[mythtv-users] POLL *** How many people on the list are running UK combined Freeview and Freesat setups?

[Michael T. Dean]

On 09/08/2009 05:20 PM, Yeechang Lee wrote:
> Another Sillyname says:
>   
>> Personally I don't choose the "Record on any channel" option when
>> setting up a recording job, instead favouring the "Record at any
>> time on Channel blah blah", it tends to reduce conflicts.
>>     
> This tells me you are missing out on the full benefits of MythTV's
> scheduler.
>
> I have four over-the-air-tuners (two physical tuners that each support
> multirec) and two cable tuners. Most, not all, of my over-the-air
> channels are also available on cable; another way of saying this, of
> course, is that some of my cable channels are also available via
> over-the-air. By not specifying specific channels in my recording
> rules, the scheduler can move upcoming recordings between tuners as
> needed to maximize their usage and reflect; by specifying channels,
> you are preventing the scheduler from doing its job. A comprehensive
> and accurate program-identifier system is vital for such efficiency on
> the scheduler's part, though, so I am not sure whether you have that
> option in the first place.

I completely agree that "this channel" rules are not usually desirable, 
but it's also important to note that "this channel" means all channels, 
regardless of video source, with the same callsign.

And, sure, callsign is perhaps a poor choice of name for a field whose 
sole purpose is to uniquely identify all channels with "substantially 
identical" content.  The value in the callsign field is irrelevant--it 
can be the FCC-assigned callsign in the US or some user-defined value 
with up to 20 characters or even a randomly-generated sequence of 
characters--as long as each channel with different content/listings has 
a different value in the field.

For reasons why "this channel" rules aren't desirable, take a look at 
broadcast histories for Scrubs and Medium and ... , not to mention 
things like the WB/UPN/CW/MyTV mess, and even the TBS/WGN histories.  
Oh, and of course, if you rescan your channels or allow mythfilldatabase 
to update channels or make certain changes to your channel 
configuration, the changes may break "this channel" rules (potentially 
/all/ of them), but will never affect "any channel" rules.

Mike