Tuner algorithm versus merit

[Razillian]

1. Optimized scheduling algorithms when choosing between multiple channels for the same favorite so that shows on higher quality tuners are preferred over shows on lower quality tuners (this solves the problem of SageTV recording shows with SDTV tuners instead of HDTV tuners when the shows were on two different channels and the show wasn't marked as 'HDTV' specifically)

How "optimized" is this? I ask because I have three tuner devices in use, nvidia dualtv, avermedia 180 svideo to stb and hdhr. I had set a previously watched episode from one of my favorites, "Big Bang," as a manual recording for this past monday night so that a friend could watch it.

The show recorded as it was supposed to, but rather than using the HDHR to record the HD show, it used the avermedia to record the show. The HDHR is set with a merit of 5, the aver is set to 0. There was nothing else in the lineup that would have prevented use of the HDHR. So I am not sure why it used the avermedia over the HDHR.

I'm not sure whether I could duplicate this again for a debug, just curious if anyone else has seen anything similar or if someone in the know (Narflex) might have a reason why this happened and how to avoid it.

[Razillian]

I just noticed it is doing this with Live TV as well and also reverified my encoder merits, so I will submit a bug report in the morning.

[paulbeers]

Originally Posted by Razillian

I just noticed it is doing this with Live TV as well and also reverified my encoder merits, so I will submit a bug report in the morning.

I'm seeing the same thing it appears. It is definately better. For awhile I was having to remap everything to the HD channel (since zap2it appears not to mark Fox shows as HD), but it isn't working perfectly. The Thursday night episode of So You Think You Can Dance is still set to record in SD via my Avermedia and not in HD via the HDHomerun.

[mayamaniac]

This new algorithm is still Lacking.

On my HDHR, I have KNBC (SD) and KNBCDT (HD). There are times when the HD show is not marked as HD in the guide, SageTV unknowingly would tell the HDHR to record the SD version. This has nothing to do with encoder merits, so the new algorithm doesn't apply here.

Because SageTV doesn't know which channel is SD and which channel is HD, we need a way to tell SageTV which is which. For example, in the Channel Setup screen, we could have another pink dot under the green channel enabled dot. The pink dot tells SageTV that this is an HD channel and to set this channel priority above the SD channel.

So on top of the encoder merits, we should also have channel merits. Screenshot example:



I wonder if I should submit this to bug report? Or maybe someone can get Narflex to see this post?

[Narflex]

mayamaniac,

Why don't you just disable KNBC in that lineup? That's what I do in mine. Since the desire is for it to always use KNBCDT instead of KNBC on that tuner; then that's the easy way to accomplish that.

[technazz]

Originally Posted by Narflex

mayamaniac,

Why don't you just disable KNBC in that lineup? That's what I do in mine. Since the desire is for it to always use KNBCDT instead of KNBC on that tuner; then that's the easy way to accomplish that.

Thats what I do. I only started doing it when I was able to copy lineups and independantly enable/disable channels from the same lineup on different tuners.

Technazz

[Razillian]

Early this morning I went through and made the changes found in this post: http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=34196 to test the HDHR digital tuning. When I went back into sage, the odd behavior of it using the avermedia tuner went away.

Of course I got my response from the betatest support team this afternoon requesting I reproduce the problem, etc. And I can't :P If I had to guess it was the dshow_tv_type=QAM line in sage.properties that was somehow causing sage to prefer the avermedia with an encoder merit of 0 over the HDHRs with an encoder merit of 5. When I hit some free air time where nothing is scheduled to record I will change that back and see if I can reproduce the problem.

[mayamaniac]

Originally Posted by Narflex

mayamaniac,

Why don't you just disable KNBC in that lineup? That's what I do in mine. Since the desire is for it to always use KNBCDT instead of KNBC on that tuner; then that's the easy way to accomplish that.

I thought about that, the two reasons not to disable it is filesize and HD transcoding to the MVP. Recording SD show on HD channel increases filesize greatly, plus if you want to watch that show on the MVP, the server will have to transode to the MVP. I don't use the MVP at the moment, but people that do require a server fast enough to transode to it. So I like to keep SD channels for SD shows.

Another solution is to limit the favorite to only HD channels. But then you have to remember to do so when you set a new favorite, rather than depend on SageTV to be smart enough to know which channel is SD and which is HD. As with the disabling the SD channel idea, it is a workaround to a problem, but it is not a solution. What I proposed in that screenshot is a solution.