Tuner usage?

[belleboyd]

I have 2 tuners in my system. Tuner #2 is connected to a digital STB and has a higher merit property than Tuner #1. Both Tuners have the same channel lineup. Sage 6.35 running as a service.

I was just watching a movie on tuner#2. An episode of "Naruto" was scheduled to record for my kid. The show is scheduled as a favorite (first runs & reruns). Tonight the recording was set to start also on tuner #2.

Instead of Sage seeing that tuner #2 was in use and swtiching to tuner #1 -- it changed the channel on the tuner I was watching.

If had wanted to save the show I was watching I would have bits of Naruto smack dab in the middle of it. Not a happy moment.

This is new behavior since I installed 6.35. How do I prevent it from happening again?

Thanks!

[ke6guj]

two things I see wrong.

First is that if each tuner has a different source input, one is connected to a digital STB and the other is connected via ??? then you can't use the same channel lineup for both ot them.

Also, I'd set the digital STB'ed tuner to be of lower merit so that Sage will try to use the other tuner as much as possible and leave the digital STB available as much as possible.

[Khristopher]

Kind of a similar problem to what I was experiencing.

I've got 4 tuners in my HTCP, 1 and 2 are connected to external digital cable boxes, 3 and 4 are connected to regular cable. I've setup the digital lineup to include the regular channels as well.

I was having the problem of regular cable shows being scheduled on tuners 1 and 2 more often than 3 and 4 which meant that both my digital boxes were tied up recording channels that could have been handed by the regular lineup.

I changed the encoder merit of tuners 3 and 4 to "9" and left tuners 1 and 2 at "0". I haven't had a problem since.

[jpwegas]

Your other option is to use two different lineups.

In short, I do this (ignore the QAM tuner since you aren't using that):

Tuner 1 (analog): Enable only channels 2-70, using my local Comcast "analog lineup"
Tuner 2 (analog): Enable only channels 2-70, using my local Comcast "analog lineup"
Tuner 3 (analog): Enable only channels 2-70, using my local Comcast "analog lineup"
Tuner 4 (STB): Enable only channels 71-999, except HD channels (which this STB doesn't support), using my local Comcast "digital lineup"
Tuner 5 (QAM): Enable only HD channels, no lineup, use "station remapping" to map available channels to the "digital lineup"

I could have Tuner 4 enable the analog channels 2-70 also (like Khristopher) but with 3 analog tuners already it didn't seem necessary.

I also have encoder_merit set higher on tuner 5 than the others, but with my recent understanding that "encoder_merit" is really "lineup_merit" I don't think this really matters much.

--John

[belleboyd]

Just in case anyone has this issue... I figured this out. Apparently the new version of Sage is much more particular about which UIRT channel is being used.

You didn't use to have to assign a "zone" to the main USB-UIRT transmitter. I guess now you do. I assigned a "zone" to the remote properties file for the STB in question and the problem went away.