Questions about conflict resolution

[pjpjpjpj]

I am thinking about making some changes to my tuners such that I will be creating a few recording conflicts amongst Favorite recordings. I looked through the Sage manual about conflict resolution and did not see a lot of detail and explanation about the options that you have (under the "set priority" option), and as I have never had a conflict to this point, I was hoping someone could answer this before I started making these changes and then discovered that it does not allow me to do what I would like to do.

I live in a location where I receive OTA broadcasts from two cities. I currently have four tuners (2 HDHomeruns, each with its own antenna), which get both cities fairly well (or did since Winter when I set it up). However, due to the weather changes with the onset of Spring, some of the reception is getting spotty, and I am considering changing my antenna setup to where I would have two tuners which receive only one city’s stations and two which receive only the other.

So here are my questions:

1) Since I have not had to deal with this issue before, I currently have all my favorites set to record “first run only” and only on the local city’s network channel that they are on. But if I add the other city’s affiliate to the favorites recording setup (so it has two channel options), and the show is on both affiliates simultaneously, will it always record both (and thus use two tuners, one from each city)?

2) If not (and only one records), can I prioritize which of the two channels it records?

3) If #2 above is “yes”, can I prioritize one channel to record when there are no conflicts (“default”, if you will), but in the case of any conflicts, to automatically use the other channel? In other words, does the “how to resolve a conflict” option give you a chance to set a second channel as “second choice”?

Thanks in advance for the help!

[Djc208]

Originally Posted by pjpjpjpj

1) Since I have not had to deal with this issue before, I currently have all my favorites set to record “first run only” and only on the local city’s network channel that they are on. But if I add the other city’s affiliate to the favorites recording setup (so it has two channel options), and the show is on both affiliates simultaneously, will it always record both (and thus use two tuners, one from each city)?

2) If not (and only one records), can I prioritize which of the two channels it records?

3) If #2 above is “yes”, can I prioritize one channel to record when there are no conflicts (“default”, if you will), but in the case of any conflicts, to automatically use the other channel? In other words, does the “how to resolve a conflict” option give you a chance to set a second channel as “second choice”?

1) No, not as long as they both use the same show or episode ID in Sage, which they should being the same network just from different stations. Now IR may suggest the other station but the favorite won't schedule both if it knows they are the same show.

2) Not really, not on a by-show basis. You can set the tuner priority in the setting file but that will always pick one over the other, so it won't help if you want ABC from one tuner but NBC from another. You can limit the channel in the settings but then it will ignore the other channel (IR may suggest it though).

3) No, Sage won't offer you that choice. It wouldn't bring up a conflict notification however, if it can switch to a different tuner to get it.

[pjpjpjpj]

Originally Posted by Djc208

2) Not really, not on a by-show basis. You can set the tuner priority in the setting file but that will always pick one over the other, so it won't help if you want ABC from one tuner but NBC from another. You can limit the channel in the settings but then it will ignore the other channel (IR may suggest it though).

3) No, Sage won't offer you that choice. It wouldn't bring up a conflict notification however, if it can switch to a different tuner to get it.

Thanks for the info. When you said "you can set tuner priority in the setting file", are you talking about the properties file?

Also, I want to clarify what you said in #3. It sounds like you are saying that Sage is smart enough to "look past" a priority, if there's another "lower priority tuner" available for a "higher priority show", in order to record everything wanted. For example:

Let's say the two cities are "A" and "B". Two tuners can only record A, and two tuners can only record B. I set priority such that A is highest priority. At 8 pm, there are three favorites that record; one on Fox which has the broadcast in both cities as options; one on CBS which has the broadcast in both cities as options; and the third on city A's PBS station (its only option). The show on Fox is prioritized over all the other shows, and the show on CBS is prioritized higher over the PBS show.

Since the "A" tuners are higher priority than the "B" tuners, would it record the A broadcasts of the Fox and CBS shows and not record the PBS station at all (since it has not left a city A tuner available for the PBS show that is only in city A)? Or would it be smart enough to know that it could switch one of those to the city B tuner (since that is an available option, just not first priority), and therefore have a tuner available to get the PBS "city A only" show?

Hope that wasn't too confusing.

[Djc208]

Originally Posted by pjpjpjpj

Thanks for the info. When you said "you can set tuner priority in the setting file", are you talking about the properties file?

Yes, don't remember the specifics of how to change it but a quick search should turn it up.

Also, I want to clarify what you said in #3. It sounds like you are saying that Sage is smart enough to "look past" a priority, if there's another "lower priority tuner" available for a "higher priority show", in order to record everything wanted. For example:

Let's say the two cities are "A" and "B". Two tuners can only record A, and two tuners can only record B. I set priority such that A is highest priority. At 8 pm, there are three favorites that record; one on Fox which has the broadcast in both cities as options; one on CBS which has the broadcast in both cities as options; and the third on city A's PBS station (its only option). The show on Fox is prioritized over all the other shows, and the show on CBS is prioritized higher over the PBS show.

Since the "A" tuners are higher priority than the "B" tuners, would it record the A broadcasts of the Fox and CBS shows and not record the PBS station at all (since it has not left a city A tuner available for the PBS show that is only in city A)? Or would it be smart enough to know that it could switch one of those to the city B tuner (since that is an available option, just not first priority), and therefore have a tuner available to get the PBS "city A only" show?

Hope that wasn't too confusing.

Yes as long as something in the favorites settings didn't lock it out of this. For instance I have a HVR-1600 in my system. I had a favorite for Supernatural with it limited to the HD channel. I have a similar favorite for CSI. Since I only have one HD tuner I got a conflict since SCI and Supernatural are on at the same time and Sage is not allowed to pick the SD version of either.

Conflict resolution only allows you to pick which one takes priority on that tuner. However, when I changed the Supernatural favorite to "any" channel Sage automatically moved it to the SD tuner and resolved the conflict.