Channel Priorities

[aperry]

Does anyone know if there is a way for me to specify that one channel should take precedence over another for recordings? My situation is that my cable provider offers two ABC channels, and unless I tell it otherwise, Sage always records off the distant channel. This would not normally be a problem, but that channel has a bunch of noise in the picture.

So, can I somehow tell Sage that my local ABC is what it should use first? I want it to fall back to the other one when necessary (like being preempted on my local ABC which happens with some regularity), so I can't just tell it to always use my local channel.

Any ideas?

[mdmint]

Have you tried selecting your preferred ABC as the channel in Favorites? I don't know if that would allow it to fall back to your other ABC if there's a recording conflict etc...

[Crashless]

You can remove the offending channel from your channel lineup. Then Sage will never use it.

Goto Setup, channel lineup.

[teedublu]

I too would like to see that option.
I have a similar situation. Currently you have to choose the channel or remove the "other" channel. (well I'm still running 2.0 and no custom STV) It would be nice to flag a network channel as always last choice.

TW

[aperry]

I know about going in and saying to record on only a given channel, but I want it to be able to automatically record from the other ABC channel if the preferred one is in use.

I know that there has to be some sort of priority thing going on already. If I record from CBS (which I also have two of), my local one is used, ABC uses the distant one (as I mentioned above), and if I record an item that is on both my local CBS and distant ABC, it chooses the local CBS.

I guess I can stumble along with the current options, I'd just like this ability someday...

[Crashless]

Now, I'm sure this is a silly question, because it seems to be obvious to you two:

Why would one channel be in 'use' and you not be able to record it? Better yet, why would you ever want the channel with the lower quality, if the same thing is being broadcast on another channel? Why would CBS and ABC be broadcasting the same thing at the same time?

Sorry for the silly questions, I just can't wrap my head around this one.

[aperry]

My local ABC station likes to preempt programming to show college basketball games (or other things just for the heck of it). Usually, the show that got preempted will show later in the night (or early the next morning). But I don't want to take the chance that this "delayed" recording will not actually happen when it shows in the guide (the game runs over and delays everything else for the rest of the night).

So, in that case, I want Sage to record from the other channel. Forcing the recording to my local channel, or removing the other channel from the list would prevent this from happening.

[silkshadow]

Heres a roundabout method to fix your problem. You can create two favorites for every show that airs on ABC. On each favorite specify that it only record on the one ABC channel. Then put the favorite that is using the low quality channel lower in your favorite list.

[aperry]

I might try that. That's an interesting workaround to the problem.

[Crashless]

That's a great idea silkshadow. Very creative.

[davin]

Another workaround option. Create a new recording device with the same capture device and delete all channels except for the "good" ABC channel. Then set that recording device to highest priority in the sage.properties file.

This is assuming that you can have two devices for the same input... with my setup I have two devices on one 150, but one uses the tuner and the other uses the svideo... dunno if you can two two devices both using the tuner.

[silkshadow]

Thanks Crashless!

@aperry, yup give it a try. I use that method for a couple of channels. I have two cable feeds that got combined by my bulding somehow so I use it alot.