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

[Jon Bishop]

On Dec 17, 2008, at 7:31 AM, James Miller wrote:

> On Wed, 17 Dec 2008, Jon Bishop wrote:
>
>> 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
>
> It actually doesn't work quite this way on my system (Mythbuntu
> 8.10--think this is Myth 0.21). I've assigned the better card  
> priority 1
> and left the lesser card's priority at 0. Having done this, I find  
> that
> when the "Avoid conflicts between live TV and scheduled shows" option
> (under Utilities/Setup > Setup > TV Settings > General) option is  
> ticked,
> my machine shows Live TV using the better card. I should mention  
> that I
> have not tried this while the machine is doing a scheduled  
> recording. When
> I untick that option, on the other hand, my machine _does_ show live  
> TV
> using the lesser card.

That's odd. In what order did you add the cards? I always forget about  
that part, but as Michael posted, it takes that into account before it  
looks at priorities. It shouldn't be using the higher priority card  
for livetv if avoid conflicts is checked.

Here's the explanation (12.6 is the input priorities) http://mythtv.org/docs/mythtv-HOWTO-12.html

> So, what's up with that? Does this mean that, when I have the option
> ticked, my machine will only show live TV using the worse card if  
> there's
> a scheduled recording underway? I wouldn't mind that scenario so  
> long as I
> could be assured that the machine would _always_ record using the  
> better
> card. My experimentation to this point seems to indicate that the  
> way to
> get the machine to show live TV using the lesser card is to untick the
> "Avoid conflicts between live TV and scheduled shows" option. But I  
> have
> yet to see what the machine will do when a scheduled recording is  
> taking
> place with that option unticked.

I think you may have added the higher quality card after the lesser  
one. As I mentioned, I always forget about the order you add them in  
setup, as it's just second nature for me to put the most important  
card first and so on.

~Jon