[mythtv] Re: Re: Ticket #255: Improved scheduling of consecutive programs with pre-roll/overrecord

[Rudy Zijlstra]

Keith Irwin wrote:

>
> On Sep 30, 2005, at 3:22 AM, Rudy Zijlstra wrote:
>
>> Face up to it. Soft scheduling will still result in unexpected  
>> behaviour. Spend 50bucks to get an  extra tuner and spare yourself  
>> the disappointment.
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Rudy
>
>
> It's not that simple for all of us.  I have one tuner for ATSC  
> (primarily high definition) digital programming and another for  
> analog TV programming off of cable.  Both sometimes have back to back  
> recordings.  So I'd need two more tuners.  I can't fit two more  
> tuners into my box.  The PCI slots are too tightly spaced to put  
> tuner cards with large "tin can" tuners on them into adjacent slots.   
> As such, I would need to buy another computer and two tuners.   
> Realistically, we're talking about a minimum of $450 (basic computer  
> = $300, ATSC tuner = $100, NTSC tuner = $50).  That's significantly  
> outside my budget.
>
> As a user, I would just like to say that having a few minutes of soft  
> time is very useful to me.  Shows on several networks I watch are  
> often literally back to back.  For instance, That Seventies Show has  
> jokes during the credit roll.  On FX the next show starts five  
> seconds later.  The network's clock is not synchronized with mine to  
> that kind of margin of error.  In fact, it's rare that it's  
> synchronized to within 30 seconds.  I want to be able to capture the  
> whole show.  But I would rather give up a few seconds of the end of a  
> show than be unable to record a show due to conflicts.  Setting  
> preroll and postroll to a few minutes does this perfectly.  If the  
> official version of MythTV goes to a 30-second limit on preroll and  
> postroll, I will start patching my own version to avoid this limit.
>
> With soft time, unexpected behavior can occur, yes, but most of the  
> time it "does the right thing" without my having to tell it what to  
> do and that's invaluable.  Those of you who don't like soft time, - 
> don't use it-.  Don't tell the rest of us that we should be happy  
> with hard time.  If we wanted hard time, we could set it.  What the  
> argument against better soft time support (options such as using a  
> second tuner rather than killing the preroll) comes down to is "I  
> don't like soft time, so you shouldn't either."  I'm glad for those  
> of you who can set your preroll and postrolls to a few seconds and  
> not have problems, but I'll miss beginnings and endings if I do  
> that.  But excuse me if I don't cry for the fact that I'm abusing a  
> feature.  If a significant portion of users are abusing a feature,  
> perhaps it's time for the feature to change to accommodate that usage.
>
> Keith Irwin
>
The reason i do not like the unexpected behaviour of soft time support, 
is that it significantly lowers F(amily)AF. There simply is no way to 
explain the resulting behaviour to them... And considering the serious 
extra time that is needed to solve the slippage here, soft timing simply 
is not resulting in predictable behaviour. Yes i understand your budget 
problem. I've gone to the length of using 3 back-ends, each with 2 
tuners to fully solve the schedule conflicts (4 analog tuners, 2 SAT 
tuners).

Rudy