[mythtv-users] Enabling multirec borks usability a bit.

[Michael T. Dean]

On 04/20/2010 03:20 PM, Douglas Peale wrote:
> Jeff Wormsley wrote:
>    
>> They'll want to use live TV as well, and it would
>> be nice if they could use it just like any other TV, which includes
>> surfing the channels with Chan+ and Chan- (and not worrying about the
>> NEXTCARD button, assuming my remote has enough buttons to map such a
>> thing in the first place, ala an AppleTV) as well as Guide (and don't
>> get me started about how much pain it is to use the Guide to actually
>> change the channel rather than schedule a recording, a completely
>> different issue).
>>      
> I want to make sure that this does not get over simplified.
>
> I have 5 tuners in my system, 3 tuners on cable, one tuner on a northwest facing antenna, and one on a south facing antenna.
> This means I get as many as 4 variants of a single station.
> On cable there are some stations that are available as analog, digital SD, and digital HD. That same station may also be available as OTA HD.
> Worse, at least one station is from a neighboring town, and the cable version of it gets blocked whenever the local affiliate feels like it.
> Usually the OTA HD quality is better than the cable HD quality, but that situation changes on certain stations that have mulipath issues OTA,
> and OTA station can also be affected by the weather. I have adjusted tuner and channel priorities so that recordings will be done on the highest
> quality source for the programming.
>
> While I can assign any channel number to any station, I have assigned the digital SD and analog stations the same numbers so that they match
> the numbers that show up in the guides. This means, for example, that I have an analog channel 2, a digital SD channel 2, a cable HD channel 2.1, and
> an OTA HD channel 2.1, all with the same programming.
>
> When using live TV and selecting channel 13, which variant of channel 2 should live TV choose? I need to be able to access all variants to be
> able to test the setup and to see if the cable company has played musical channels again, but if I'm channel surfing, I'd like to just surf
> the best quality variants of the channels.
>    

The sole purpose of channel numbers is to allow users to jump directly 
to a given channel when in Live TV.  If you assign 2 channels the same 
channel number, you're saying, "These are equivalent and I never have a 
need to differentiate them."  So, in your case, every channel should 
have a unique channel number.  Channel numbers are user-editable, so 
just go into mythtv-setup, mythfrontend, or MythWeb channel editor and 
change them as desired.

Note that "this channel" rules can still be set up to treat channel with 
identical content the same.  The "this channel" rule keys off callsign, 
so assign the same callsign to all channels with identical content that 
you want to treat as the same channel for recording scheduling 
purposes.  (Or, just use "any channel" rules, instead, as they're almost 
always better.)

One you've made your channel numbers unique, you can switch channels by 
typing in a channel number directly (and it should even switch 
source/card as required) or by using the EPG.  Otherwise, with channels 
sharing channel numbers, you've given up your ability to specify which 
channel to use for Live TV.

Mike