27 replies to this topic

[PaulOgilvie]

I recorded Roland Garros tennis and now Wimbledon is coming. I record Eurosport 1 and Eurosport 2 (via satellite, dual feed). I record from 11 in the morning until 11 at night. It is a kinf of "dragnet" and it records everything. I can skip/delete things later.

 

But at 8 at nght I want to record the daily news. There is no free tuner available. What should I do? Adapt one of the recordings to stop at 19:59 and continue at 20:31? But sometimes there is also another more important program I want to record.

 

That is where I would appreciate a feature "priority recording". Actually, one of the two tennis recordings can have the lowest priority and any other programmed recording requiring a tuner can interrupt that one, do its recording and continue the interrupted recording.

 

(I have been thinking a lot about it, the user interfeace and multi-levels of priority and that seems to get just too complex. But a single lowest priority "dragnet" recording can work.)

 

Any more ideas?
Paul Ogilvie

[Dimitrij]

Very simple .
Use receiver with 2 tuners,it is better FBC.

[PaulOgilvie]

Yes, I have 2 tuners, and two cables, and two heads, and two Diseq switches. And those are used by the two tennis stations. So i need to interrupt one recording. And I would like that with Priority Recording. (I have VU Solo 2.)

Edited by PaulOgilvie, 26 June 2019 - 18:54.

[PaulOgilvie]

As far as I understand, Full Band Capture (FBC) lets two or more stations be recorded through the same tuner if those stations are on the same transponder. in mij case, both tennis stations are each on a different transponder, and my third program I want to record is yet on another (a third) transponder (or satillite).

 

The tennis stations are on daily repeat. That makes programming a single recording that would need to interrupt these daily recordings very difficult. Priority Recording could solve this.

[WanWizard]

In that case FBC will only work if you have a Unicable setup. With a DiseqC setup and FBC tuners you are limited to two quadrants (not two transponders). So if your third transponder is in the same quadrant as one of the first two, it would work.

 

There is no such thing as Ptriority Recording, so although it would solve it, its absense doesn't really help you.

[PaulOgilvie]

Could Priority Recording be a development suggestion?

[WanWizard]

The big question will be, which recording to cancel.

 

My box has 16 tuners (A to P), say they are all busy recording, which of these should be cancelled, and why, to free up a tuner? How does the box determine which one I can afford to miss/loose?

[anudanan]

I think the idea of PaulOgilvie is to mark a timer with a prio number during the programming  so the box cancel the recording with the lowest prio number.

 

But I think it is not so easy to implement because he will also that the interrupted record will start again it the higher prio record is finished.

 

From my point of view for those demand it is better to buy a FBC tuner box with a unicable setup. Then you have normally enough tuners for recordings.

[PaulOgilvie]

Indeed, because it is not so simple and can be very confuding to the user, I suggested a single recording to be low priority and interruptable.

 

I looked up Unicable. I understand that the selection now occurrs near/at the head and not in the tuner. As a result, the cable has a lot of bandwidth available and can stream multiple channels from multiple heads/transponders/quadrants/whatever.

 

I thought I had it all well set up with dual cable/two quad heads (2 satellites)/diseqs/dual tuner, but it seems I am behind in technology. I believe the VU+ Solo2 has FBC tuners. So I would only need additional or new hardware at the disc to capture/stream over the cable(s)?

[WanWizard]

You'll only find FBC tuners in the (VU+) 4K models.

 

If you already have quad LNB's, pull two extra cables (or use a stacker), and you can connect up to 4 regular tuners.

 

I have a box with 2 FBC tuners (4 FBC inputs) connected to quads, until I've saved up to swap it for a Unicable system. It is not as flexible as Unicable, but I can still use the additional tuners the FBC module supplies to tune to channels in the same quadrant.

 

But I've had a regular 4-tuner ET10000 and HD2400 connected to those LNB's before, and that works fine too.

[PaulOgilvie]

Maybe for all those stuck with old technology and not having/wanting to buy yet again new equipment, please implement my Priority Recording? Just one interruptable program is fine...

[WanWizard]

Provide an answer to my questions in post #7.

 

You're a software engineer, you should know a user request needs to be translated into proper design specs for it to be implemented.

[WanWizard]

p.s. that doesn't mean it will. Implementing this will be very complex. 

 

For starters, Enigma has conflict detection, it will simply refuse to create a timer if it detects no tuner will be available at that time. So that mechanism has to be bypassed before a low prio timer can be created.

 

Second challenge is to deal with the different timing scenario's:

• if a low prio recording is active, and another timer starts that wants the tuner, the recording needs to be stopped, and rescheduled to start again when that other timer finishes. That might create another conflict with other timers, that needs to be resolved.
• if all tuners are busy when the low prio recording starts, it needs to find out which recording finishes first, find its end-time, see if that is within the window of the low prio recording, and if so, reschedule it. If not, it can be marked finished.

I wonder if there is someone willing to put quite a bit of time in to develop this edge case. It won't be me, it's way above my paygrade.

[jeanclaude]

just go for the receiver with the 2 FBC tuners with your classic setup -  that will give you access to all channels on 8 different transponders located on 2 quadrants (2 quadrants on the same satellite or 1 quadrant on 2 different satellites - tuner A will "lock" the first quadrant, tuner B will "lock" the 2nd quadrant, the 6 other tuners C,D,E,F,G & H are internally linked to any quadrant made available by tuner A or tuner .

that should be sufficient for most your needs.

[PaulOgilvie]

OK. I will. It is me who wants it, so it is me who must specify it. Poor me.

 

Though I dont think your cases above afe a problem.

• The first bullet is not an issue because any recording has priority over the low priority, so conflict resolved.
• The second bullet neither seems a problem: I understand a watch dog wakes up every minute to see if a recording must be started; it detects the low priority recording has not started; it seeks a tuner. If one is free, fine, otherwise sleep again.

I am interested to hear more cases.

[PaulOgilvie]

I just heard from my supplier that Unicable LNBs won't fit on my disc because they are too big and two won't fit next to another. The heads must receive Astra 19 and Astra 23.

[PaulOgilvie]

WanWizard,

 

When you say in post #14 "For starters, Enigma has conflict detection, it will simply refuse to create a timer if it detects no tuner will be available at that time", does that mean that Enigma is a black box we can't touch in a solution?

[WanWizard]

No, it means that the code is a lot more complex than you think. We're dealing with 15 years of undocumented spaghetti and a mix of Python and C(++).

 

Also, the architecture is realtime and event-driven, so it is not so easy to make a decision at point A to do something in point B.

 

I don't say it can't be done (I am by far not knowledgeable enough), I am just saying it might be more complex than you think, and that might influence your attempts to try and convince a developer to add this feature.

[WanWizard]

I just heard from my supplier that Unicable LNBs won't fit on my disc because they are too big and two won't fit next to another. The heads must receive Astra 19 and Astra 23.

 

That depends on the solution you pick.

 

Standard Unicable LNB's (with a combiner) are indeed wider, I don't know if smaller ones exist. If you go for a unicable switch, you can keep using your existing quad LNB's.

 

And I believe I've read about people using 4 positions in a Unicable setup, so it should be possible. Again, not my area of expertise, my Unicable setup is still in the planning stage.

[Pr2]

Since you know what you are recording it is up to you to properly setup your recording timers.

 

Just stop your recording before the news, record the news, start a new recording afterwards. What is the problem?

This will achieve what you want.

 

You didn't realize how complex your request is and how many troubles this will introduce, for a totally useless option.

 

It is before purchasing that you should think about your requirements and then setup your installation accordingly.