LiveTV vs Intelligent Recordings

[troycheek]

I've had SageTV a few weeks and have only recently turned on Intelligent Recordings, so I'm still a little fuzzy about how it's supposed to work. I was under the impression that Intelligent Recordings would get bumped for just about anything else (Favorites, Manual Recordings, or LiveTV), but also thought that SageTV would use all available tuners before failing to record anything.

I'm running Windows XP SP2, SageTV 6.3.10RC, no extenders, Service mode, and the only client is running on the same PC. I usually exit the client altogether rather than sleep. I have a Hauppauge WinTV PVR-500 (PCI) and a Plextor ConvertX PX-TV402U (USB2.0) for a total of three tuners. I've set the tuner merit for the two PVR-500 tuners to 1 and left the TV402U set to 0, so my understanding is that SageTV should use one of the PVR-500 tuners, then the other, then finally the TV402U when I request to record multiple shows. The Upcoming Recordings view seems to bear this out.

This morning I looked in on SageTV and it was recording an Intelligent Recording on PVR-500 tuner 1 and a Manual Recording on PVR-500 tuner 2. The TV402U was not being used. There were no other recordings scheduled for the next few hours. I requested LiveTV on another channel expecting SageTV to use the TV402U. I failed to check the indicator lights on the unit to see if it was actually being used. After watching for a few minutes, I stopped it. SageTV then said it was still recording the Manual on PVR-500 tuner 2, but there was no sign of the Intelligent Recording on tuner 1. The program did not show up under SageTV Recordings. The file did exist in my recordings directory and comskip was processing it. Playing it back on VLC showed that it stopped recording about the time I went to LiveTV. I have not had the chance to restart the SageTV service or reboot or anything like that to see if this file will be automatically deleted.

Is it normal for SageTV to drop an Intelligent Recording from a higher merit to tune LiveTV when a lower merit tuner was available, or should SageTV have used the available tuner for LiveTV? Do I need to avoid LiveTV when using Intelligent Recording? Or was this just one of those things?

(P.S. I've had about a gazillion questions the last few weeks and this is the first one I wasn't able to answer with a quick search of the forums. I chose SageTV over several other possibilities because SageTV had the best user to user support in the forums!)

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by troycheek

Is it normal for SageTV to drop an Intelligent Recording from a higher merit to tune LiveTV when a lower merit tuner was available

Yes -- there is a PDF manual in your SageTV install dir. You may want to check out at least chapter 2's Quick Start Guide, around p. 18. Live TV is discussed on pages 20-21, with the comment you are looking for on p. 21, about live TV vs. scheduled recordings.

Do I need to avoid LiveTV when using Intelligent Recording? Or was this just one of those things?

If you want to make sure an IR show records, turn it into a Manual Recording. But, I avoid live TV anyway, because all watched shows affect IR & watching live TV/channel surfing affects what is marked as watched.

- Andy

[troycheek]

Originally Posted by Opus4

Yes -- there is a PDF manual in your SageTV install dir. You may want to check out at least chapter 2's Quick Start Guide, around p. 18. Live TV is discussed on pages 20-21, with the comment you are looking for on p. 21, about live TV vs. scheduled recordings.

I've read through the PDF several times. It's tough going in places. I've read that particular page about 10 times now, but I must be slow today. I can see that if my requesting LiveTV had tied up the last available tuner, an upcoming IR show would have silently failed to record. That is completely consistent with my understanding of how SageTV and Intelligent Recording works. I can see that if all tuners were in use and I requested LiveTV, it would silently kick an IR show it was recording. I get that. What I can't see is how an IR show recording (or any other recording) in progress was kicked for LiveTV (or anything else) when another tuner was still available. I thought I read somewhere that SageTV used all available tuners. Or did I mess things up by setting tuner merits? Did SageTV feel obligated to take the highest merit tuner for LiveTV?

Originally Posted by Opus4

If you want to make sure an IR show records, turn it into a Manual Recording.

That's what I was doing previously. Actually, I was using the excellent Intelligent Suggestions import to look through what SageTV thought I might like and setting Manual on the interesting ones, setting "don't like" for the others. I finally have IR trained enough that I thought I could stop looking through the listings every few days for interesting shows. If IR is really this skittish, I might have to keep doing that anyway.

Originally Posted by Opus4

I avoid live TV anyway, because all watched shows affect IR & watching live TV/channel surfing affects what is marked as watched.

To be honest, the only reason I tried watching live this morning was because I saw that two tuners were in use, thought "Now that I've got all three tuners working, I can record two shows while watching a third live!" and tried to do just that.

I'm still confused as to why it didn't work, but I thank you for your prompt reply.

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by troycheek

I thought I read somewhere that SageTV used all available tuners. Or did I mess things up by setting tuner merits? Did SageTV feel obligated to take the highest merit tuner for LiveTV?

It is possible that the merits affected this, but as far as SageTV is concerned, IR can be bumped for Live TV because it isn't a recording that a user asked for.

- Andy

[troycheek]

Originally Posted by Opus4

It is possible that the merits affected this, but as far as SageTV is concerned, IR can be bumped for Live TV because it isn't a recording that a user asked for.

I hear what you're saying, but this user still feels like he did ask for the IR recording because he turned IR on in the first place. Oh, well. I wish that SageTV would notice that there are other tuners it could use without interrupting the IR, but I guess I can work around that. I don't think I've seriously watched TV live since I found that I can get the weather from within Sage...

Thanks again for your help. I'm going to try really hard this weekend to stop fiddling with things and just enjoy watching TV.

[GKusnick]

Just to cover all the bases, are you sure the third tuner is actually working? Have you tried setting three simultaneous manual recordings?

[troycheek]

Last night, I was able to record two Manuals and a Favorite at the same time, so I'm pretty sure all three are working.

This morning, I noticed Sage was IRing a show on tuner #1 (highest encoder merit) that I didn't care if I saw or not, so I requested LiveTV just to see what would happen. Two other tuners available, but Sage dumped the IR to tune to my requested live channel. The first time I saw this, the IR was also on the tuner with the highest merit and was also booted in favor of LiveTV.

I returned all the encoder merits to 0 and waited for an upcoming Intelligent Recording. It started on the same tuner as the other times. However, when I selected a currently airing show on another channel via EPG, LiveTV used a second tuner. I flagged that show as a Manual Recording to lock it in, then went back to the EPG. The next show I selected was on the third tuner. I MRed it as well. At this point, I had one IR and two MRs going, using all three tuners. It wasn't until I went to the EPG once again and selected yet another show to watch live that the IR was finally bumped. This is the behavior I expected all along from SageTV.

So, my conclusion is that changing the encoder merits caused the LiveTV vs Intelligent Recording conflict I observed.