[mythtv-users] 2 capture cards: want 1 dedicated to live TV, other to recording

Jon Bishop jon.the.wise.gdrive at gmail.com
Wed Dec 17 15:20:31 UTC 2008


On Dec 17, 2008, at 6:15 AM, James Miller wrote:

> On Wed, 17 Dec 2008, Jon Bishop wrote:
>
>> Don't totally dismiss his priorities suggestion, it really isn't that
>> complicated. You have 1 setting in mythtv-setup, go to your sources
>> section, and pick the higher quality source, and set it's priority to
>> a positive number... or set the bttv card to a negative priority...
>> then in the general frontend setup, select avoid conflicts from
>> livetv, and it will automagically default to that lower priority card
>> when you want to watch livetv. This will allow the card to still be
>> used for recordings as well - alternatively, as Brad mentioned, you
>> can setup the livetv menu option to launch another software tv  
>> player,
>> but this requires editing your theme settings.
>
> <snip>
> My first questions with regard to that have to do with specific  
> numbers I
> might set and whether both cards should be affected. From your  
> remarks I
> gather that setting the better quality card's priority to _any_  
> positive
> number will bring about the desired effect, correct? So is there no  
> need,
> then, to in addition set the poorer  quality card's priority to a  
> negative
> number? Were I to do that, what effect--good or bad--could it have?

Yea, you get it. Basically the reason for numbers is multiple cards.  
if you had 4 or 5 tuners, with 3 or 4 sources, you could prioritize  
specifically, higher numbers being higher priority.  just 0 and 1  
would be sufficient in your case, or 0 and -1 as well.

Let me explain my reasoning for the -1 option. I have a bttv tuner as  
well as a PRV150 and two pinnacle PCTV HD cards. Obviously, I want the  
HD cards to record first, so I have them set up as +1 priority. Then,  
I have the PVR150 plugged into cable, as such, it tunes the same  
stations in standard definition, plus all the cable stations. This  
prioritization prevents it from recording in SD if HD is available.  
Then, in the living room, on my slave backend/frontend system, I have  
a WinTV Go Plus. It's primary purpose is to be an IR receiver for the  
remote. But it's got a tuner, so I feel somewhat obligated to use it,  
because I can! So I have it hooked up to the cable as well, but it  
requires a lot of CPU to record, and makes playback of HD recordings  
impossible, so I have it set to a -1 priority, this way it doesn't use  
this card unless it absolutely can't record anywhere else. But  
honestly, the slave backend doesn't start up automatically, and I  
don't usually start it while we're home... because, as I said, it  
plays hell on playback.

By setting the avoid conflicts with livetv, when you do decide to  
watch livetv (which, you will find happening less and less) it will  
pick the lowest priority card, so that any recordings that are already  
scheduled, will not be moved to accommodate livetv, and will remain on  
your higher priority tuners.

Hope that helps.

~Jon



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