Tuner preference

[gilded07]

I have an SD lineup for my HVR2250 and PVR500 and a separate lineup of HD locals for my HDHR3.

The SD PQ is better with the 2250s than with the 500s especially when watching sports with small font team scores on the screen and just about any programming with scrolling text (e.g. cable news, espn, etc).

Is there a way to get SageTV to always give preference to the 2250's two tuners over the 500's two tuners? I've heard of using encoder merit in the props file but was shocked at how little it was talked about in the v7 manual. Essentially, I always want SageTV to grab the 2250s when available over the 500s. Is this possible?

Note: Not sure If it matters, but I do have pre- and post- padding on all of my favs.

[Boolah]

encoder_merit is indeed what you want. The higher the merit, the higher the priority. The merit just needs to be a positive integer.

Shut down Sage and edit the sage.properties file. Find the mmc/encoders/<ID> lines for each of the tuners you want to set merit on and add a line for each tuner that looks like:

mmc/encoders/<ID>/encoder_merit=X

where "X" is a positive integer. You could set X to be 20 for your 2250's (giving both 2250's even merit with each other) and set X to be 10 for your 500's (giving both 500's even merit with each other, but lower merit than your 2250's). Save the properties file and restart Sage.

You should then check you're recording schedule to make sure the merit took effect.

[gilded07]

Will this tuner preference work when I select a live show from the guide as well?

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by gilded07

Will this tuner preference work when I select a live show from the guide as well?

Yes. You could also disable by channels those that you would ALWAYS want to record on the 2250s as well. If you copied the lineups when you setup the tuners anway.

[gilded07]

Originally Posted by BobPhoenix

Yes. You could also disable by channels those that you would ALWAYS want to record on the 2250s as well. If you copied the lineups when you setup the tuners anway.

You mean create a third lineup for just the PVR500 that would only have the channels that I didn't care about the PQ?

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by gilded07

You mean create a third lineup for just the PVR500 that would only have the channels that I didn't care about the PQ?

Yes. Just change the lineup and when it asks if you want to use the same lineup or copy to new one - choose copy. Then disable all channels that you don't want recorded on the PVR500 and enable those that you do. When you do that the PVR500 will only record those channels that you have enabled for it. You will have to do it for both tuners of the PVR500 if you have setup both tuners.

I do that with DirectTV lineup. I have a Colossus to record the HD channels and HVR-2250 to record the SD channels. I have the HD channels enabled for the Colossus and the SD channels disabled and for the HVR-2250 I have the SD channels enabled and the HD channels disabled on a copied lineup. Not that I couldn't record the SD on the Colossus but had the HVR-2250 available since it was only recording OTA signals otherwise.

[sflamm]

details on merit here:

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...=encoder+merit