encoder merit setting

[lovingHDTV]

I set my encoder_merit setting for my A180 tuner to be 1 and for my PV250 to be 0. The documentation says this means that the A180 should have priority for all recordins possible over the PVR250. However, I don't see that this is the case. I have to actually set my the channel in my favorites settings to ensure the A180 is used to do the recording. This happens even though there is no conflict. In fact I never record two shows at the same time.

Does this work for anyone else?

thanks,

[Flips]

I've got the same issue. When there is only one favorite scheduled sometimes it records in HD and sometimes in SD. I have the merit for HD and SD set to 2 and 1 respectively.

In the documentation it says when all else is equal the card with the higher merit is used. What else contributes to this? Is there a way in the logs to see what Sage is thinking?

Just last night I recorded Office in SD, but Law and Order was in HD... strange...


Thanks,
Flips

[Jeraden]

I noticed a similar thing last night. My HD tuner is set to higher merit. It showed in the scheduled recordings that it was going to record My Name is Earl on the HD tuner at 9pm (NBC) and The Office on the SD Tuner at 9:30pm (NBC). Even though nothing else was scheduled to record at the same time, they are on the same channel right after each other. Not sure why it chose 2 different tuners instead of recording them both back to back off the same one. So I had to manually schedule the Office to record on the HD tuner and that went through ok.

[lovingHDTV]

What you two are describing is exactly what I'm seeing. I've had to set the station in the favorites in order to get it to record correctly. It is almost as if Sage does not want to use a single tuner back to back, when it has an additional tuner of lower merit available.

I'll bug it and see what Sage says.

[malore]

Anyone find a solution to this?

At first when I was setting things up I gave my analog tuner a higher merit, but some shows without conflict still were scheduled to record in HD. Now my digital tuner has a higher merit, but the selection of tuner seems random. When I added the nightly news as a favorite SageTV scheduled it to record on both tuners, so I restricted the favorite to the analog channel.

Although I didn't have any scheduling conflicts, a couple of times after manually switching a scheduled recording to the HD version, SageTV was able to schedule another show to record sooner on the newly freed analog tuner. This makes me kind of question the efficency of the scheduling algorithm.

I'm wondering if all this is a general problem when combining different programming sources. Anyone have similar problems not related to HDTV?

[newmedia42]

I have this problem as described earlier as well - I have the merit of my HD card set to 1, the merit of my other two SD card's set to 0, yet it still is choosing the SD cards to record favorites. The frustrating part is there are times I have nothing else set to record, such as tonight when Survivor is on, I have a favorite for Survivor, it shows up with a white outline on both channel 5 (SD) and 17 (HD), but it is queued to record channel 5, the SD one. Even more frustrating is that for the second episode of Survivor it IS recording it off of 17 (HD).

Before I switched to DirecTV, I used to use merit all the time to ensure it would favor the analog turner over the cable box, without any issues, so I'm a bit surprised to see it having these issues...

I'm running 4.1.6 (the latest beta)...

[lovingHDTV]

I"ve given up on this working and have locked all my favorites to the one channnel I want to ensure I get HDTV/SDTV appropriately. I know this should not be necessary, but it appears to be.

[rsagetv99]

The merit setting is not working for me either, I think it might be because the encoder that I want to take priority is a network encoder. Not sure though...

[dflachbart]

I experience the "recording conflict warning" issue with two tuners set up with different merits when recording a show on tuner1 and trying to watch LiveTV on a different channel. I noticed that this problem has been discussed in several threads in the past - is there any update on this ? Any feedback from support, will this be fixed in the future ?


Edit: I am still using 4.1.3

Thanks,

Dirk

[newmedia42]

I was going through my list of upcoming recordings, manually changing them from SD to HD, and I noticed one trend - I occasionally get shows that correctly record in HD, but only when the HD channel number is lower than the SD channel number. Am I just going crazy seeing patterns within patterns ala the movie Pi, or has anyone else noticed this?

Any word on this? I'm going to submit a bug just in case...

[roxy99]

I have also noticed that my dual Haupauge PVR 500 seems to ignore the Merit setting. I understand a higher merit value is given priority.
I tried
Source1: encoder_merit=1
Source2: encoder_merit=10

Both are SDTV BTW. I presume Source2, merit=10 should be given priority.

However it seems that SageTV reverts to the last selected tuner. IE: If last tuner active was Source1, then the autoprogram resorts to Source1 ignoring the fact that Source2 has I higher merit. Vice-versa, if I watch live tv say on Source2, and I go to bed and put Sage into standby. Then source2 will be the first chosen tuner for my next chosen show regardless of any merit value assigned.

I have both tuners with the same channels and both are digital satelite SDTV. I know its odd that I should care which one takes merit, but I have my reasons. I need source2 to be used 100% for all recordings unless source1 is busy then fallback is source1. Could it be that the PVR500 always first chooses mpeg source1 and only uses the second mpeg source by design ? (attached to the header connection on the card)

Do the merit setting only apply on certain conditions?

How does this feature work exactly?

[archie658]

Originally Posted by roxy99

I have also noticed that my dual Haupauge PVR 500 seems to ignore the Merit setting. I understand a higher merit value is given priority.
I tried
Source1: encoder_merit=1
Source2: encoder_merit=10

Both are SDTV BTW. I presume Source2, merit=10 should be given priority.

My experience is that the merit should be 9 or lower, i.e. only the first digit is taken into account. Can someone confirm this? It's not in the docs.

[archie658]

Originally Posted by newmedia42

I occasionally get shows that correctly record in HD, but only when the HD channel number is lower than the SD channel number.

I've noticed the same behaviour with my own two tuners (one digital and one analog, both SD). This even showed when the merit-option did not work at all (in the betas before 4.1.14, if I remember well). To overcome this, I've moved the analog channels to 3xx numbers (to find that they did not tune in version 5.01). Luckily that was fixed as well.

[roxy99]

Originally Posted by archie658

My experience is that the merit should be 9 or lower, i.e. only the first digit is taken into account. Can someone confirm this? It's not in the docs.

I tried 0 and 1 on my first attempt. I'll go back to that or 1 and 2. I don't think 0 and 1 helped either, but I'll double check.

Is there anyone SUCCESSFUL with the merit settings? I'd like to hear I would like to know if there is something I am doing wrong.

[Para]

Originally Posted by roxy99

IIs there anyone SUCCESSFUL with the merit settings? I'd like to hear I would like to know if there is something I am doing wrong.

I can't say the merit settings work exactly like I would expect but I have read somewhere that they are a little non-intuitive in their operation. (maybe that is an understatement - given all of the confusion )

Anyway, the only success that I have had is to set the merit of one encoder low (0) and the rest high (1) to avoid using an encoder until last.

For example, one of my 150's is set low (0) to keep from using it unless all other encoders are busy. It works that way. BUT - expect that you will get pop up messages asking if it is all right to change channels if the low merit encoder is the only one available. It seems that Sage wants you to confirm it is okay to use the lower merit encoder.

[ToxMox]

Originally Posted by Para

BUT - expect that you will get pop up messages asking if it is all right to change channels if the low merit encoder is the only one available. It seems that Sage wants you to confirm it is okay to use the lower merit encoder.

This was fixed a version or two ago.

EDIT: was fixed in v5 release version specifically

4. Fixed bug where using merit settings for encoders would prompt unnecessarily on channel changes

[Para]

Originally Posted by ToxMox

This was fixed a version or two ago.

oops! Just checked the V5 release notes:

SageTV V5.0.1 Release Notes 4/25/2006

Core Updates
4. Fixed bug where using merit settings for encoders would prompt unnecessarily on channel changes

Thanks for pointing it out!

EDIT: Just saw your edit after I finished my post, maybe I should just wait for the thread to get older before replying EDIT EDIT EDIT EDIT

[jlabrue]

Originally Posted by ToxMox

This was fixed a version or two ago.

EDIT: was fixed in v5 release version specifically

I believe that particular issue was fixed in v5 but the problem with encoder merit and scheduling is still there. The channel change problem of course has been around for a while but when it is trying to schedule HD programming and you have encoder merit specified, it ignores it and records in SD most of the time and occasionally in HD. I wish it were as simple as just setting a flag such as "Always prefer HD" or something like that.

ToxMox, has the new version fixed your issues with HD recordings using encoder merit?

[ToxMox]

Originally Posted by jlabrue

I believe that particular issue was fixed in v5 but the problem with encoder merit and scheduling is still there. The channel change problem of course has been around for a while but when it is trying to schedule HD programming and you have encoder merit specified, it ignores it and records in SD most of the time and occasionally in HD. I wish it were as simple as just setting a flag such as "Always prefer HD" or something like that.

ToxMox, has the new version fixed your issues with HD recordings using encoder merit?

I think you are thinking of someone else. I don't have any HD encoders nor have I had any issues with merit not working properly.

[jlabrue]

Originally Posted by ToxMox

I think you are thinking of someone else. I don't have any HD encoders nor have I had any issues with merit not working properly.

Sorry, I thought you were having issues as well but you were just pointing out the fix for merit in v5. I need to read a little closer