Default tuner question

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boogmeister1

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Default tuner question

#1

Post by boogmeister1 » Tue May 06, 2014 5:21 am

Can someone tell me how to tell which tuner is being used a the default tuner for Media Center?

I have both OTA and HDHomerun Prime cablecard. When watching OTA I can change the channel to the equivalent cablecard channel and it doesn't appear to actually change channels. Does media center default to OTA before using the cablecard tuner? I only ask because I don't have the greatest signal strength with OTA, but the cablecard channel looks good, but when I record a show it always seems to us the OTA to make the recording... even if I've specified using the cablecard tuner.

Is there a way I can change this?

I hope this makes sense. If not, I'll answer any additional questions as well as I can.

Thanks,
Eric

adam1991

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#2

Post by adam1991 » Tue May 06, 2014 9:57 am

The only place I know of to set anything like this is in channel guide setup, where for a given channel you can move the tuners around on the list and set the priority that way.

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holidayboy

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#3

Post by holidayboy » Tue May 06, 2014 1:25 pm

^ That's the place to do it.

Right click or press info on a channel number/name, click edit channel, click edit sources.

Tuners at the top are used for live TV, recordings use tuners in order from bottom to top.
Rob.

TGB.tv - the one stop shop for the more discerning Media Center user.

boogmeister1

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#4

Post by boogmeister1 » Tue May 06, 2014 3:10 pm

Thanks a ton, guys! That did it.

Eric

captain_video

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#5

Post by captain_video » Wed May 07, 2014 5:40 pm

holidayboy wrote:Tuners at the top are used for live TV, recordings use tuners in order from bottom to top.
Can you provide a source that verifies this? I always thought that the priority for both recording and watching live TV was the same.

captain_video

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#6

Post by captain_video » Thu May 22, 2014 12:48 pm

I've googled this to see if I could find the answer and so far all I came up with was one other reference to tuner priorities for live TV vs. recording that agrees with holidayboy's statement. Can anyone else confirm or deny that this is the way tuners are prioritized for use?

barnabas1969

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#7

Post by barnabas1969 » Thu May 22, 2014 1:22 pm

Yes, there is actually a registry key where this is defined. I'd have to go digging to find the registry key. I remember that there was a thread on the old TGB/WEC site (that was destroyed by Microsoft recently) discussing exactly this, and there were answers from one of the Microsoft employees who was on the Media Center development team at Microsoft. He confirmed this behavior, and recommended to NEVER change that registry key which controls the behavior.

As I and others here have discovered, the order is top-to-bottom for live TV, and bottom-to-top for recorded TV... but this is further broken down by tuner type. So, if you have both ATSC and CableCARD tuners setup for the same channel... and your ATSC channels are on top, then it will work like this:

Live TV will use the ATSC tuners first, from top to bottom. Recorded TV will use the ATSC tuners first, from bottom to top. If all of the ATSC tuners are busy, then it will repeat the same scenario on your CableCARD tuners.

werds

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#8

Post by werds » Thu May 22, 2014 3:26 pm

Cool, wasn't aware of half of this. I knew that ATSC was defaulted to for live and recording first but didn't know the top to bottom, bottom to top part. Thanks barnabas!

captain_video

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#9

Post by captain_video » Thu May 22, 2014 5:34 pm

Thanks for the clarification and confirmation. Tuner priority between ATSC and cablecard types aren't a problem for me since I set up specific channels to record from for any given program. I've got enough tuners of each type that I won't run into any conflicts (six ATSC and six cablecard with a HDHR Dual and Prime in reserve if they're needed). I usually configure the tuner priorities manually for each channel I record from so as to help with any conflict resolution. One of my Hauppauge 2250's is a bit weak on a couple of channels so I tend to put them at the bottom of the list in order of priority. It looks like I should be reversing the order for those channels.

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