SageTV V7 encoder_merit questions, setting and funtionality

[cjalphonso]

1. is there a way to set the encoder_merit through the new UI?
I have windows 7 and using UAC so I really don't have a good understanding of which properties file I need to mess with?

2. How intelligent is the current encoder_merit? I have 5 tuners, one is on a different antenna yet still picks up that same stations (not as good) as the other tuners, but it picks up one station that none of the other tuners can tune to. I would expect that Sagetv would realize that only this tuner could tune this particular channel and would automatically save the tuner for possibly tuning this station. However, instead it consistently chooses to use this tuner to tune other channels, locking it out from being able to tune this one channel. Therefore I cannot see the one channel this tuner is set up for.

As a workaround, I currently disabled all channels on this tuner except the one channel. This works, but I shouldn't have to sacrifice all the other channels in order to be able to tune this one.

Any help is much appreciated

P.S.-Loving the new SageTV V7

[GKusnick]

1. No, there's no way to set merit through the UI. I'm not a Win7 user, but here's a FAQ about UAC.

2. Merit comes into play only as the last step in deciding which tuner to use. At the time a channel is tuned, if two or more tuners are available that can tune it, the one with the higher merit is chosen. That's it. Merit doesn't play any part in scheduling recordings in order to make particular tuners available for particular channels, which seems to be what you're asking.

You could try setting the merit for your one odd tuner to be lower than all the other tuners, so that it would be the last tuner chosen for channels they can all receive. For the one channel that only it can receive, there are no alternatives, so merit doesn't matter in that decision.

However if you want to guarantee that that tuner will always be free for that channel, then you've already hit upon the right answer: don't allow it to be used for any other channel.

[cjalphonso]

Thanks for the reply, at least now I know how it works. Maybe someone will make a plugin to set the tuner merit in the UI.
I do find it interesting that I could miss a recording because sage did not save the only tuner available to tune that channel.
I'll try to set the merit and see how that goes.
Thanks again.

[GKusnick]

Originally Posted by cjalphonso

I do find it interesting that I could miss a recording because sage did not save the only tuner available to tune that channel.

Have you actually seen this happen? Normally Sage tries to calculate a recording schedule that maximizes the number of scheduled recordings it's able to record. If you're getting conflicts that prevent some programs from recording, then what you need to adjust is Favorite priority, not tuner merit.

That said, it could happen that Sage calculates a conflict-free schedule that uses your odd tuner to record a scheduled Favorite on some common channel, making it unavailable for live TV on the unique channel. That's where tuner merit might come into play, by making that tuner the last one chosen for scheduled recordings on the common channels.