[mythtv-users] How do I disable a tuner

[Michael T. Dean]

On 04/30/2011 02:35 AM, f-myth-users at media.mit.edu wrote:
>      >  Date: Sat, 30 Apr 2011 01:14:11 -0400
>      >  From: "Michael T. Dean"
>
>      >  On 04/29/2011 04:04 PM, f-myth-users at media.mit.edu wrote:
>      >  >       >   Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2011 09:42:27 -0400
>      >  >       >   From: "Michael T. Dean"
>      >  >
>      >  >       >   >   I am going to go to Input Connections section and change the Video
>      >  >       >   >   Source for the bad Capture Device to NONE.  Am i correct in assuming
>      >  >       >   >   that the  scheduler will not use/consider this device now.  This should
>      >  >       >   >   buy me time to fix the bad cable.
>      >  >
>      >  >       >   If you do that, things may work fine, now, but at any point in the
>      >  >       >   future, all of your MythTV Capture Cards/Video Sources/Input Connections
>      >  >       >   configuration may be broken (with no further action on your
>      >  >       >   part
>      >  >
>      >  >  ...once again, do we know what exactly breaks... ? :)
>
>      >  No idea.  And, really, no one runs with that configuration.  Until
>
> Eh?  I recall at least one person saying, some months ago, that he'd
> been running with that configuration routinely, or for several months
> at a stretch, or something like that.  (For all I know, we'd have more
> people try it if you didn't keep saying "OMG don't do that." :)
>
>      >  someone who feels it's a good idea to configure MythTV to define things
>      >  it can't use figures out what breaks, I will continue to say it's not a
>      >  well-tested configuration.
>
> So it's just -untested-?
>
> And all this time, every time you issued one of those the-sky-is-falling
> vague warnings about OMG-the-world-might-end, I thought it was because
> someone had done that and had run into a problem because of it.  Simply
> saying "that is an untested configuration" is much clearer.  It's certainly
> clearer than hinting that something awful may have befallen similar misguided
> individuals, but you're not going to actually tell us what happened to them.
>
> I'm glad I asked; this response always puzzled me, since I hadn't
> recalled anyone complaining that anything went wrong when they did that.
> You know the archives well; maybe there are cases you're just not
> mentioning, in which case a reminder could be useful.

Yes, I've seen it happen many times to users over the last 5+ years.

> You sometimes alternate between saying that some proposed idea isn't
> valid because there's some other way to achieve it, or saying that no
> one should be allowed to have a voice unless they're also the one who
> plans to implement the feature---in other words, that it's not valid
> for person A to suggest an idea in the possibility that person B might
> say, "Hey, yeah, that's worth implementing."

FWIW, I have never (and will never) believe that a workaround is a valid 
substitute for a feature--and I especially do not believe that we should 
have features that allow users to break or misconfigure

I do believe, and always have, that a lack of a feature and a 
requirement to use a workaround is better than an improper feature.  In 
other words, if it's between, "Do this until we can do it right," and, 
"Do without until we can do it right," I'll choose the latter.  On the 
projects I work on (for fun and for work), I spend a /lot/ of time 
cleaning up those "until we can do it right" areas of code--which 
generally make doing it right more difficult than it would have been 
without that "temporary" feature.  This may be why my opinions seem so 
arbitrary.

> All I was trying to figure out is whether we'd seen any actual cases
> of unconnected inputs screwing people up.

Yes.  I've seen probably 10 or more that I know of, but many of the 
times I've posted a link to 
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/264034#264034 (which 
is  the way to fix the configuration after the problem) may have also 
been caused by the same configuration.

> Turning that into an immediate "show me the code" makes non-coders
> feel helpless and disenfranchised, and can make people who -can- code
> feel that even getting simple questions answered is likely to lead to
> confrontation instead of elucidation.  That wasn't my intent.

And I was simply saying that you're focusing on the part that's not 
important--how the data is stored internally.  Instead, we just need to 
provide a UI that allows users to  change what they need to change (and 
which rewrites the internal data appropriately).

I completely agree that we need a way to allow specifying (and seeing) 
the order used by MythTV--I just don't believe it requires refactoring 
or rewriting the existing code.  We just need to add code to rewrite the 
data on user request.

Mike