Two Tuners, One Cable Box?

[jgourd]

When I finish my dedicated BTV box I'll have two tuners but only one cable box and one USB IR tranmitter.

I understand that I can create different line-ups for each tuner. I understand that one tuner will be connected to the cable box, the other directly to the cable.

Here is my question. When I program a show, do I have to care about which line up it is on, or does BTV just handle that for in the background?

The other question is: If I schedule two shows back to back both starting 2 minutes early and ending 1 minute late, will BTV automatically use tuner #2 to start show #2 while tuner #1 is still recording show #1?

[nanook105]

Originally Posted by jgourd

Here is my question. When I program a show, do I have to care about which line up it is on, or does BTV just handle that for in the background?

The other question is: If I schedule two shows back to back both starting 2 minutes early and ending 1 minute late, will BTV automatically use tuner #2 to start show #2 while tuner #1 is still recording show #1?

BTV will decide which tuner to use based on the channel.

Yes - BTV will use both tuners in a back to back situation

[jgourd]

Are all the channels from both line ups mixed together in one list so you don't have to look in two places for a show?

[RiderFan]

Yes, they mix all the channels together on your program guide. The problem I have is that a few of my channels are the same, but they are named different so they show up twice. Like 1 tuner shows channel 11 as CBC, and the other tuner shows channel 11 at CBCR so they show up twice, but they are the same channel.

Anyone know of a way to fix this?

[nanook105]

Originally Posted by RiderFan

Yes, they mix all the channels together on your program guide. The problem I have is that a few of my channels are the same, but they are named different so they show up twice. Like 1 tuner shows channel 11 as CBC, and the other tuner shows channel 11 at CBCR so they show up twice, but they are the same channel.

Anyone know of a way to fix this?

The only way that I can think of is to remove those channels from one of the lineups

[Edgarmoon]

I currently have one input on my card for local channels (one lineup) and another for satelite (second lineup) I had overlapping channels before and it would alternate between the inputs, but if you have some channels on one lineup and not the other, those recordings should prioritize that lineup, unfortunately that doesn't alway s happen.

[not_Shorty]

sometimes it would use the cable box input when it should've used the tuner card? And consequently missed recordings that only the cable box input has access to? Although I suppose you could avoid that by setting specific record jobs to only use the cable box, if that is what you're saying happened to you.

[Edgarmoon]

not quite. Since there were overlap channels, but some unique to one input, those channels unique to one input should have been given priority over common channels. Say I had one movie on a common channel (both inputs) start at 7 and go to 9, then a premium movie (1 input) start at 8, you would think that btv would recognize this and assign the common movie to the less versatile tuner, it doesn't always. Then come 8 the second movie gets skipped. Factors that affect this are livetv, and if thee is a consecutive recording before this, possibly others, it happened once and I eliminated overlap channels.

Btv will change recording priority based on when movies are playing (if higher priority movie playes tues and wed at 7 and lower priority movie is playing tuesday at 7 only it gets recorded and higher gets recorded wed) but btv does not do as good a job on prioritizing inputs.

I have asked (and ask again, for the net milestone) for more tuner control. I'd like to set one tuner up only for conflicts, rather than switching between two for livetv and recordings. This way, if you set a conflicting recording, it lets you look at both recordings (for this recording only, not whole series etc) and choose which gets recorded with the second tuner. Those of us with two tuners (like an aiw we don't normally use) could then use that without degrading all other recordings.

[nanook105]

I'm almost sure that BTV did handle this condition (smart enough to use basic tuner first if a permium channel is also schedule to start during the first recordings time period), but I think it is broken in 3.5.1. I "fixed" it by changing the order of my tuners so that the tuner with the premium channel lineup is always selected last for recordings.