EDIT 10/23/2017 - I marked my post below as the actual answer to the initial question of how to set the primary tuner. Which is the link on editing the database to change each tuners ID setting. Everything else talked about with recording issues really should have been subject of another thread.
– original post started here –
Sorry I am kinda doubling up on this post but I had not realized how old the other thread was when I replied, my bad.
So I had a Plex server running form OSX and have had a HD Homerun Prime on it since day one. I bought a Quatro, I know you are not supposed to mix tuners according to the FAQ page, however I was reading that one can map channels. So I set up the Quatro and then added to my current DVR. I only added 6 of about 30 channels available for those OTA channels. I mapped them to their cable equivalent from the EPG. This is working as expected, when recording fills up all the Prime’s tuners any additional recording needs, using those mapped channels, go to the Quatro. Of course if it has available tuners itself. However I am hoping to reverse the devices in Plex making the Quatro the first device choice when the channels match and then the Prime as secondary.
Possible?
I’ve tried deleting the DVR and starting a new one with the Quatro first and then adding the Prime and still it always goes to the Prime first.
I did also look into the thread here about using curl to make two DVR’s manually which I did this successfully and this would be optimal imho since they both then have their own EPG and no channel mapping is needed.
However the DVR containing just the Quatro is unable to pick the OTA channels. Meaning if I pick a show from the Program Guide (the one the Quatro is using), then select a show from a supported channel it can tune, I can see the show should be on OTA 2.1 or whatever channel
but if I go to Modify Recording to force the channel for 2.1 for instance the only choices are those of the DVR the Prime is in.
Leaving it on “Any” once again allows the scheduled recording to use the Prime if it finds the show there on any channel.
I’m looking for any insight or suggestions at this point. I hate to start my Plex server over completely but I would consider it if users here know for sure that would fix this?
Thanks much!
LT
OK, finally found a thread here on “tuner priority”, apparently finding anything using the search on this forum is difficult. I only found this thread through searches from Google.
I now have my new Quatro as the primary base don it’s ID number from the database and the Prime is secondary.
Originally I had unchecked/disabled the channels 002 through 012, local networks on my Charter service, on the Prime tuner.
Then mapped the Quatro tuner’s OTA channels to use those stations (2.1 mapped to 002 and so on). The hope was that if I set recording then to only use channel 002 for instance that would have it skip over the Prime and record on the Quatro. This was not occurring however and the recording would simply fail. With the same config on both tuners channels but having the Quatro as the primary tuner source it does skip to the Prime when needed.
I assume it didn’t work previously since the Prime had those channels (002 through 012) “disabled”. I guess Plex saw that and simply stopped in it’s tracks and didn’t bother to continue to the second tuner and see if they were enabled there? Now with the Quatro being first, it doesn’t have all the channels disabled, they simply don’t exist in it’s channel config. Plex now continues to the next tuner device without issue. Does this sound like a reasonable explanation of what happens?
ok, well today I am lost once again. After a number of successful tests yesterday with setting recordings, version 1.6.1.3722 (because newer versions get “stuck” recording), I wake up to more tests I was leaving overnight that have failed. Some worked and some did not. Those that failed actually appear to be on the same two channels, both channels are OTA on the Quatro and have 100% signal, the failure simply states
Oct 13, 2017 19:19:42.795 [0x700000323000] DEBUG - MediaGrabber: Allocated a tuner (3 left)
Oct 13, 2017 19:19:42.798 [0x700000323000] DEBUG - HTTP requesting GET http://192.168.10.112:5004/auto/v4.1?duration=2418
Oct 13, 2017 19:19:47.817 [0x700000323000] DEBUG - HTTP 503 response from GET http://192.168.10.112:5004/auto/v4.1?duration=2418
Oct 13, 2017 19:19:47.817 [0x700000323000] DEBUG - MediaRecorder: Recording completed with HTTP status 503
Oct 13, 2017 19:19:47.818 [0x700000323000] DEBUG - MediaGrabber: Operation for E3 - Roulette Wheel & Wire completed with status 5 (The recording was aborted)
Oct 13, 2017 19:19:47.818 [0x700000323000] DEBUG - MediaGrabber: Freed a tuner (now 4 available)
Almost like it could not tune these couple channels but I certainly can manually, with other apps, but only here and there with Plex. I did try the latest Plex version too from a different machine and it behaves the same way so I don’t believe the issue is due to using this older version.
Again I understand the FAQ states you are not supposed to mix OTA and cable tuners, but why then does Plex provide channel mapping ability? Seems counter productive if this is what is causing this flukey recording issues.
For now I have removed the Quato altogether and will hope the single Prime device doesn’t have failure recordings like it does when both are in the mix. 
The error 503 generally indicates that the device refused the connection request, typically because the device did not have a tuner available to tune to the channel for Plex recording. Are you using the device for viewing Live TV or DVR in other applications? I ask because you mention being able to tune to channels in other apps. Plex assumes that it has exclusive access to tuner devices. It keeps track of which tuners it has requested on each device. So if it has requested 2 tuners on the Quato device and it has 4 tuners there are still 2 tuners available as far as Plex knows. Plex will try to use the Quato for another recording. If the other 2 tuners are in use by other applications Plex will get the 503 error rejection from the Quato because the Quato has all 4 tuners in use, 2 by Plex and 2 by some other application. But Plex believes there are still 2 free tuners.
As far as mixing device types in Plex you should be fine as long as the channels received OTA are the same channels received by cable. I have a Prime connected to cable, along with 2 Connects, an Extend, and a Dual all connected to OTA antenna. My DVR is setup as OTA, the local channels broadcast by cable company are on the same channels as the OTA so 10.1 local OTA NBC is on channel 10.1 on cable system. I am able to record on all of the devices because the channel mappings are the same.
Only when I was testing the channel did I run Live TV but I had stopped well prior to any Plex scheduled recordings. Would just having the HDHomerun HTTP page open to the device itself make Plex think the tuner is in use? It would not have been viewing any channels just the Tuner Status page which showed none in use before I left to let the schedule run.
As to the OTA and cable channels the physical numbers are different. On cable I have 002, 004, 005, 011. On OTA there is 2.1, 4.1, 5.1, 11.1 respectively. I thought the whole channel mapping feature was specifically for this purpose? I am setup for cable EPG so the Prime is good. Then on the Quatro I mapped all the OTA “decimal” channels to their cable counter parts.
Thanks for the reply too. Any insights into this are helpful.
There was another thread where the discussion was that the spouse of a user was watching shows within Plex Live TV and shut off the TV without actually ending the show viewing I believe. From what I recall that apparently kept one of the tuners open and caused a recording to fail because the tuner device refused the 2nd or 3rd recording. Having the tuner status page open should not keep a tuner active unless the application viewing the channel was left open which apparently was not since the tuner status showed no active tuners. For a little more information about how Plex records it is using standard web protocols to establish a client (Plex) connection to a server (HDHR). It issues a standard http request to the server (HDHR) for example the error you showed above, the request was (http://192.168.10.112:5004/auto/v4.1?duration=2418). Server 192.168.10.112 stream station v4.1 for 2,418 seconds. The server then rejected the request (503 error) from the client (Plex).
The channel mapping should work correctly. Do you have full logs from earlier when you pasted the partial snips?
Have you tested the mappings. For example, now that you have the Quatro first can you record a show on channel 2.1 and the Quatro be utilized. Can you record a cable channel, guessing at a number her but channel 26 and the recording start using the Prime device? Curious if the setup you have now works correctly for the cable and OTA.
At the moment since I did fall back to v.1.6.1 (we cannot do Live TV via Plex on this version best I can tell?). Users in my home would all be watching from Plex for Roku. I don’t see a Live TV option there?
I did test the mappings and it seems if I force any of the 6 OTA channels (again 2.1 mapped to 002 and such) and there is a free tuner on the Quatro available it will use it first. Otherwise I do have those 002 channels now enabled on the Prime again so it can “fail over” to it should the Quatro be full.
Last night I removed the Quatro from the DVR in Plex and added it back. This time during the setup however I chose “Cable” as the type instead of “Antenna”. I was still presented with the OTA channels and able to map them to their cable counterparts just as before. I don’t know if this made any difference but so far on a session of recording six shows at once and also seven shows at once nothing has failed and everything looked really good. I plan to test a bit more today setting up some scheduled recordings and some scheduled while using a tuner to see if it will fail again. Does Plex do something different with tuners when they are picked as “Cable” or “Antenna”? or, Is this just a selection because the Homerun device can do both?
Once again I appreciate all your insights and ideas on the issue so far. Oh and I think I do still have that log detail so I can post more of it if needed later. What log lines would I be looking for to see other tuners in use, similar to when it records like a above? Just those HTTP GET requests to the device?
If you went back to 1.6.1 there will be no Live TV option in Plex unless you use a Channel app installed in Plex. Live TV was released with 1.7.2.
The logs to review for recordings are the Plex Media Server logs. Unfortunately to see what is happening with all recordings it will be a manual process to find each recording. Perhaps search for the IP Addeess of each of your devices. Plex also does not really state which tuner on a device is being utilized, actually no way for it to know as far as I can tell since it just makes a server request to the device for a stream of a channel, the device determines which actual tuner it will use.
Hey Johnm_ColaSC, I was holding off at the moment on posting any new info as it is working currently. So far four different recording sessions with 6 or 7 total tuners in use and everything worked perfect each time. The Quatro was always chosen as the primary tuner as I hoped. It rolled over to the Prime only when the Quatro did not have a free tuner or when the channel being used was not available on the Quatro.
I am only wondering if the final fix here was picking “Cable” on both tuners? Again previously I was picking “Cable” on the Prime and “Antenna” for the Quatro. Those would be proper choices for each of course. Since the EPG is based on the Prime I decided this last test setup to pick “Cable” on the Quatro as well. What I can’t find is anything the explains what the difference is to Plex? or is there any?
Otherwise I’ve made no other changes I can think of. So if not the “cable” selection on the new tuner I suppose it could mean my four test runs were flukes and it will eventually fail again at some point on recordings. I’ll try and post back this weekend after I see how the mid-week recordings go which is the bulk of what we do. crossing my fingers.
Well one week later and not a single failed recording on version 1.6.1. This included numerous test recordings of 5 or more at the same time plus all my families normal recording scheduled items. I watched each session manually through the 19th this month. Every single scheduled item went to the expected tuner based on channels I was forcing. I think setting the Quatro as a “Cable” tuner was the final nail to fix it but still not 100% sure as I again don’t really know if Plex treats the two settings any different internally?
Thanks much for the responses johnm_ColaSC
