Setting tuner preference (merit?)

[Fallen Kell]

I am trying to set the tuner preference. I have one tuner that controls an external set top box, and I also have 2 more which just use a standard cable connection. My problem is that I want to have the two standard tuners used first if possible to record a show (i.e. if the show exists on a channel that they can tune in and record, I want SageTV to use those tuners first and only use the other tuner when the show/channel is not available on the other two tuners).

So doing some digging, I saw a thread that mentioned tuner merit, which is supposed to do something like this (i.e. I would set the other two tuners with a higher merit rating and they would be used first if they are available to recode the show). However, that thread does not say how to actually make the changes, just mentions that it is in the manual. Well, the only thing I could find in the SageTV 6 manual is:

mmc/encoders/XXX/encoder_merit
used to determine which capture device is 'preferred' when all other things are equal;
higher numbers equals higher priority


But there is nothing in there that says how to tell it which tuner you are setting the priority to and what syntax is used (i.e. "encoder_merit <priority value>", what is the range of values 0-255? -1024 to 1024? etc., etc.,). In other words, what do you need to do to actually set this?

[Opus4]

Just exit SageTV and set the propety to some number value. A merit of 1 is higher than 0, and as far as I know, it doesn't matter how much higher the value is, so using a difference of 42 is no better than a difference of 1.

And, you will find the encoder_merit property in several places, so choose the ones associated with the tuners you want to affect -- look for the nearby audio_capture_device_name property.

- Andy

[Fallen Kell]

Thanks Andy. I did manage to figure out which tuner was which by the video_capture_device_name. I set the two that I wanted to have it use first with a value of 10, and it seems to be working perfectly. No longer do I have to worry about my cable channel being changed on me if I was watching something over the regular TV when the channel could have been recorded from a different tuner.

Now I just have to get my media extender up and running again. Long story, but the short of it was that I had to wipe the entire system and rebuild. I figured since I had to rebuild, I might as well get the other tuner to use the STB so I could record all channels that we get. Now to go find where did I put my media extender license key....