Should EPG grabbing take over one of my tuners?

Backin69

Hi all,

Just a quick one. Should EPG grabbing take over one of my tuners?

I only have 4 muxes locally, so the plan was to use 4 tuners to ensure that all channels are available at all times.

The issue with my plan is that I've noticed while testing with only 2 sticks, if one is doing an EPG grab, the muxes available to it are unavailable.

I ask about this, as if I want 100% uptime, it means I need to order another stick.

Thanks for reading!

davep

From the online help for Configuration -> DVB Inputs -> TV Adapters:

"Free subscription weight : If the subscription weight for the input is below the specified threshold, the tuner is handled as free (according the priority settings). Otherwise, the next tuner (without any subscriptions) is used. Set this value to 10, if you are willing to override scan and epggrab subscriptions."

From this it seems that if Free subscription weight is set to 10, Tvheadend should abandon an epggrab if the tuner is needed for something else.

davep

I've now checked and it seems that the setting of "Free subscription weight" doesn't work as described. Regardless of setting (I tried 0 and 10), if I try to stream or record a channel while the epg grabber is running the grabber stops and the tuner is set to my channel. When the stream or recording ends the epg grabber carries on.

Backin69

davep

Hey Dave!

Thanks for doing this testing for me. It's not that I'm lazy, it's more that I find TVH a bit confusing at the minute, so I wouldn't be certain of the behavior I'm seeing, so wanted to confirm.

OK. So I've possible set something that's causing the EPG grab to take over the tuner. Otherwise, it should only use the tuner if it's free. So I should be able to just use 4 tuners in total. (once I figure out what I've configured wrong)

That's good to know. However, I'm still wondering if it's worth it to grab a fifth stick (I've a good price on eBay at the moment) so that their can never be issues. Like Just use that stick solely for EPG grabs...