[mythtv-users] Reserving an encoder for an external program?

[Joe Votour]

> On Sun, Aug 20, 2006 at 02:33:23PM -0400, Michael T. Dean wrote:
>> On 08/20/06 09:08, Lars Kellogg-Stedman wrote:
>> >I'm hoping that there's some way to schedule "idle time" for an
>> >encoder
>
>> You can tell Myth not to use it by not configuring it in mythtv-setup.
>

Part of the problem with the PVR-500's (and I think the PVR-350 also)
radio is actually the same as one of the tuners - you can do either radio
or TV on it, but not both simultaneously.  Not configuring it within
mythtv-setup actually prevents you from ever using the tuner for recording
TV.

> You've missed his point.  This is similar to the FAQ "my cable will
> be disconnected for a few hours and I want to stop Myth from
> recording static from that tuner during that time".  Stopping Myth
> entirely would cause other non-cable (or in this case, non-radio)
> tuners to be unavailable and would kill all the frontends.
> Similarly, setting all the recording rules to "this schedule is
> inactive" is a lot of work for a short outage and affects all
> tuners.  The "do not record" overrides apply to the show, not the
> tuner.
>
> Currently the only way to free up a tuner is to manually insert "do
> not record this showing" overrides for every show that falls into
> that time period for which the desired tuner would be a candidate.
> If multiple tuners are candidates for recording then they *ALL*
> have to be disabled because Myth doesn't allow us to direct
> recordings to a specific tuner.
>
> The solution we really need is two-fold:
>
> Part 1- A way to specify a specific tuner in a recording rule that
> overrides the normal allocation of shows to tuners.
>
> Part 2- A special kind of recording rule (or a recording
> profile/codec for a normal rule) that allows Myth to schedule a
> recording but then not actually record anything when the time
> comes.  That would allow the tuner to be forced to an idle state.
>
> Incidentally, why does the frontend's "Setup | TV Settings |
> Recording Profiles" page have a "(Create new profile group)" option
> when you can only associate the profile with a video source in the
> mythtv-setup program?  I can understand having an editor for
> adjusting the bit-rates in the frontend, but would have expected to
> see the creation and deletion of profile groups in the mythtv-setup
> program.
>

The way that I would do it would be that all tuners available in the
system are available.  When wanting to record something, you pick the
first tuner in the list that matches your criteria (i.e. contains the
channel you want to record, highest priority, etc.).  If no tuners with
the desired characteristics are available, then you have a conflict.

>From there, if you wanted to record something on the radio (or use the
tuner external to MythTV), you'd send the backend a command that marks
that particular tuner as unavailable.  From there, the scheduler knows not
to use it.  (This sounds like your Plan 1).  If the tuner management is
done properly, then you don't actually need to fake a recording (your Part
2), because the scheduler should honor the fact that the tuner isn't there
(and take the appropriate action if necessary).

Of course, I haven't looked at the scheduler (since the 0.14 days), so I
have no idea of how this would be done (or even if this is the way it
works), or how much code it would take to write.  I must admit that my
needs are simple - one PVR-500 for two analog, plus an HD tuner, and I
don't use the radio on the PVR-500, and I keep separate channel
names/listings present for the HD card.

In searching the archives, I found a mention of using an EXECTV menu
command that seems to reserve a tuner and execute a program.  I wonder if
this could be called via some sort of UDP/TCP message or a script or
something.

-- Joe


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