Does MP "look ahead" for conflicts when tuning a channel? (1 Viewer)

[RobNorthcott]

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I think I'm being a bit hopeful here (I think the answer to my question is "no"), but thought I may as well ask:

When starting a recording for a channel available on more than one card, does the TV server look ahead for conflicts that will arise due to later overlapping recordings?

I mostly use DVB-S freesat, but have recently added a DVB-T card to help resolve recording conflicts. I get better reception on DVB-S so I really want to use that as the primary tuner (highest priority) and only use the DVB-T when necessary. At the moment I've just set the DVB-T channels in their own group and use them manually to resolve conflicts, which works fine. But if I link the DVB-S and -T channels in TV server, with the -S as top priority, then set recordings, for example, BBC1 at 7pm for 1 hour and Men and Motors at 7:30 for 1 hour, I'm guessing the second recording would fail (MP would use the primary DVB-S card for the first recording, then fail to find a card for the second because M&M isn't available on DVB-T). It's easy enough to do this manually by setting the BBC1 recording on the DVB-T, but not automatically unless I set the DVB-T as highest priority for the shared channels (which I don't want to do). Or at least, that's how I understand it - MP will not "notice" the up-coming conflict when picking a card for the first recording. Or will it?

Hope that makes sense.

And yes, the ideal solution would be to have a second DVB-S tuner, but that would mean dismantling half the house to run another cable to the dish and I _really_ don't want to do that!

Rob

 

[wonkyd]

I get into a similar situation with my setup.

1. DVB-S2
ITV1
CH4
BBC HD
2. DVB-T
ITV1, CH4

If I've previously scheduled a recording on BBC HD at 9PM for one hour, then try to record ITV1 and Channel 4 at 8PM for one hour MP will use my DVB-S2 card to start the recording on ITV1 then use my DVB-T card for Channel 4 causing BBC HD to fail to start recording until 9:10 PM because of the padding.

MP could have used just the one DVB-T card to record both ITV1 and Channel 4 becuase they share a multiplex leaving the DVB-S2 card free to record the BBC HD channel on schedule.

MP does warn on some occasion of a conflict in the schedule, even though it is theoretically resolvable using the right combination of cards. Even with that said it does warn sometimes and when told to ignore records all the items correctly, then on the other hand sometimes it doesn't warn and a recording will fail.

 

[RobNorthcott]

So I'm not the only weirdo using DVB-S with a DVB-T backup then! I can see the added complication if the software had to look ahead for these sort of situations, but it would be very useful if it could. For now I think the easiest way for us is to keep the -S and -T channels separate and pick the appropriate one manually.

Rob

Edit: Off-topic, but you don't need S2 for BBC (or ITV) HD, BTW - it's normal DVB-S (until they change their minds...) - but you probably already knew that.

 

[wonkyd]

Edit: Off-topic, but you don't need S2 for BBC (or ITV) HD, BTW - it's normal DVB-S (until they change their minds...) - but you probably already knew that.

I used to use it for Channel 4 HD... until Sky changed the encryption