[mythtv-users] recommendations?: energy efficient FE/BE system

[Dave MythTV]

On Fri, Feb 27, 2015 at 12:30 PM, James Miller <gajs-f0el at dea.spamcon.org>
wrote:

> On Fri, 27 Feb 2015, Dave MythTV wrote:
>
>  prime-time snag, and your wife asks:
>>            "Why is it waiting until next Thursday to record my show that
>> was a new episode tonight?
>>                        My friends are going to be talking about it at work
>> tomorrow!"
>>
>
> Wow, that would never have entered my mind as a consideration. Just shows
> how out of touch with popular culture we are. My 3 tuners are even more a
> case of overkill than yours, but it has happened on rare occasions that
> we've missed a recording we'd wanted to see because of a scheduling
> conflict. I decided to go with a dual tuner card when I needed to replace
> one of my single-tuner cards that had gotten damaged, in order to address
> that potentiality.
>


That's a good plan.  Most of the time when we hit that problem, it is
because of a special, a movie, a sporting event, or something of that
nature.  Something that isn't part of our "normal" schedule of programs,
yet is only running once and is of a high enough priority that MythTV
pretty much *has* to record it at that time, bumping something else that is
"reschedulable" (even if higher priority) in the process.   MultiRec has
made a HUGE difference in this as well, so depending on the multiplexes, it
might even take 4 or 5 simultaneous recordings now to cause problems!
(Thanks Devs!)



There are pros and cons to each, and there are good arguments (depending on
>> your use case) for the networked HDHomeRun as well.   But USB was a clear
>> standout for me.   My "tuner of choice" at the moment is the "AVerMedia
>> AVerTVHD Volar (A868R)".   Not because I compared all the options and this
>> was the best, but because I got a good deal on them at the time, and they
>> were listed in the LinuxTV database of supported tuners.   If I were doing
>> it again, I would probably look for a different tuner with an integrated
>> 'F'-connector to tidy things up, not the add-on MMCX-to-F adapter cable
>> that these require.    But aside from that, I've been very happy with
>> them.    These are also a 2006/2007 design, so a more modern tuner might
>> also have better tuning sensitivity and/or lower power consumption.
>>
>
> Just a clarification on this: that tuner handles ATSC but cannot do clear
> QAM, correct? I would not have guessed that 3 USB tuners--especially ones
> connected via a USB hub--could work out. Since they're all the same model I
> guess that helps: I had to make udev rules for my PCI cards since the
> tuners would not come up consistently as the same devices on reboots. That
> issue would be obviated in the case of 3 identical capture cards, it seems.
> I did end up going with the HDHR (HDHR4-2US), but it will connect to the
> Mythbox on its own private LAN (using Myth box's NIC) since I don't have a
> free RJ45 port on my router and since the box will have wifi by which to
> connect to the LAN. I never watch any programming on other machines that
> connect to my LAN so I don't expect (fingers crossed) this topography to
> cause any problems.
>
> In case I might want to investigate the USB option, what USB tuners out
> there that are Myth-compatible can handle clear QAM?



Hooking the HDHR directly to the MythTV machine sounds like a solid plan!
If you want to watch TV from other machines on the network, you can just
copy or stream the recordings from the MythTV box instead of directly from
the HDHR.  That's probably a better idea anyway, as MythTV then doesn't
have to deal with scheduling issues and recording misses from the HDHR not
being available when it needs it.


We dropped our cable subscription five or six years ago, and I've changed
tuners since then (previously on a pcHDTV 5500)...  but I think the answer
is "No" - my USB tuners do NOT support clear QAM.   They're also new enough
that they're not the "Hybrid" tuners that support NTSC broadcasts, for what
it is worth.

With the tuners, I think they get enumerated based on their slots in the
USB hub... so the ordering assignments are consistent across reboots even
though they are the same hardware.  With my three tuners, I have them on an
unbalanced three-way RF splitter, in which one port has a stronger signal
than the other two rather than all three being knocked down the same
amount.  I've given this strong-source tuner a higher priority in Myth, as
well as removed a few of our weakest fringe stations from the channel lists
for the other two tuners.  This has worked really well to ensure that our
highest priority shows have the best recordings possible, and our weakest
stations are recorded with the strongest tuner.

Split separate tuners also has a nice benefit that it's easy to hook them
up to multiple antennas.  Before we moved, I was doing this for a while
with two directional antennas and my channel list split (with some overlap)
between the two tuners.   There were some weak fringe stations that just
weren't workable with an omnidirectional antenna (and the splitter), but
two separate directionals without any splitter losses made it happen.

- Dave
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