Primary Tuner for LiveTV?

[Tony414]

Hello,
I'm sure this was already posted somewhere but can't seem to find it. How can I make one of my tuners the primary one for LiveTV? Or can this even be done?

[Wheemer]

You can set the tuner merit, it is documented in the manual. However this will not only be for LiveTV viewing, it will be for recording aswell.

[Tony414]

I did do that. It worked when recording a show last night. But when I tried it for livetv it didn't. It used my other capture card which is connected to my cable box.

[stanger89]

You can't.

[Tony414]

I can't?? REALLY? That's not cool! Is there anyway around it? What determines in the setup which one is used for LiveTV? My PLextor is connected directly to cable. My PVR-150 goes to my cable box.

[Opus4]

The tuner priority for live TV is the same as for any other recording... since it is still a recording. If you have set encoder merit so that your preferred tuner has a higher merit value, that one should be used first for any recording, provided that tuner is capable of tuning that channel at the specified recording quality, though there is a property to alllow any tuner to be used even if a specified recording quality is not available on a tuner.

If you set the merit correctly, yet the other tuner gets used, then my guess would be that it is because the higher merit tuner is either already in use or cannot tune the requested channel.

- Andy

[Tony414]

Thanks Andy for the detailed response. I'll look into it tonight. Thanks again!!

[rsagetv99]

Originally Posted by Opus4

though there is a property to allow any tuner to be used even if a specified recording quality is not available on a tuner.
- Andy

Andy, I am having the same problem and I have set the Merit parameter in the sage.properties file. The encoder that I want to have priority is a network encoder and I have a feeling that this is why it is not being used.

If I understood the above quote right, are you saying that there is another parameter which will force a particular tuner to be used? Even if all things "aren't" equal? If so please let me know what it is.

BTW, the reason I want a network encoder to take priority is because it is actually a DVB card used through the MT plugin and it has DD capability.

Thanks for your help.

[mike1961]

Actually - that brings up a good point. Suppose I have one tuner card that changes the cable box for the extended digital channels and another tuner card for the basic (without a cable box). Now suppose I start watching channel 2. If it tunes to channel 2 through the cable box what happens if 5 minutes later someone wants to watch an extended channel? How can it do it if I'm watching channel 2 with the tuner via the cable box?

I just read that about Merit. It sounds like it means I can specify the order of which tuner card is used first. How is that done?

Thanks,

Mike

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by rsagetv99

are you saying that there is another parameter which will force a particular tuner to be used? Even if all things "aren't" equal? If so please let me know what it is.

This is from about a year ago... I think I was referring to the scheduler/enforce_qualities_in_schedule property, which just determines whether a recording with a user-specified recording quality can be assigned to a tuner than can't use that recording quality. If the property is false, then the assigned tuner might use whatever default recording quality it is capable of using. Ex: you assign a fav to be recorded in DivX format, but the recording may get scheduled on a PVR-250 depending on that property... which can't record in DivX format.

mike1961: p. 220 of the v4.1 manual mentions the encoder_merit property. It isn't guaranteed priority, though.

- Andy

[mayamaniac]

Originally Posted by mike1961

Actually - that brings up a good point. Suppose I have one tuner card that changes the cable box for the extended digital channels and another tuner card for the basic (without a cable box). Now suppose I start watching channel 2. If it tunes to channel 2 through the cable box what happens if 5 minutes later someone wants to watch an extended channel? How can it do it if I'm watching channel 2 with the tuner via the cable box?

I just read that about Merit. It sounds like it means I can specify the order of which tuner card is used first. How is that done?

Thanks,

Mike

I think this actually happened to me a few times. SageTV gives an error message if the tuners that are on extended channel is already in used.

There's a way around it if this feature is implemented, which I think will work:

1. Upon user request to watch an extended channel while the extended tuner is busy recording channel 2, SageTV quickly starts recording channel 2 on a different tuner that is free.
2. Then SageTV switches tuner on the user that was originally watching channel 2 on the extended tuner. So that user is now watching channel 2 on the non-extended tuner. The user might notice a slight pause when its doing the switch.
3. Next, it would stop recording on the extended tuner, and saves the partial recording of channel 2 right before where it began in step 1. So basically, the channel 2 show will be stored in two files, and time shifting should still work all the way back to the beginning of the show.
4. Lastly, change the channel in the extended tuner to the channel original requested.

[src666]

The way I handle this is to only assign the extended channels to the extended tuner. All "normal" channels are excluded. It's not a perfect solution, but so far it has kept me from missing recordings on the extended set.

[roxy99]

Originally Posted by src666

The way I handle this is to only assign the extended channels to the extended tuner. All "normal" channels are excluded. It's not a perfect solution, but so far it has kept me from missing recordings on the extended set.

That defeats the purpose of the merit setting. What happens if both recordings are at the same time only in the normal set? Normally Sage has 2 tuners except with your suggestion the normal channels are only assigned to 1 tuner.