[vdr] Intelligent management of simulcast DVB-S2 / DVB-T channels

[Dominic Evans]

I remember seeing patches for marking channels as identical in terms of EPG
(so e.g., a DVB-S version of the channel can automatically share the EPG
entries from the DVB-T version), but has anyone worked on a patch for
identifying simulcasting channels, or even had some preliminary design
thoughts for how one could be implemented?

I can imagine at least the following two use cases:

1) When watching live TV, channel '1' automatically selects the 'best'
available version of 'BBC One London' depending on available tuners - e.g.,
rotating through BBC One HD (DVB-S2), BBC One (DVB-T2), BBC One (DVB-S) and
BBC One London (DVB-T). This is much more intuitive than having to
manually find an available broadcast of the channel.

2) For recordings, if a timer needs to start a recording on 'BBC One
London', depending on its priority and a 'required quality' attribute it
will similarly locate a tuner to make the recording with. Assuming it needs
the DVB-S2 tuner for HD, if someone with lower priority is currently
watching live TV on BBC One HD via DVB-S2 (and only one HD tuner is
available) then they will be transparently switched down to the next
available tuner quality.

[Magnus Hörlin]

On 02/23/2012 04:50 PM, Dominic Evans wrote:
> I remember seeing patches for marking channels as identical in terms
> of EPG (so e.g., a DVB-S version of the channel can automatically
> share the EPG entries from the DVB-T version), but has anyone worked
> on a patch for identifying simulcasting channels, or even had some
> preliminary design thoughts for how one could be implemented?
>
> I can imagine at least the following two use cases:
>
> 1) When watching live TV, channel '1' automatically selects the 'best'
> available version of 'BBC One London' depending on available tuners -
> e.g., rotating through BBC One HD (DVB-S2), BBC One (DVB-T2), BBC One
> (DVB-S) and BBC One London (DVB-T). This is much more intuitive than
> having to manually find an available broadcast of the channel.
>
> 2) For recordings, if a timer needs to start a recording on 'BBC One
> London', depending on its priority and a 'required quality' attribute
> it will similarly locate a tuner to make the recording with. Assuming
> it needs the DVB-S2 tuner for HD, if someone with lower priority is
> currently watching live TV on BBC One HD via DVB-S2 (and only one HD
> tuner is available) then they will be transparently switched down to
> the next available tuner quality.
>
Hi.
This is an interesting topic and I have had exactly the same ideas. But
I think this violates Klaus's "Keep it simple" philosophy and (as usual)
I tend to agree with him.
/Magnus H

[Udo Richter]

Am 23.02.2012 19:36, schrieb Magnus Hörlin:
> This is an interesting topic and I have had exactly the same ideas. But
> I think this violates Klaus's "Keep it simple" philosophy and (as usual)
> I tend to agree with him.

If you've ever read the algorithm that picks the best possible device
for a recording, you'd probably agreed that we're already way too far
from keeping it simple. These rules are already way too complex. Adding
the complexity of choosing from different quality sources and
up/downgrading other receivers would probably push this a lot further
towards insanity.

Cheers,

Udo

[s***@no-log.org]

Udo Richter <***@gmx.de> writes:

> Am 23.02.2012 19:36, schrieb Magnus Hörlin:
>> This is an interesting topic and I have had exactly the same ideas. But
>> I think this violates Klaus's "Keep it simple" philosophy and (as usual)
>> I tend to agree with him.
>
> If you've ever read the algorithm that picks the best possible device
> for a recording, you'd probably agreed that we're already way too far
> from keeping it simple. These rules are already way too complex. Adding
> the complexity of choosing from different quality sources and
> up/downgrading other receivers would probably push this a lot further
> towards insanity.

Even without the primarylimit it's still deadly complex. The very
clever programming syntax used for the device selection makes it very
difficult to understand and also to debug.

I have an old idea in my head but I've never taken the time to do so,
it's also quite erratic: disable channel and device management and
allow an external program to decide how to deal with devices and
channels.
I wouldn't want to start from scratch and work around dvbstreamer,
vdr and its plugins are wonderful ! I love it ! (it's just the device
and channel management that are too limited imho)

I'm not really into C++, it might already be possible to let plugins
take over the channel and device management but i doubt it.

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