Recordings scheduled when no free tuners

[Croftie]

I don't know how to explain it any clearer, NPVR never used to allow me to add recordings if padding couldn't be honoured, I know this for 100% definate. However now it does allow these recording and if you add them padding isn't recording.

Has sub ever commented on padding and why it is low priority, I'd be interested to hear his views.

Sub, and comment on this?

[sub]

The scheduler has always considered padding as 'optional but nice to have'. The same was also true for GBPVR before NextPVR. The vast majority of people only have a single tuner, and you'll have major shortcomings in what can be recorded if (for example) you record shows from 7pm-8pm followed by another recording from 8pm-9pm. Even dual tuner setups often require this. Obviously the more tuners you have the less you need this.

[Croftie]

Thanks for the reply sub. The simple solution, at least in my mind (it may not be technically but hopefully it is) would be to have an option to tell NPVR whether or not to consider padding when scheduling recordings. So with it disabled padding is treated as it is now and with it enabled NPVR will warn you when scheduling a recording if there are not enough tuners free to honour the padding.

I used GBPVR before NPVR and padding was always honoured because it wouldn't let me schedule more recordings than there were tuners. As a result tuners were never "double booked" during the padding and so it was always recorded. That's the functionality I would like back, without it I have to be very carefull not to "overbook", or setup recordings manualy.

More tuners would alleviate the situation yes, bit of an expensive solution though and wouldn't be a complete one, because..

Recently I have had padding missed even when there was (or at least should of been) a free tuner, NPVR spread 3 recordings on the same mux across the two available tuners instead of adding them to the one tuner and leaving the second free for the 4th recording, which was on a different mux, the padding was missing because the recordings hadn't been asigned to the tuners efficiently.

[Croftie]

Just lost another recording sub, this is no fun at all. Would you consider turning NPVR open source? I have a programmer friend that might be interested in implementing this.

In the mean time can anyone recommend alternative recording software I can try?

[Jaggy]

In the mean time can anyone recommend alternative recording software I can try?

Errr GB-PVR this one plus a few others things that are not as good are why I'm still using if for my main system

[johnsonx42]

Just lost another recording sub, this is no fun at all.

What do you mean "lost another recording"? If a recording that was scheduled to record didn't, then post logs and we'll figure out what happened (and if it's a bug get it fixed for the next release). If you just mean you didn't get the padding you wanted on a show, well yeah, we know that's annoying... but several people are asking for other ways of handling padding, so it may get addressed (which is not to say that sub has indicated he's interested in changing anything here).

Would you consider turning NPVR open source?

I can't speak for sub of course, but anyone who's been around here for awhile can assure you that isn't going to happen.