[mythtv-users] LiveTV conflicts with scheduled recording - despite unused tuners on the same box!

[Mark Buechler]

On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 3:48 PM, Mark Buechler <mark.buechler at gmail.com>wrote:

> On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 1:16 AM, Michael T. Dean <mtdean at thirdcontact.com>wrote:
>
>> On 07/01/2009 11:15 PM, Jean-Yves Avenard wrote:
>>
>>> 2009/7/2 Michael T. Dean:
>>>
>>
> <edited>
>
>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> Because Myth is meant to record TV, and LiveTV is for people who haven't
>>>> figured out how to use a DVR.  :)
>>>>
>>>>
>>> I think that view of MythTV is very restrictive for no real reasons
>>> other than LiveTV is really lacking there.
>>>
>>> LiveTV isn't implicitly bad, there are many channels where recordings
>>> make no sense other than watching it live: sport and news channel
>>> being the 2 most obvious categories.
>>>
>>>
>>
>> If you're watching LiveTV on input 1 with inputs on 4 other cards free and
>> a recording starts on input 1, you did not check that box.  The, "Avoid
>> conflicts between live TV and scheduled shows," setting selects the
>> least-preferred input for LiveTV (which, if you have 5 inputs, /should/ be
>> the 5th one if you have your system properly configured***).  Recordings,
>> however, will take the most-preferred capture card in all cases (regardless
>> of the, "Avoid conflicts..." setting).  Therefore, if you're watching LiveTV
>> on an input on card 1 and a recording starts with 4 other cards free, you're
>> either not using that setting or
>>  a) you entered LiveTV when 1 scheduled recording (that was on input 1)
>> had finished but 4 others that ran concurrently with the recently-finished
>> recording that was on input 1 are still in progress (i.e. all 4 other inputs
>> are in use), or
>>  b) you've manually switched to another input.  For example, you may have
>> switched inputs because only input 1 can pull the channel you're currently
>> watching--in which case you probably should reorganize your cards so that
>> the cards that can pull the largest subset of channels are most preferred,
>> otherwise you're telling MythTV not to record some shows you want (as your
>> most-preferred shows will record on the most-preferred inputs, so you may
>> actually have conflicts due to the fact that it's recording a show that
>> could be recorded on any of the 5 inputs but it's using the only input
>> that's capable of pulling the channel that's airing a lower priority show).
>>
>> *** Properly configured means that the most-preferred input has the lowest
>> input ID and /none/ of the inputs have input priorities.  Note that no one
>> should /ever/ mess with card/input priorities without first reading
>> http://www.mythtv.org/docs/mythtv-HOWTO-12.html#ss12.6 , and, really,
>> without reading all of section 12, to find out how messing with input
>> priorities may actually mean you're telling MythTV not to record some shows
>> you want to see.  Of course, after reading section 12, people would realize
>> that there is /never/ a good reason to mess with input priorities and things
>> actually work better when you just configure your system properly, so they'd
>> instead configure their systems properly.  But, regardless, the first step
>> is reading section 12.
>>
>>  One recording is now due on another channel and I get a message about
>>> either exit, record later or switch to that channel.
>>> This happens even with that particular configuration is set.
>>>
>>> So maybe, I'm just missing the logic behind "Avoid conflicts between
>>> live TV and scheduled shows", but it certainly doesn't seem to work
>>> sometimes: it asked me to change channels, when 4 other decoders were
>>> available.
>>>
>>>
>>
>> With, "Avoid conflicts between live TV and scheduled shows," Myth /always/
>> chooses the least-preferred input that's available when you start LiveTV.
>>  So, if at the point that you enter LiveTV no other inputs are in use (by
>> either other users' LiveTV sessions or scheduled recordings), you will get
>> the least-preferred input.  If you have 5 inputs connected, that means you
>> won't get "kicked" from LiveTV until the 5th concurrent scheduled recording
>> begins.
>>
>> Without, "Avoid conflicts between live TV and scheduled shows," Myth will
>> attempt to choose the most-preferred (assumed to be the highest-quality)
>> available input that's local to the frontend in use for LiveTV.  If there
>> are no available inputs locally, it will choose to use the most-preferred
>> input available on some other system's backend.  In the simplest
>> configurations, this means that /both/ LiveTV /and/ recordings try to use
>> the best input, so /every/ recording that starts when you're watching LiveTV
>> would get you kicked from LiveTV.
>>
>
> <edited>
>
>
>> Mike
>
>
> I hate to disagree with you here, however, I think you're wrong. I too have
> this issue, but I've managed to track down half the problem. Take a look at,
> in 0.21-fixes, all incarnations of TV::GetValidRecorderList(). You'll notice
> there's no "ORDER BY" clause, and there really should be. Now, the ORDER BY
> clause doesn't matter if you've created your cards in order and have never
> recreated any cards and messed up the internal mysql ordering of those rows.
> However, if you have, you could end up on cardid 2 instead if cardid 1 when
> you enter LiveTV. Since you've enabled the "Avoid Conflicts..." option, Myth
> will always want to pick cardid 2 to record on (assuming equal priorities),
> thus taking your LiveTV tuner.
>
> As I said, I believe this is only half the issue. I've not yet bothered
> figuring out the rest yet.
>
> - Mark.


And this seems to hold true in trunk as well in cardutil
get_valid_recorder_list().

- Mark.
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