[pvrusb2] HVR-1950 encoder appears to be stuck error messages

[James Miller]

On Wed, 1 Apr 2015, Roger wrote:

> I merrily and simply use a small self-created script for tuning and recording
> called record-dvb.sh.  (It's file location URL is linked within a Gentoo Wiki
> page.)  For scheduling recordings, I easily call the script via crontab.  The
> script has been reliable for me for many years.
>
> The other thing you have to watch for when recording, MPlayer and MythTV tend
> to unknowingly re-encode the data streamed from the pvrusb2 device (or any DVB
> device file) into it's own format of choice.  Hence, you're not recording a
> vanilla stream from the device and likely unknowingly degrading the video and
> audio quality.  Most do not seem to mind this loss versus having all the
> features of MythTV, etc.  (ie.  The only tasks required for recording from the
> DVB device, first lock the tuner to a channel, and then simply use "cat
> /dev/dvb/adapter0/dvr0 > file.mpg".)

I've run across that script before, Roger, and I have to admit that I've 
found that approach very appealing. I would very much welcome getting away 
from the bloat of MythTV. There would be some minor drawbacks for me 
personally--things such having to schedule all episodes of some series 
individually rather than as a group. Though I personally could live with 
such minor inconveniences, the real barrier for me to adopting the DVR 
approach you've taken is the fact that I am not, and do not want to be, 
the sole DVR scheduler in my household. You see, my wife would never be 
able to manage the more manual/technical method you reference for 
scheduling recordings. On the other hand, she's become quite adept at, and 
is now very attached to, scheduling recordings through Mythweb. Were I to 
adopt an approach such as yours, the burden of scheduling all recordings, 
I am sure, would fall on me.

That said, there might be ways of making your method more 
user-friendly--perhaps even friendly enough for more techno-phobic folks 
like my wife. For example, perhaps, rather than scheduling cron jobs, the 
remind program, running in daemon mode, could be utilized. It does have a 
frontend (tkremind), and calendar appointments can be made to trigger 
events like executing scripts. How an interactive interface like tkremind 
could be made available across the network so that someone could enter 
"appointments" (recording time slots) from a remote machine, I have no 
idea. Then there would be the issue of somehow matching entries entered 
there to a set of recording scripts. Then, you start getting partway 
toward a more full-fledged solution like MythTV. Unfortunately my modest 
technical abilities do not allow me to do much more than speculate that 
some such alternate arrangement might be made to work; the actual 
execution of it, if it would even be possible and/or more desirable, 
remain beyond my reach. Which is why I remain a user of MythTV :(