Okay, I did searches in the forums and using google (w/ site:mysettopbox.tv switch) and came up empty handed, so I'm starting a new thread.

I have two tuners (currently in two different machines, but they will eventually be in one box). Anyway, I was wondering how I control which tuner records which show. The way I would like the recording to work is that if I have two shows recording back to back is for it to use tuner 1 to record show 1 and tuner 2 to record show 2 (or vice-versa for all I care). The point is that I want to retain my 1min before and 2min after show buffers, which can't be done if it is using the same tuner for both shows (which is currently happening). The only time tuner 2 is scheduled is if I have two shows recording at the same time.

If this cannot be configured via preferences/settings, is there any way to manually set which tuner to record a scheduled show with?

I've actually got two back to back recordings that do this every week because of the way I set up the overlaps.

I've got the global settings to start a minute early and end a minute late, but for the second recording schedule of this pair I've also got an individual setting to start two minutes early. This generally means that the second one gets the second priority tuner. I suspect that could be flipped by giving it a higher priority as well.

Once you put both tuners in the same box myth will do exactly what you described with no extra configuration needed.

Or
You can leave the tuners in different machines. Run one machine as the masterbackend and the other as a slave backend. The master backend will tell the slave when to record a show. Effectivly giving the master two tuners. Then it will schedule the two shows on the two different tuners like you want.

I must have something set up wrong...

I am running in a master/slave backend configuration. tjc, what do you mean by "individual setting"? Where do you configure that?

Actually, nevermind, I found the setting in MythWeb. And that worked, thanks tjc.

FYI and also for the next person to come along, there is actually a very detailed section in the MythTV documentation about how the scheduling algorithm works.

http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Sc ... Recordings

I have to take issue with that - I have just installed a second tuner in one mythbox and can confirm that what kmkittre describes in his first post is exactly what happens.
If 2 shows are set to record back to back (eg. one show finishes at 9pm and the other starts at 9pm) myth does not automatically choose to record the 2 shows using 2 separate tuners. The result is, if the first show goes overtime, you'll miss the end of it because the 2nd show will start recording bang on time.

The only way to get around it is doing what tjc says which works, but involves individual attention each time you happen to notice this situation occurring.

It seems odd to me that myth wouldn't automatically choose to use both tuners, when it knows that 1) your global settings specify to start/end each show a minute earlier/later than the schedule; 2) two tuners are available which both receive the same shows on the same channels at the same time. So basically I am re-asking kmkittre's original question: is there a way to automate this behaviour? And if not, where would the right place be to post such a suggestion, eg. the MythTV-dev mailing list perhaps?

I just make it a habit to set the start early/end late items when I schedule a recording. Especially if the interface shows a potential conflict. Using the MythWeb interface makes this much easier.

I've got roughly a dozen to a dozen and a half active recording schedules, and roughly half of those are clustered late Saturday into early Sunday, at the moment so it's not a big deal. to go through and make sure they all play nice.

tjc, your method was working well... but I've just noticed a problem with doing this via MythWeb. The problem occurs when I do as you suggest to a show that has been scheduled using a Power Search (Custom Record). Instead of doing what it should, as soon as I set it to record the second show a minute early, the entire Power Search is deleted from mythconverg. The upshot of that, of course, is that the show doesn't get recorded at all, ever. This doesn't happen if I set an Override option to record a minute early directly via the myth box, only when I use MythWeb to do it.

For all I know this may be a bug in MythWeb that has been overcome in the current version - I'm still running R5A30.2. (I am aware that R5A30.2's MythWeb does not display Power Searches in its list of 'Recording Schedules' which may be a related issue, although that in itself is not a real problem as such. I don't know if that issue has been fixed in R5C7, but you might be able to confirm?)

Are you aware of, or can you confirm this behaviour?

The scheduling algorithm says a lot about how priority conflicts are resolved, but nothing about whether to pick the NTSC or the ATSC tuner.

For me, this results in Myth usually getting it right, (channel memory ??) but sometimes picking the wrong tuner & recording 'grey fuzz'.

Will .20 address this ?

I would think that giving the HDTV tuner input higher priority should resolve most of the cases where a program is available for both tuners... It's in mythtv-setup under input connections, and called something like "input preference".

Wait a minute, you aren't using the same video source for both the SDTV and HDTV tuner are you? They should really be seperate...

Not sure if you're replying to snaproll's post or mine - but for mine, I've tried that, and all it does is assign the higher priority tuner to record both of the back-to-back showings. So I've reverted to giving both tuners the same priority.
Do you have any ideas about MythWeb's Power Search issue though (please see my previous post above)?

The reply was to snaproll's posting.

Super In that case I'll answer it myself. While I've no intention of upgrading to R5C7 *just to see* if this bug has been fixed in 0.19, judging from http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Release_Notes_-_0.20 where it says:...I guess we'll be waiting a only little bit longer before MythWeb can be relied upon for this sort of functionality.

I'll give 'input preference' a try.

I AM using the same antenna to supply 'OTA' signals to both tuners through a powered splitter. In this instance (all the frequencies available) why would they need separate inputs ?