuner instances, or using more meaningful names for the
cards.
This would simply use numbers 1 to 4 for a system with four tuners and
that would be, I think, good enough for most users.
It is also most likely relatively simple to implement. I would then
also change the "Display name (optional)" to "Display name".

Groetjes,
Klaas.