[mythtv-users] Can't simultaneously record two programs with 3 (or 4) available tuners v2

[George Nassas]

On 2013-10-14, at 9:36 PM, Leif Pihl wrote:

> v2 -- Corrected typo in settings section 4. 
>> 
>>> the first tuner card is the Hauppage HVR-2250 (connected to CATV) and 

I should have asked this earlier but what kind of cable do you receive? The answer is either analog cable or digital cable. If it’s digital are you sure that you get unencrypted channels? The 2250 can only tune unencrypted signals.

> I agree that the 1800 should have only one channel, but that's not technically correct. 
> In fact, SOMEWHERE in the settings, I've seen a list of FOUR tuners. 
> This is because the 1800 can tune in one analog and one digital tuner (not two of either, but one of each!). 

You mean one tuner and yes I know it actually has one analog and one digital tuner. The reason you saw four is due to a myth feature called virtual tuners where it multiplies your physical tuners to do double duty. It’s a great feature but don’t worry about it for now.

> As a result, I'd love to disable the analog tuner in the 1800, but I need to address the 1st, 2nd and 3rd things first, second and third.  

You don’t have to disable anything. The linux drivers name analog tuners as /dev/videoN and digital ones as /dev/dvb/adapterN. If you tell myth about a device at /dev/video0 it will use it, if you don’t it won’t. So, analog is effectively disabled unless you do something.

> As for the number of capture cards, I have two configured.
> I thought that was all I needed to configure and/or that was all I COULD configure (I've forgotten who told me what). 

The 2250 driver presents the card as if it was two devices but don’t take advantage of that for now. It’s a needless complication.

> 2. Capture Cards 
>  [ DVB:/dev/dub/adapter0/frontend0 ] 
>     Samsung S5H1409  QAM/8VSB  Frontend Subtype:  ATSC
>        (used in the Hauppage WinTV-HVR-1800) 
>  [ DVB:/dev/dub/adapter1/frontend0 ] 
>     Samsung S5H1411  QAM/8VSB  Frontend Subtype:  ATSC
>        (used in the Hauppage WinTV-HVR-2550) 

There’s a problem here and it relates what I mentioned about how linux numbers tuners inconsistently. Sometimes the hvr-1800 will be at /dev/dvb/adapter0 and sometimes it will be /dev/dvb/adapter2. But, you’ve told myth that adaptor0 is always the 1800 card and that’s going to be wrong half the time - myth will end up trying to tune broadcast signals on a cable source.

I have a similar setup, an hvr-1600 and an hvr-2250, so I can take you through what I’ve done to make them work.

The first part is putting the hvr-2250 devices in a consistent place using a driver option. You can check if you already have this by doing an “ls /dev/dvb” and looking for adapters numbered higher than 2. If you don’t have any then do this as root:

	echo options saa7164 adapter_nr=6,7 > /etc/modprobe.d/hvr2250.conf

and reboot. You should now have adapter 6 and 7 in /dev/dvb. Go into myth setup and change the device for your hvr-2250 to be /dev/adapter6 (or whatever the first number higher than 2 is).

The second part is giving the hvr-1800 device a consistent name using a linux feature called udev. That might better in its own email but to prepare for that could you run these three lines as root and come back with the output?

	udevadm info --name=/dev/dvb/adapter0/frontend0 --attribute-walk | grep device
	udevadm info --name=/dev/dvb/adapter1/frontend0 --attribute-walk | grep device
	udevadm info --name=/dev/dvb/adapter2/frontend0 --attribute-walk | grep device

it’s better if you put the output in pastebin which is a website (pastebin.com) where you can paste up to a few K of text and give people an url that will let them look at it. It’s much better than running long text lines through an email list.

This all might sound convoluted but I think you’re pretty close to a fully working system. You’re covering ground that a lot of people have already covered, you just need to be pointed in the right direction.

- George