Bug: If one tuner rejects playback, next one not tried, playback fails

[bilditup1]

Server Version#: latest beta
Player Version#: all
Tuner Make/Model: HDHR3-CC (x2)
Using XMLTV?: yes
Channel number/Name: not applicable

I have two SiliconDust HDHR3-CC boxes, each with three tuners. Consider the following scenario: Plex is streaming one channel from one of the tuner-boxes, another app (in my case, WMC) streaming the other two from the same. To PMS, presumably, there should be another two tuners open on the same tuner-box it already chose, but of course, there aren’t. When the HD HomeRun it rejects Plex’s request to tune, as it doesn’t have any available tuners for it (regardless of what Plex thinks it has), PMS simply gives up, and doesn’t even try the second HD HomeRun, all of whose tuners are available. (I checked the logs of each tuner; the second one is never hit.)
This is obviously suboptimal. Plex should not assume exclusive access to either the tuner hardware in question or its individual tuners, but even if it did, there is no reason for it not to hit up the next available box before summarily giving up.

[pl_5309]

The reason Plex assumes exclusive access is that not all tuners support an api to keep the program informed on what is in use, the HDHR3 being one of them.

[bilditup1]

Ok. But even given that’s the case, that doesn’t explain why it doesn’t try the next available tuner box once its preferred one rejects its requests. And even after summarily returning a failure message without checking the next box, on subsequent attempts to select a channel, it constantly tries to get one from its preferred tuner regardless of the fact that it had already rejected Plex’s requests to tune multiple times in a row. It would be nice if some heuristic could be implemented such that whatever the preferred box is, it gets demoted after rejecting a tune request, and the next available one is then tried, instead of entirely ignored.