Padding and Series Schedules

[chriscalga]

I'm having a bit of a problem with my Humax. I have two series scheduled in which the episodes of each series play sequentially, on the same channel. The Humax does not pad the first recording, so, when it inevitably runs overtime, the end of that show ends up on the beginning of the next recording. Add to that the Humax's practice of putting series recordings into their own folder and it can be a bit of a nightmare finding where the missing end of a recording is stored.
Ideally, it would be possible to view all recordings in a single list, in the order in which they were recorded. Alternatively, the Humax should be able to pad the first show, while separately recording the second. I can see no reason why that wouldn't be possible, given that only one tuner would be necessary to make the two recordings. I have a Foxtel IQ and a Videomate tuner card which do exactly that.
Any comments?

[prl]

This is a common problem on PVRs. I had it on my Topfield 7000 when I had one, and Beyonwiz PVRs are similar, and though their padding priority setting gives you some control over the point at which it switches from one recording to the next on the same service, you still almost always get a bit of one program in the wrong recording. Both the Topfield and the Beyonwizes allow you to play recordings one after the other, but on both you get a short (~1sec) gap in the program where the switchover occurs. The more recent 4-recordings-at-a-time Topfields may handle this better.

I don't know whether the Humax allows the selection of a sequence of recordings to play in one go.

In theory, the broadcast Now/Next information should be able to trigger the correct switchover from one program to another, but the accuracy of the broadcast information there seems not to be all that good (fairly long discussion on DTV forum), either.

Anyway, there's not much that IceTV could do to help apart from allowing sequential recordings on the same service to be rolled into a single timer (this has been suggested a number of times on the forum). Then there are problems with naming the recording. The only real solution is for broadcasters to actually stick to their schedules, and allow some slack between the end of one program and the start of the next (e.g. ad break, station promo). But I don't see that happening real soon.

ABC and SBS do tend to be a bit better at sticking to their schedules, and they do have breaks between shows for promos, ads (SBS) and news updates, so the problem tends to be bigger on commercial services.

The largest program overrun I've ever seen was a Big Brother final that went 50min+ over time. I only know because I wanted to watch whatever followed it. Honest

[chriscalga]

Thanks for the reply Peter. As to rolling sequential recordings into one timer, I can always schedule just the first recording, then manually edit the schedule to lengthen it to include the second show, but that's a bit of a hack. I used to do it on my old Topfield 5000, but I was hoping for something a bit more elegant on my shiny new Humax.

[prl]

The problem with editing the timers is that (at least on Beyonwiz), you have to edit each occurrence of the timer (e.g. edit each week's timer for weekly shows, daily for daily shows), and you lose IceTV's feature of tracking schedule changes for those programs. The "right" place for combining the timers would be on IceTV (and definitely as an optional feature, as I'm not sure whether I'd use it if it was available).

[nigelb]

I have a slightly different padding issue. I recently bought a HUMAX HDR-7500T and set it up with my IceTV account. It's generally working fine, but padding isn't working properly. I've set the padding to 10mins after each recording, but it doesn't seem to be working i.e. most scheduled programs from Ice are not getting 10mins added to them.

The HUMAX is accessing and Ice by wi-fi via my home network and the firmware version is 1.04.00.

Any ideas?

[prl]

It's going to be a Humax issue, because IceTV doesn't add padding for PVRs that have their own padding feature.

In some circumstances, the limitations of the number of tuners and the maximum number of simultaneous recordings may prevent the PVR from adding padding to some recordings in a set of consecutive (or near-consecutive) recordings.

10 minutes is probably insufficient padding. Is that the Humax maximum? I have 25 mins set (on Beyonwizes).

[chriscalga]

I guess you realise that if you record two successive programs on the same channel, the first program doesn't get padded.  That's why it's frustrating when the two programs get put in different folders - you have to remember where the end of the first program has been stashed. Other than that, I've had no problem getting the Humax to pad all programs by 20 minutes.

[prl]

I wasn't referring to the problem of a program being split when two consecutive programs are recorded on the same service. I was referring to the fact that padding can't be added at all, and the end of the program is likely to be lost if, for example, two recordings in the same time slot are followed by one or more recordings in the subsequent time slot. E.g. 1900-2000 ABC1 and Nine, followed by 2000-2100 Seven, then one of either the ABC1 or Nine recordings won't (and can't) be padded. This is an inherent limitation, and not a Humax bug. Padding can't be recorded in other similar situations.

[chriscalga]

I was replying to Nigel's post Peter. I know you are aware of the limitations of the PVR's.