I'm struggling to understand what the Stack Duplicates setting does.
Does it mean when I try to tune that channel it will try the different sources that has it in priority order?
Does it affect recording?
If I set to to ' By Channel Number' and I manually set the channels to the same channel number in the Sources 'Manage Lineup' will that have the same effect?
By guide:
If your sources have multiple channels with the same guide data, on the lowest numbered channel will display in the guide.
For example, many cable providers might broadcast the local ABC on channel 7 (which is where OTA users might expect the channel to be), but also list the same channel as 707. In this case, your guide would only show an entry for channel 7; channel 707 would not be displayed in the guide at all. If you attempted to tune channel 7, but there was an issue, the client would then attempt to tune 707.
By number:
If you have multiple sources that contain channels with the same numbers, then their entries will be consolidated into a single line in the guide. (Beware, if you have 2 different sources that have different content, but share a number, only one of those channels will appear in the guide.)
It should also be noted, this is only for the clients; the web UI does not do stacking. Also, how the DVR schedules passes is a slightly different process.
Thank you. So it only effects display in the guide and tuning when watching live? How does it determine 2 things have the same guide data? Is it comparing the actual listings?
Correct.
If their guide data is for the same station. When you view a source in the web UI, you can edit the listing to change which station a particular channel gets its guide data for.
No. If the DVR server tells the client that both channels' guide data is the same, then they are stacked.
Is that the pencil icon under Manage Lineups? I see that for my HDHR source but not the TVE source
How does this work for managing multiple connections (e.g. 2 devices viewing at same time, or DVR recording one channel while another is being watched) when you have multiple single-connection sources?
So say you have 3 sources, each of which is set up with a 1-stream limit, and the channel lineup and guide data is identical for each source. If user X starts watching channel 123 in one room via source 1, then later user Y wants to watch channel 123 - or some other channel - in another room, will the server know that source 1 cannot be used (1-stream limit) and cycle to source 2?
They will be able to watch if watching the Same Stream the 1 limit is only for the Source that means that another device cannot watch another Stream or Channel on that source but will move on to another source if available. ... but any amount can watch the Same Stream/Channel as Channels DVR will Share the stream/Channel.
Thanks. So if I understand correctly, even though there are multiple sources, if user X is watching stream/channel 123 and then user Y wants to watch channel 456 on another device, the server will not attempt to use the next (unused) source (and user Y will be prevented from viewing)?
In the case you describe above it will use the next unused source. Yeah my post was a bit confusing I edited it.
Thank you! Trying to analyze whether Channels will work for my use case, or if I need to try Emby or even some stream merging proxy to 'orchestrate' multiple 1-connection sources. It looks like Channels will work for this, especially since my sources will have identical channel lineups - so the stacking feature should prevent duplicate channel listings for the users.