[mythtv] Removing "local" preference within live tv tuner ordering

[Matt S.]

Hello!

Let me start off by offering a bit of praise for David's work in
restructuring tuner priority for both scheduled recordings as well as
live TV.  As someone who has personally deleted all his tuners,
inputs, and sources dozens of times over the years simply to ensure
correct tuner number and ordering, I'm grateful to see this change.

I do have a few questions to throw out to the devs regarding their
opinion related to Live TV ordering, and figured that since this area
is being refactored now would be the right time... I'm referencing the
changes here: http://www.mythtv.org/pipermail/mythtv-firehose/2012-January/002660.html
(3281cdd) and here
http://www.mythtv.org/pipermail/mythtv-firehose/2012-January/002681.html
(97047fc).

After the recent changes, the factor for ordering for scheduled
recordings is to honor the new order based on lowest to highest
positive number (or revert back to the previous behavior of added
order when there's a tie).  But for Live TV order, there's an
exception to this rule, and that's when there's a tuner locally
available.  Historically, this might have made sense... but I'm
thinking there may be more justification for leveraging the same model
across both Live TV and Scheduled Recordings, and that's to honor the
order regardless of local vs. remote tuner location.

For example (and I know this is just 1 specific case, but...):
I have multiple tuners -
- HDHR for QAM - tunes various cable channels between 1000-1100 (set
up in the MBE)
- HD5000 for QAM - tunes various cable channels between 1000-1100(in MBE)
- PVR-500's/250's for analog cable - tunes various cable channels
between 2-99 (in MBE)
- HD-PVR - tunes EVERYTHING, but is primarily used for channels the
other tuners can't tune (in SBE/FE)

In the case where I want to watch Live TV in my frontend, rarely if
ever do I want to leverage the HD-PVR by default because the tuning
cycle is 15x longer than the other tuners.  Additionally, it's the
ONLY tuner I have without an additional "like" tuner, so if something
needs the HD-PVR, I must stop watching Live TV for it to record.  In
my case, with the new ordering rules, I'll never have the option of
ordering the HD-PVR lower in the list since my FE will ALWAYS try and
leverage it since it's local - and in my case, I want it to be used
last.

But I know that's just my particular use case, but in general I'm
wondering in today's day and age with gigabit networks and centralized
storage if it makes sense to continue to put focus on a local tuner
priority?  From a simplicity standpoint alone, you could simply say
that tuner ordering is always based on the order you specify in setup
- consistent message for scheduled ordering and Live TV ordering.  No
asterisk or small print :)

I brought this up in IRC with davide and sphery who both weren't
opposed to taking that piece out of the equation, but they politely
asked that I ask a broader audience on the dev list for further
feedback/opinions.

So, does anyone have a drastically compelling story for keeping local
tuner priority for Live TV in the equation?

Thanks!
Matt