Hi,

I've got a Hauppauge Nova T 500 DVB-T card which has two built in tuners (i.e. two physical tuners on the card). I've read about and noticed that MythTV 0.21 has a 'vitual tuner' ability built in: http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Multirec called multirec. This is meant to allow recording of more than one channel on one multiplex which is pretty cool effectively turning my single card with two tuners on it into a massive 10 simultaneous show recording platform!!!

But I've noticed it not working as expected with my new R5.5 platform.
When I have a show recording on one physical tuner and want to record a simultaneous show on the same multiplex it will use a virtual tuner and record both fine without using the separate second physical tuner. If I want to watch another show at the same time and on the same multiplex it will let me do this as well without using the second physical tuner.

However if I want to watch a simultaneous show broadcast on a different multiplex to one which is presently being recorded, MythTV will NOT use the separate physical tuner as one would have expected but instead only allow shows to be watched which are on the same multiplex as that which is being recorded. Furthermore if one is already watching a given multiplex and a show is scheduled to record simultaneously on a different multiplex, the viewing of the show will terminate and you will be left with only being able to view one multiplex?!

Hence the second tuner is never used!

This is really strange since I've added both tuners during setup and given them both the maximum of 5 virtual tuners each?! MythTV even recognises these two separate tuners which I have chosen! But it will not use one of them?

Has anyone else experienced this issue or have I just forgotten to select some crucial setting to make MythTV realise that there are two physical tuners one one PCI card on my computer?

Please help,
Mythman

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Running Knoppmyth R5.5 on a Compaq EVO D510 (sff) w/ P4 1.8GHz, 1GB RAM, 330GB 7200rpm Maxtor IDE HDD, XFX Nvidia GeForce 6200 (AGP low profile, p/n: PV-T44A-WANG) and Huappauge NOVA-T 500 DVB-T dual tuner PCI card.

Firstly, I think it is possible to press the channel number and it will select a card that is able to record it.

Its to do with tuner priorities. In the mythfrontend settings somewhere there is a setting called "Avoid conflicts between live tv and scheduled shows". What this does is allocate high priority tuners to scheduled shows, and low priority tuners to live tv. Since all your tuners are of the same type, their priority is the order in which they were configured.

If you do this, then your first scheduled show will be recorded on the first card. Your first live tv instance will be on the last card.

Hi,

Thanks for this - I changed the setting under Setup -> Setup -> General I think...as you suggested.

LiveTV is now viewed on the second physical tuner leaving the first to record the first instance of a recording.

However it still dosen't perform as expected: you can record multiple shows on the same multiplex with each tuner and because I have two tuners you can record two multiplexes with multiple shows on both multiplexes but if you want to view live tv (with 2 tuners both recording) mythtv will only let me view a channel which is broadcast on the multiplex that the second tuner is tuned into and not a channel on either multiplex that both cards are tuned into - despite there being virtual tuners avaliable on both cards ?!

I guess what I have now is much better than it used to be although I am a little surprised that you can't watch channels off two multiplexes when recording. The only work around I have is to schedule a record for the program I want to watch on livetv on the multiplex that I cannot access and then watch it that way as a recording.

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Running Knoppmyth R5.5 on a Compaq EVO D510 (sff) w/ P4 1.8GHz, 1GB RAM, 330GB 7200rpm Maxtor IDE HDD, XFX Nvidia GeForce 6200 (AGP low profile, p/n: PV-T44A-WANG) and Huappauge NOVA-T 500 DVB-T dual tuner PCI card.

Hi,

Yes you're right. The general feature of what you are saying is "Browsing across tuners". There are two buttons, 'C' changes the current card, and 'Y' changes the current input. Pressing these will force you onto the other tuners.

I still think pressing the number of the channel should switch the tuner in use. This is the same problem that people who have free to air and pay tv inputs setup. They can only browse the channels that are in the current line up.

There is a Mythtv patch http://www.ronfrazier.net/ronfrazier.net/mythtv/ here that allows you to browse across tuners.

There are ways to achieve what you are asking, but unfortunately, it is not the default behaviour.

Hope this helps.