No tuners available for this recording

[sub]

The algorithm known how many tuners there are at any given time, and if, at schedule time, the user schedules more shows than there are tuners at showtime it can issue a warning and say that there will not be enough tuners available. Ofcource the algorithm need to analyze the shows and see if any of them can utilize multirecord.

That is exactly what it is already doing today. It does this by provisionally deciding which tuners will be used for which recordings, so that it can know which recordings can be use multi-record etc. It doesnt necessarily end up using that particular tuner for the recording, but it is enough to confirm that it has a plan to determine it has the required number of resources.

[mvallevand]

The current plan isn't really elegant with multiple tuners though, because I think it is based on minimizing tuners, at the expense of losing padding. There should be a preference to record the same digital channel back-to-back ith inherent padding to maximize multirec, and also a preference to use multiple analog tuners again with padding when possible.

Martin

[sub]

The current plan isn't really elegant with multiple tuners though, because I think it is based on minimizing tuners, at the expense of losing padding.

There is some changes coming on this front in the next release. The resource usage plan would effectively stay the same - with minimizing tuner usage (padding optional), for maximum number of recordings, but at recording time it'd be better at knowing it could shuffle some recordings off to other available tuners to help retain the padding if possible. Its a complicated area though with the multi-record issues etc.

[mvallevand]

Thanks sub Be sure to take the time to get it right, NPVR is running really well overall, and this "complicated" work will be appreciated be most users.

Martin

[johnsonx42]

one thing that would be very useful is an option to forcibly schedule a one-off recording if the first try fails. If the user opts for this, simply have the program discard all recurring recordings that overlap the desired one-off recording (but only those not already in progress), schedule the recording, then do an epg update to re-schedule all the recurring recordings (not a full epg update where it loads a new xmltv file, just the 2nd part where runs through the epg and schedules all the shows based on the recurring requests). in some cases this would simply result in all the same shows being recorded but on different tuners, in other cases one of the recurring recordings would get dropped. the nice thing about this is that all the needed scheduling logic is already there - NPVR already knows how to do this, it does it every night.

additionally, if conflict management is ever enabled, after a user does a forced schedule of a single recording, then any recurring recording dropped as a result would show up in the Conflicts list and could be dealt with there.

as far as I can see all that's needed is a dialog to allow the user to request the forced scheduling, a few lines of code to do it and call the epg update, and a "please wait..." message to cover the minute or two this process will take.

[Reddwarf]

johnsonx42 has a good suggestion in my opinion. Good to hear that there is more improvment in the scheduling algorithm. Hopefully we will not be thrown out of live-tv when there are tuners available :

[martint123]

When you actually sit down and look at the problem, I find it often a difficult task to optimise it on a piece of paper.
Getting an algorithm to cater for the multiplicity of tuners of different capabilities of all users is a daunting task.
Not forgetting the option in later versions of "damn, I have no spare tuners, can anyone 'out there' record it for me please"

[wodger]

I've run into this several times. The likely cause is that Tuner 1 was set to record American Idol on TV2, but then at 10pm it scheduled Distraction to record on Tuner 2. Then Tuner 1 was going to record 7 Days at 9:30pm. So now, even though it looks like you have a tuner available to record Chain Reaction on TV3, you actually don't, because Tuner 1 was busy recording TV2 at 8:30pm, and then Tuner 2 would be on TV2 at 10:00pm; so no single tuner could be on TV3 from 8:30pm to 10:30pm. NPVR doesn't have the logic to re-assign tuners on the fly.

Getting an algorithm to cater for the multiplicity of tuners of different capabilities of all users is a daunting task.

I'm sure I don't know all the use cases out there, my needs are relatively simple, and I'm no programmer ... but, it makes sense in my mind that if you schedule a recording on one frequency, and then schedule another recording on the same frequency, that the system should allocate the same tuner and use multirecord then and there. I presumed this was how it worked. It doesn't make sense (to me) that the app would allocate the 2nd tuner to the same frequency that it knew the first tuner was already going to be locked onto at the time of the second recording. That way other tuners are available *if* the user happens to want to schedule a third, fourth, fifth etc recording on another frequency. If they just left it at two recordings, then it'd be an efficient use of resources - only one tuner locked onto the same frequency, recording two programs. As I understand it, in the case of NZ freeview two tuners would always then work, as there are only two frequencies in use.

I am about to start a job as a team leader on a support helpdesk for a small software company in Wellington with just a few products, which is a bit of a shift from my previous roles in technical server/desktop support. So, not trying to be a know-it-all here Sub, I am genuinely interested in this. Do I understand it correctly?

[wodger]

The work-around that I have to use frequently is to cancel the later recording(s), schedule the one I want, then re-schedule the later recording(s) again. Then in your case, Distraction would have been re-scheduled on Tuner 1.

Thanks. I'll look into a bit more along these lines next time it happens. I didn't bother and wish I had because I wanted to see that movie

[sub]

I'm sure I don't know all the use cases out there, my needs are relatively simple, and I'm no programmer ... but, it makes sense in my mind that if you schedule a recording on one frequency, and then schedule another recording on the same frequency, that the system should allocate the same tuner and use multirecord then and there. I presumed this was how it worked.

Its not that simple. It'll be because it already has a another that tuner allocated to some other frequency for a period of time that overlaps that new recording request (so cant just use multi-record, since that frequency wouldnt have been possible for the entire time).

As indicated, its basically come down to the order you'd scheduled recordings, and the details of your earlier scheduled recordings had lead to a situation where no tuner would have been available for the new recording you were trying to schedule. In some cases it might be possible go back and reassing all the other recordings, and reallocate them to different tuners to make sure this new recording would be possible, but this is something GBPVR/NPVR doesnt do.

If you supply your npvr.db3 and sample recordings that cause the problem, I'll check and tell you exactly why it allocated the tuners the way it did.