[mythtv] NTP config

[Ben Rigby]

On 10/22/05, Michael T. Dean <mtdean at thirdcontact.com> wrote:
> Ben Rigby wrote:
>
> >There seems to be a general feeling amongst Australian television
> >channels that they can pretty much do as they please and the viewers
> >will eat it up and come back for more anyway. Perhaps this is due to
> >the fact there is only 3 commercial stations, plus two government
> >sponsored channels (who behave much better). There isn't a lot to turn
> >to when you get fed up with the treatment of viewers by one channel.
> >
> >They regularly run late. They mix repeats in with new series to pad
> >them out. For example, I think one channel was padding out NCIS by
> >alternating between a new episodes and old ones for most of this year.
> >They often take programs off the air without any announcement, leaving
> >you with no idea if they're ever going to come back to it. They also
> >run series out of order. I have no idea how they think this benefits
> >them, but they do it. They'll also cut bits out of programs to fit in
> >more ads. Repeats of the Simpsons reguarly have scenes cut to allow
> >more ads to be shown.
> >
> >Ok, that was a bit of a rant, but I think it might help for the devs
> >to have an idea of what we're using Myth to deal with when they're
> >making decisions about the future of Myth (eg. the cutting post-roll
> >to 30secs debate).
> >
> >
> Of course, with only 5 channels, you could easily get 3 x PVR-150's (or
> even 4 or 5) and use hard start-early/end-late settings, which would be
> guaranteed to work--as opposed to soft padding, which may or may not
> work depending on other schedules...  ;)
>
> Mike

Yeah I could. But my case/MB only has 1 PCI slot (it was a bad
choice). So a new case, plus MB, plus 3 x DVB-T cards is more than I'm
willing to spend at the moment.

I'm making do by not scheduling a show back to back with anything on a
commercial channel, unless it's on the same channel. If it's on the
same channel, the soft-padding is automatically dropped, and if the
show runs over it ends up on the start of the next recording. If I was
using hard-padding, I'd have to remove the padding each time this
happens, which from a quick check of upcoming records is about once
per night. So in effect, if I'm scheduling back-to-back, I want the
padding dropped nearly every time.

This isn't a perfect solution, but it's the most efficient way to do
things with what I have available to me. It wouldn't work for
everyone, but it does for me, because the situation is different to
what most people are dealing with. Which I guess is the point I was
trying to make, that the flexibility of myth is one of it's best
features, and allows it to be a great solution in so many different
circumstances.

Ben Rigby