[mythtv-users] is mythtv smart enough to dothis(overlap/back-to-back) with recordings?

[Steve Hodge]

On 7/29/06, Steve Daniels <steve.p.daniels at googlemail.com> wrote:
> What I *think* myself and Steve Hodge are talking about here is the
> following situation - scheduling issues aside they don't enter into this
> scenario.

...

> Program 1 starts at 0900 on channel 1 myth starts writing to the relevant
> file. This is a 30 minute program but for one of many reasons it is going to
> be recorded till 0935.
> Program 2 starts at 0930 on channel 1 as well. Myth sees that it is already
> recording on this channel, so starts to write to an additional file.
> Program 1 recording ends at 0935 so myth stops writing to its file. It is
> however still writing to Program 2's file.
>
> This is all with one tuner.

Yep. Looks like you and me are on the same page, at least.

> Let's say we have multiple tuners.
>
> Myth should only use the above technique if the multiple recordings are
> going to be done from your highest priority tuner (the best quality one) or
> it has no other options available e.g. record later so it can record it with
> the higher priority card.

Yes, the second program should be recorded with the same tuner as the
first if the first chosen tuner is the highest priority one that is
available. It's conceivable that some people may prefer to use a lower
priority tuner for both programs in order to maximise the number of
free tuners, but I imagine that would be an option rather than the
default, if it's implemented at all.

Basically the necessary change to the scheduler, AFAICS, is to
consider a tuner available for the program immediately following a
scheduled one on the same channel. If only some types recorders are
capable of writing two files at once there will need to be a flag to
indicate whether a tuner can handle this or not.

I'm not sure if many (or any) of the recorders will be able to write
two different files with different recording characteristics (bitrate,
resolution, etc), so I imagine this will only be permitted in
situations where the recording profile is the same for both programs.

Steve