[mythtv-users] Enabling multirec borks usability a bit.

[Tortise]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Michael T. Dean" <mtdean at thirdcontact.com>
To: "Discussion about mythtv" <mythtv-users at mythtv.org>
Sent: Wednesday, April 21, 2010 5:47 AM
Subject: Re: [mythtv-users] Enabling multirec borks usability a bit.


One thing to keep in mind is the overall goal of mythtv - wasn't it to be the mythical convergence of all technologies into one 
system?  Correct me if I am worng, I don't think exclusion of livetv fits with the original definition of mythtv?


> Small, but achievable goals, and all...  Make a bunch of little changes to get a huge improvement.

Well I am certainly sympathetic to that notion, IMO and experience it is vastly eassier to make small incremental changes than do a 
dump of a radical change and then the pain of debugging the hell out of it....

>Then, eventually, maybe some of the bigger changes will be easier/more acceptable.

The holy grail seems to be having the same number of tuners as the users have number of mux, so for me that's 3, given code that 
efficiently utilises the tuners for recording and livetv.  (Realistically that means 2 x 500T's here = 4 tuners!)


I did not realise that turning off multirec would also fix the issue.  So if I had 3 x 500T = 6 physical tuners that hardware 
requirement is very likely to cover 99.x% of our user requirements, whether it be through either of the above options.  My servers 
got 3 PCI slots.... To make 6 I'm going to buy another dual tuner!

One thing I'd appreciate a response on is the question of dedicating tuners.  How hard would it be to say have 3 tuners dedicated 
for multi-recording mux and say 3 dedicated for (uni-rec) live TV use?  As we only have 3 mux, this could also work well and keep 3 
live frontends live.  (Not sure what one would do when 4 tried...I suppose as is now....)

Maybe making the first 3 tuners multi-rec and leaving the rest uni might be a pragmatic solution that uses the existing code base? 
I think it would cover it all for 1 live user.  The issue would be which tuner a second live user got, I believe they'd currently 
get the same tuner the first live tv user is using....?  Could that be a small fix....(Mike can you comment please?)

Either way I'd still have an inefficient tuner use outside the "holy grail" scenario.

The cost of tuners is relatively small compared to the surrounding kit they integrate in with.

The coding "cost", ie limited coding dev resource is limited.

I for one respect the dev's setting development priorities because they understand the decision criteria and consequences better 
than I do.

I am also prepared to buy another dual tuner!