On GUI restart, the following happens to IceTV and existing timers:
- Existing timers are read from the timer file. When the timers are created from the file, the name of the program in their timeslot is looked up in the EPG if the timer has no name in the timer file.
- IceTV updates the EPG (so if the PVR has been off for a while, the previous name updates will have been on a stale copy of the EPG.
- IceTV updates the timers (only changed or new timers should be sent). Changed timers are created as a new timer. IceTV sends the timer name in the timer data (and for timers with blank names, this appears to be missing or empty). The timer name in the IceTV timer data is used to create a timer, but if it's missing or empty, the same EPG lookup as when the timer list is read should take place when the timer is created.
That process should be the same whether the just GUI is restarted, or whether the GUI is restarted because of a reboot/restart.
If the PVR has been off for a while, then when it restarts, the name lookups in the timer list load won't have the most recent copy of the EPG, so doing another GUI restart may fill in some timers that the reboot didn't fill in.
If the PVR doesn't shut down (or have a GUI restart), the only parts of the process that can fill in missing timer names is the fetch of IceTV timer updates, and then only if there's another change in the timer (e.g. timeslot change) to trigger the IceTV update.
Disabling and then re-enabling IceTV may also help fill in timer names without having to restart the GUI, because that should resend all IceTV timers.
This problem would seem most likely to happen on timers that are set at times later than the end of the EPG data for the channel. Then if the timer is missing its name in the IceTV timer data, there's no way it can find its name from the EPG, because that data hasn't yet been sent. I think that at the moment only SBS timers are sent in advance of the EPG data, though in the past, I'm fairly sure that ABC ones were, too. I think that IceTV v1 used to have agreements with ABC and SBS to use their EPGs as-is. I don't know whether that's the case with the current IceTV.
Regular restarts seem to protect against this problem. We shut down our IceTV-enabled T4 every night, and we simply don't see this problem at all. Obviously there's a bug to be fixed here, but perhaps if you shut down your devices regularly, the problem will be worked around.
I hope the description makes it clear why I think that this is basically an IceTV server problem, though I wouldn't discount contributory misbehaviour from the T series Beyonwizes.
