[mythtv-users] Record only HD or prefer HD over SD

[Greg Woods]

On Wed, 2010-02-03 at 19:04 -0500, Christian Szpilfogel wrote:

> The only other way I could see was to create a custom rule to select 
> only HD. 

I've tried that and gotten burned. For instance, the SyFy channel [sic]
will rebroadcast its new shows several times during the week. I really
don't care if those get recorded in real time or not, whereas the
Avalanche hockey game, I want that one in real time. Of course ideally I
want both in HD, but I only have one tuner that can get both channels
they are on. So I set them both to record only in HD and give the hockey
game a higher priority. That solves the immediate problem, but if there
also happen to be conflicts with the tuner at the other times that the
SyFy show is rebroadcast, which is a common occurrence when there are
many channels I can only get with the one tuner, then I can end up
missing the show entirely. In that case I'd rather at least get the SD
recording. This of course is all very difficult to program into a
computer. So I can't really think of any way to get what I want.

What is really needed (for me) is a flag that says "record this
regardless of the other settings in this rule if it is the last time
this show is available in the current guide data". There is no way I
know of to program that into a custom rule. And of course even that
takes the risk of missing the show entirely if there happens to be a
conflict with the SD tuner for that last showing, but since I have not
much competition for the SD tuners and I have two of them, that's a risk
I'd be willing to take.

What I end up doing of course is setting the SyFy shows to "record any
time on any channel", but then any time there is a hockey game that
night I end up with the SD version of the SyFy show. If I happen to
notice this before it is time to watch the SyFy show and while there are
still showings of it left, I can "delete and allow re-record" to get the
HD version, or set up a manual rule to record an HD showing. But that is
a manual process which obviously we like to avoid, that's why we have a
scheduler in the first place.

I can't think of any way to make the scheduler do exactly what I want
every time, so there seems to be no avoiding some manual scheduling of
recordings.

--Greg