[mythtv-users] Number of virtual tuners

[Pieter De Wit]

On Sun, 29 Apr 2012, Simon Hobson wrote:

> Pieter De Wit wrote:
>
>> I think "we" should have a limit of per card:
>> 
>> My card (1) can't do more than 2:
>
> Yes, each installation will have limits - in your case it appears due to the 
> card, for others it's disk bandwidth, and there are other factors that can 
> limit the total recordings/system or recording/card that can be done.
>
> The discussion is about a compiled in limit that restricts the users ability 
> to decide how many virtual tuners they want/can use/is supported by their 
> hardware. For some users, this artificial limit of 5 is an issue - so there's 
> a discussion as to whether this needs to be raised (or removed ?), and what 
> it should be. It will in no way force anyone to use more virtual tuners than 
> they want/their system will support - but if the limit is made too high, then 
> novice users may set it too high due to ignorance of the issues involved and 
> experience poor performance or other problems.
>
> -- 
> Simon Hobson
>
> Visit http://www.magpiesnestpublishing.co.uk/ for books by acclaimed
> author Gladys Hobson. Novels - poetry - short stories - ideal as
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Hi,

Going back to my original post, how will this go down:

During the channel scanning phase a scan is done to see how many channels 
a card can tune to. This can be done to /dev/null to drop out disk/display 
and other bottle necks.

Once this number is known, Virtual tuners can be used to record from the 
real tuners. Virtual tuners is something that "we" control so we can limit 
them based on other factors. I am sure we can safely say, that you only 
need to display 2 channels at once (watch, someone will give us a 
screenshot with 4 PnP's :) )

If we find that the system can't cope with a set of recorders, we drop one 
from the list (something like that)

This might not score us a lot of points on the technical side, but user XP 
will be better.

Cheers,

Pieter