[mythtv-users] Capturecard names and multirec tuners

[James Linder]

Dave this is a most gentle and polite but harsh critique

>> I have three HDHomeRun (HDHR4-2US) units, with two tuners each, for a
>> total of 6 physical tuners. When adding them and creating the inputs
>> (allowing a max recordings of 2) I've of course ended up with a total
>> of 12 capturecard records:
>> 
>> select cardid, inputname, sourceid, displayname from capturecard;
>> +--------+-----------+----------+-------------+
>> | cardid | inputname | sourceid | displayname |
>> +--------+-----------+----------+-------------+
>> |      1 | None      |        1 | HDHR 1      |
>> |      2 | None      |        1 | HDHR 1      |
>> |      3 | None      |        1 | HDHR 2      |
>> |      4 | None      |        1 | HDHR 2      |
>> |      5 | None      |        1 | HDHR 3      |
>> |      6 | None      |        1 | HDHR 3      |
>> |      7 | None      |        1 | HDHR 4      |
>> |      8 | None      |        1 | HDHR 4      |
>> |      9 | None      |        1 | HDHR 5      |
>> |     10 | None      |        1 | HDHR 5      |
>> |     11 | None      |        1 | HDHR 6      |
>> |     12 | None      |        1 | HDHR 6      |
>> +--------+-----------+----------+-------------+
>> 12 rows in set (0.00 sec)
>> 
>> Unless I'm mistaken, when creating the two rows there per physical
>> tuner based on the max recordings, I don't think mythtv-setup gives
>> you any means of giving different names to each of the two in a pair.
>> I'm fairly sure I've read here on the list at some point that some
>> users manually rename these to make things less confusing...for
>> example in the above case, HDHR 1-1 and HDHR 1-2 or whatever in place
>> of two with HDHR 1.
>> 
>> Has anyone done that? Also, am I better off putting the name in the
>> existing displayname, or in the inputname?
>> 
>> I'm also unclear as to exactly what that would affect. I've seen some
>> places in the frontend UI (as well as mythweb) that display the
>> existing HDHR names above. However there are some places, for example
>> the Upcoming Recording screen in the frontend seems to use the ids
>> (1-12) and I'm unclear if that would change.
>> 
>> Thanks in advance for any clarification!
> 
> My very strong recommendation is to NOT change your database.  If I
> spend time working on a scheduling issue and find that you have, I
> will not be happy.
> 
> My softer recommendation is to stop worrying about input IDs.  I used
> to be rather anal about them myself.  With the advent of schedule as
> group and on demand addition of inputs, it's both too unwieldy and not
> necessary.
> 
> If there are places in your theme where you'd like something more
> meaningful than an input ID, change your theme (or lobby your theme
> designer) to show "input" instead of "card".  That will show the last
> two characters from the displayname (that you've assigned according to
> your desires) instead of a meaningless, numeric ID.

I found tracking displayname in the code and DB quite ummm busy, but it *is* optional and *may* be blank so it should not make any difference if one changes it. 

Rather than resorting to Microsoft’s “under section 44 part 3 of the license you may not toucha da buttons", it would be more helpful if you said “here-and-there we use displayname for this silly purpose” and the data base does this-and-that, or more probablly displayname is not used to do anything other than providing a nice name.

Instead of babbling about IDs you could just say “Don’t change them, they are used sll over the place and need to be consistent.

Your concern is very real, but rather than treating the users as idiots you could give authorative guideance.

Regards
James