Not grabbing a tuner

[crook038]

I'm having a similar problem with selecting tuners. I have set my recordings with no pre or post padding. I am running a slicondust homerun Prime with 3 tuners. NPVR doesn't seem to want to select a tuner that is not in use. I record several shows with WMC8 (for the wife and kids) and the rest of my shows with NPVR so I can watch them in XBMC. I have attached a portion of a log. A file is created but it has 0 KB and no info file. The problem begins on 03/20/13 at 2100 hrs. Any help would be appreciated.
Sean

[johnsonx42]

This has no relation to the issues in the thread you posted in, so I've moved it to a new thread. I'm on my way out the door right now so I don't have time to look at your log. The usual reason for problems like this is that you haven't allowed NextPVR.exe, NRecord.exe and NDigitalHost.exe through your firewall.

[crook038]

Thanks for moving the post, I wasn't really sure if it should be new or not. I have allowed all three thru the firewall and can manually record 3 separate shows at the same time. The problem seems to occur when 1 or 2 of the tuners is being used by WMC8 and a scheduled recording tries to begin in NPVR. It seems like it doesn't roll down to an unallocated tuner to start recording. Thanks in advance for the help.
Sean

[Graham]

The problem seems to occur when 1 or 2 of the tuners is being used by WMC8 and a scheduled recording tries to begin in NPVR. It seems like it doesn't roll down to an unallocated tuner to start recording.

WMC and NextPVR both recording shows at the same time might be a tiny bit too ambitious. How would NextPVR know which tuner(s) are being used by WMC? How would NextPVR avoid scheduling a recording on a tuner that is being used by WMC? Is it possible to disable tuners in WMC and in NextPVR so that each has its own dedicated tuners.

The best solution is probably to teach the wife and kids how to use the NextPVR client so that you can dump WMC.

[johnsonx42]

It won't completely solve your problem, but you can change the order of the tuners in Settings->Devices; select the tuner and click the Up or Down buttons as needed. This way you can set it so that the first tuner NPVR will use is the last one WMC will use.

I seem to recall the HDHR has something called "Dynamic Tuner Allocation" which will automatically choose a tuner that's not in use, but that feature conflicts with the way NPVR uses the tuners.

I don't know if there's a mechanism by which NPVR could tell if an HDHR tuner is being used by another app and try another tuner... only sub could answer that for us.

[crook038]

Still trying to work this out. I manually set 3 shows to record, one I started right away (1614 hrs) and then set 2 to start at 1630 hrs. No problem, all recorded correctly. I then set up 2 shows to begin recording at 1830 while a show was already being recorded in WMC8. No problem the 2 shows on NPVR recorded correctly and so did the show on WMC8. Looking at the log for the 1830 shows you can see that it grabs tuner 0 correctly for show 1 then it grabs tuner 1 correctly for show 2. Then at 2000 hrs a show is recorded correctly and ends at 2100. At 2058 a show began recording on WMC8 that recorded correctly. At 2100 NPVR tried to grab tuner 0 which had just been released from the recording at 2000 but fails to attempt to grab any other open tuner. It doesn't appear to be a conflict issue between NPVR and WMC8 but I am no expert. It appears that when I manually create a recording the checking for open tuners works properly but my season recordings don't appear to be using the logic to pick an open tuner. Any help in this would be appreciated.
Sean

[Graham]

NextPVR allocates a recording to a tuner at any or all of 1) when the recording is created and 2) when the EPG is updated and 3) when the recording is about to start. I suspect that it will always be a coincidence whether or not a NextPVR recording collides with a WMC recording.

[crook038]

Thanks for the info Graham. I wonder if there is a way to disable the tuner assignment when the recording is created and when the EPG is updated so that it is forced to pick a tuner on the fly. If a tuner is being picked in advance there is no way for NextPVR to see that WMC8 is going to be using a tuner. All help is appreciated.
Sean

[Graham]

NextPVR will change the pre-allocated tuner at the time of the recording. For example, I might cancel a recording a few minutes before that recording is due to start. A second recording that is due to start at the same time might then be allocated to a different tuner to avoid the loss of padding that would have otherwise occurred. The problem is not that NextPVR does not do dynamic tuner allocation. The problem is that NextPVR does not know what WMC is doing and NextPVR does not know which tuners are being used. What do SiliconDust say about support for two recording programs sharing a single device?

I still think that your best bet is get the family to use NextPVR. You can switch of all of the menu options so that they only see Guide and Recordings and Exit.

[martint123]

I have never managed to get anything like this working. If I ever need two different applications to record independently I allocated individual tuners to each application.
I can't see you getting this to work any other way.