[mythtv-users] Tuner Schedules

Michael T. Dean mtdean at thirdcontact.com
Thu Mar 17 17:48:12 UTC 2011


On 03/17/2011 01:38 PM, David Engel wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 17, 2011 at 01:07:41PM -0400, Michael T. Dean wrote:
>> On 03/16/2011 10:50 PM, Spencer Herzberg wrote:
>>> Hi, is there a way to easily setup schedules for tuners? So that say
>>> Tuner A can't record anything from 5pm to 1am, and Tuner B from 10am
>>> to 12pm?
>>>
>>> My setup has my master backend in the bedroom and the hd receiver is
>>> hooked up to my tv through my hdpvr. We watch tv at night and the Miss
>>> doesn't like to use the Mythtv frontend for live tv (yet). If I could
>>> just schedule that tuner to not be available between 5pm and 1am, that
>>> would be a perfect fix until I can get her to use the mythtv frontend.
>>>
>>> I have tried cron jobs with mythbackend --nosched but it seems that
>>> this will need to rebuild the recording schedules at the time the
>>> command is called which is not quite ideal. I want the tuner to not be
>>> available during certain time slots and this to be reflected in the
>>> "Upcoming Recordings" displays.
>>>
>>> Thanks for the help!
>> Don't do any of the things suggested in the thread, so far.  Instead
>> "check out" one or more tuners from the mythbackend, so it knows that
>> tuner is not available.  It will then automatically reschedule
>> everything properly, according to the specified recording rule
>> priorities, etc. and ensure that the showings that occur while the tuner
>> is locked are marked as not recorded because the tuner was not available.
>>
>> You can do this via a menu command with EXECTV--see
>> defaultmenu/tvmenu.xml the default menu theme for details/example (and
>> will need to keep whatever program you start with EXECTV running until
>> you're done with the tuner--and one program/menu/frontend per tuner).
>> With this, you could actually set up the system so that the menu entry
>> kicks off xawtv or tvtime or kdetv or whatever "passthrough" TV viewer
>> application you like.
> Spencer doesn't explicitly say so, but I suspect his wife doesn't use
> any "passtrhough" application to watch live TV.  I bet she simply
> switches the TV input to the STB output (via the hdpvr) and then
> switches channels on the STB.  Training her to select a certain MythTV
> menu item before watching live TV and then always, Always, ALWAYS
> remember to exit that menu item when done might adversely affect the
> WAF.

Yeah.  I have a feeling EXECTV wouldn't work, anyway, as it sounds like 
he needs to lock multiple tuners (and I have a feeling he may have more 
than one tuner per host), which is why I also suggested:

>> Or, you can write your own script that can be run at the command-line or
>> through cron, using the Python bindings.
>>
>> http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/0.24_Python_bindings/Connection_Handlers#lockTuner
>>
>> (Description isn't complete, yet, but if you pass a capture card ID, you
>> can tell it  to lock a specific tuner--tell mythbackend that tuner is
>> not available, so it won't be used for scheduling.  You'll need to keep
>> the connection from the python script to the backend open as long as you
>> want the tuner locked--the destructor will unlock anything prior to
>> closing the connection.  So, if done on a cron job, the first script
>> could lock the tuner and keep it open and the second could )

Heh, forgot to finish the thought...  "the second could just kill the 
first process."

Mike


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