I have just started using IceTV and I am having real trouble avoiding recording conflicts with you Interactive TV Guide.
Firstly, a grid view (as a appears on the PVR or say http://yourtv.com.au) would solve most of my probs.
Even without a grid view, if I program 3 simultaneous records, why can't the TV Guide warn me immediately and prompt me to resolve ? As it stands at the moment, I have to wait up to half an hour to hear back from the PVR if there are conflicts, and even then, most of the time it doesn't mark them accurately as conflicts, it just leaves them as Queued and nothing gets sceduled.
Unless Interactive becomes more user-friendly I really can see it being of much use to me :(.
well we hope that grid view has been included in the recent up date of ice-tv, but i really begin now to think that it has not. after all the day is almost half over and the only thing i've really seen in the update is that i have to re-set all of my series programs for some reason, but really see no major improvment elsewhere.
Quote from: strangr on July 29, 2009, 11:11:11 AM
well we hope that grid view has been included in the recent up date of ice-tv, but i really begin now to think that it has not. after all the day is almost half over and the only thing i've really seen in the update is that i have to re-set all of my series programs for some reason, but really see no major improvment elsewhere.
The HD/SD options for Series Recordings is a major update!!
there was an option like that before, i could set prefer HD or Prefer SD, so why is it a major update.
The Important thing for ICETV is to make the view of the guide easy for users to see what they are recording and a list view just does not cut it, you need a landscape grid view by timeslot not a running minute. similar to that of yourtv.com.au.
you almost got so close, by allowing us to view just one channel, how about letting us put another channel side by side, so close to a grid view.
Quote from: strangr on July 29, 2009, 11:30:25 AM
there was an option like that before, i could set prefer HD or Prefer SD, so why is it a major update.
You could do it for Keyword recordings, the major update to Series Recordings was released this morning.
Did you read the last paragraph of the email you received? Sounds promising too me.
In terms of the new features that will be made available as of tomorrow via the IceTV Interactive website, mini mobile phone site (m.icetv.com.au), IceTV iPhone app & IceTV (Dashboard) Widget… this is only the tip of the ice-berg!
Don’t panic… more information will follow shortly… so stay tuned!
well i hope a grid view is coming soon. It's the clincher for me, it just how a tv guide should look, it is how it has always looked. So lets hope that the final paragrah in the email does mean something because so many companies say that just to keep suspense when nothing is really coming. Lets hope ICETV is different, and soon follows the masses.
Actually there is merit in having the TV guide like it is. It is easy to see exactly what is on at the same time as the shows are all grouped together. IceTV is doing a great job and shouldn't be given ultimatums. The service they provide is brilliant and far and away better than FTA guides and manually setting timers.
I admit there are some issues and quirks but once you get used to them you work around them. It is worth it! Unlike most companies today they really do value customer service and try and help any one with a problem.
Quote from: strangr on July 29, 2009, 11:52:38 AM
It's the clincher for me, it just how a tv guide should look, it is how it has always looked.
That doesn't mean that the way it has always been is right. I dare say that grid TV guides were invented for the purpose of putting them in newspapers! Times change. I agree that a gridded guide can be handy but so is the current format.
I've yet to see a grid EPG/online guide that was anything like as easy to read as a printed guide. The printed guide has it all over a screen-based guide on resolution (pixels/cm) and total number of pixels, and this affects how much information can easily be made available in a single glance over the guide.
Quote from: A_G on July 29, 2009, 12:28:54 PM
That doesn't mean that the way it has always been is right. I dare say that grid TV guides were invented for the purpose of putting them in newspapers! Times change. I agree that a gridded guide can be handy but so is the current format.
And thats the point i raise, grid style, or list style with all networks side by side forming a grid or something relevant to a grid is the way the tv guide has always been presented to them, so to attract new customers would you not want to make the guide so much more like what they are used to in appearance. Thats why most people stick with Windows OS because the GUI is similar to what they've always known.
It's the same with TV guides, i always buy the sunday herald sun (melb) because their TV guide is far better and easier to read then the Age's Version, and this is the way people will view the guide. They look at the list view and it looks nothing like they are used to.
My two cents worth.
I would love to have a grid guide. Like the one on the about page, (media centre isn't it?) http://www.icetv.com.au/about/
I've had a few incidents lately where I was unaware I had clashes and things didn't record properly. With a grid layout I wouldn't need a notepad and pen, a clock and a calculator to work out the clashes by hand </exaggeration :) >
Quote from: grahford on July 29, 2009, 01:45:09 PM
With a grid layout I wouldn't need a notepad and pen, a clock and a calculator to work out the clashes by hand </exaggeration :) >
Now that you mention it, that kind of thing would be handy, I have a similar experience. I don't mind the way they group the timeslots, but having them side by side rather than vertically aligned like in the Widget and the web makes it difficult to see if the red dots are even close to each other. Would also be handy if you could setup a "number of tuners" preference at ICE so that it doesn't simply schedule 3 or 4 things at once and leave it up to your PVR to fight it out amongst which ones it chooses to implement.
Quote from: tonymy01 on July 29, 2009, 02:06:13 PM
...Would also be handy if you could setup a "number of tuners" preference at ICE so that it doesn't simply schedule 3 or 4 things at once and leave it up to your PVR to fight it out amongst which ones it chooses to implement.
That would need a fairly sophisticated model of the recorder's tuner allocation algorithm, including a model of padding, particularly the "hard" "soft padding" priorities in the Beyonwiz like pre- and post-padding priority, which can reserve a timer unconditionally outside of the scheduled time slot for a program. IceTV would also need to know all the padding settings to make this work. The Beyonwiz is also known for the, let's say, quirky nature of its tuner allocation algorithm in some firmware versions.
Quote from: prl on July 29, 2009, 02:12:31 PM
Quote from: tonymy01 on July 29, 2009, 02:06:13 PM
...Would also be handy if you could setup a "number of tuners" preference at ICE so that it doesn't simply schedule 3 or 4 things at once and leave it up to your PVR to fight it out amongst which ones it chooses to implement.
That would need a fairly sophisticated model of the recorder's tuner allocation algorithm, including a model of padding, particularly the "hard" "soft padding" priorities in the Beyonwiz like pre- and post-padding priority, which can reserve a timer unconditionally outside of the scheduled time slot for a program. IceTV would also need to know all the padding settings to make this work. The Beyonwiz is also known for the, let's say, quirky nature of its tuner allocation algorithm in some firmware versions.
prl
I'm curious how the BW latest firmware (I'm not using it due to H1 issue) now handles tuner allocation. Have they improved the situation?
Quote from: prl on July 29, 2009, 02:12:31 PM
That would need a fairly sophisticated model of the recorder's tuner allocation algorithm, including a model of padding, particularly the "hard" "soft padding" priorities in the Beyonwiz like pre- and post-padding priority, which can reserve a timer unconditionally outside of the scheduled time slot for a program. IceTV would also need to know all the padding settings to make this work. The Beyonwiz is also known for the, let's say, quirky nature of its tuner allocation algorithm in some firmware versions.
I would just like to say to it, "I have 2 tuners. Please let me know if I've accidentally set 3 shows to record at the same time. Don't worry about padding, just let me know if the scheduled start and end times overlap. I'll work it out by hand if I'm aware of a possible issue. An email alert would be great. Ta."
Quote from: grahford on July 29, 2009, 02:18:35 PM
I would just like to say to it, "I have 2 tuners. Please let me know if I've accidentally set 3 shows to record at the same time. Don't worry about padding, just let me know if the scheduled start and end times overlap. I'll work it out by hand if I'm aware of a possible issue. An email alert would be great. Ta."
Now that I've said that, it might be useful to also say "I normally pad the end of a show by 30 minutes. So if you could just shoot me a line if it looks like that could cause an overlap that would be super. Don't do anything, just let me know."
Yep, exactly. It doesn't have to get too complicated, simply have a priority scheme from 1 to 10 for your shows, and make sure if you have 2 tuners setup in ICE, to have the higher priorities scheduled to the 2 slots over the low priorities, hopefully with a different colour icon and report/email/rss feed to indicate the others weren't scheduled due to lower priority.
The PVR soft padding should not come into the equation, as that padding is designed (depending on the priority that was set) to not interfere with normal timer creation. Of course there will always be situations where you miss out on the end few minutes of a show with padding with:
showX
showY
.........showZ
But that is not something ICE needs to be concerned with. If the Wiz has soft padding priority of none, then one of X or Y will be truncated to the exact end of the timeslot that ICE said it would be (and the beginning of Z similarly).
Regards
Quote from: Trial_Master on July 29, 2009, 02:16:47 PM
...
prl
I'm curious how the BW latest firmware (I'm not using it due to H1 issue) now handles tuner allocation. Have they improved the situation?
There aren't any tuner resolution bugs for "Once" timers listed in the bug list for 01.05.301. That's not to say that it's working perfectly and occasional comments that could be tuner allocation bugs do pop up. There are some problems with false conflicts between "Weekly on specified days" timers (say, every Tues and Sat, as The Bill used to be scheduled) and other timers (bug B2(a) in the general bug & wishes list for 01.05.301 (http://www.beyonwiz.com.au/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=4024)). As far as I know, the H1-specific tuner allocation bugs have not been fixed (bug 1(a) in the DP-H1 bug & wishes list for 01.05.301 (http://www.beyonwiz.com.au/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?p=58096#58096)).
Quote from: grahford on July 29, 2009, 02:18:35 PM
Quote from: prl on July 29, 2009, 02:12:31 PM
That would need a fairly sophisticated model of the recorder's tuner allocation algorithm, including a model of padding, particularly the "hard" "soft padding" priorities in the Beyonwiz like pre- and post-padding priority, which can reserve a timer unconditionally outside of the scheduled time slot for a program. IceTV would also need to know all the padding settings to make this work. The Beyonwiz is also known for the, let's say, quirky nature of its tuner allocation algorithm in some firmware versions.
I would just like to say to it, "I have 2 tuners. Please let me know if I've accidentally set 3 shows to record at the same time. Don't worry about padding, just let me know if the scheduled start and end times overlap. I'll work it out by hand if I'm aware of a possible issue. An email alert would be great. Ta."
The history of problems with the Beyonwiz having timer conflicts when there isn't any such conflict suggests that the problem may be less simple than it first appears. Remember that even though IceTV only ever sets Once timers, any conflict detection will need to deal with all timer types on the recorder, because users can also set timers there.
Quote from: tonymy01 on July 29, 2009, 02:52:42 PM
...
The PVR soft padding should not come into the equation, as that padding is designed (depending on the priority that was set) to not interfere with normal timer creation. Of course there will always be situations where you miss out on the end few minutes of a show with padding with:
...
But the "hard" settings (pre- and post-priority) of Beyonwiz padding can and do interfere what the timers actually do. Post-padding with post-padding priority and reasonable time settings (15-30min) could easily completely prevent the recording of a short adjacent timer without there being any "conflict" between the timers with padding ignored.
Quote from: prl on July 29, 2009, 03:01:25 PM
Remember that even though IceTV only ever sets Once timers, any conflict detection will need to deal with all timer types on the recorder, because users can also set timers there.
Not something I care about. I only use icetv to handle my programming. I would be happy if icetv kept track of any clashes in the timers that I've entered directly through it. I don't expect it to reach into my device and look for additional timers.
Quote from: grahford on July 29, 2009, 03:21:39 PM
Quote from: prl on July 29, 2009, 03:01:25 PM
Remember that even though IceTV only ever sets Once timers, any conflict detection will need to deal with all timer types on the recorder, because users can also set timers there.
Not something I care about. I only use icetv to handle my programming. I would be happy if icetv kept track of any clashes in the timers that I've entered directly through it. I don't expect it to reach into my device and look for additional timers.
Maybe, but IceTV wants to cater to all its users, including those like me who do have manual timers. It already examines the timers set manually in the recorder. If you set a manual recording, you'll see it in IceTV. Hard to manage a mix of manual and IceTV recordings otherwise.
Quote from: prl on July 29, 2009, 03:31:20 PM
Maybe, but IceTV wants to cater to all its users, including those like me who do have manual timers. It already examines the timers set manually in the recorder. If you set a manual recording, you'll see it in IceTV. Hard to manage a mix of manual and IceTV recordings otherwise.
This makes it even harder for me to understand why it can't notify of any clashes in shows that it knows about. I don't want it to DO anything about them, just let me know about it. Email alerts would be fantastic. Or at the very least, give me a grid layout so I can quickly, visually see the clashes without having to work them out.
I don't think icetv understands how mad my wife gets when our toppy decides to drop her favourite show because icetv told it scrubs had moved into a timeslot where there was already 2 shows, (that it knew about), being taped ;)
Yep, agreed, it has happened to me a couple of times now.
Also, while we are at it, I wish ICE would have the past day or two in the EPG also. Nothing worse than seeing a fave show didn't get recorded, and to start to investigate if there was ever a timer set for it, but to not be able to look back in time (even just a day... I often start investigating after midnight when looking for a show that was meant to record before midnight), and not knowing if the show was even listed. And then trying to see if the show is therefore listed next week instead, but ICE doesn't have the following week in their system yet....
e.g. Was the USA Biggest Loser on last weekend? I tried to determine this on Monday, as I didn't get my normal weekly recording, and couldn't see anything listed for the night before, nor for the next Sunday night, but their data didn't go that far. Now seeing my RSS feed details I see it is showing up this Sunday. I dunno why the RSS feeds go to sleep also sometimes with Outlook, and it misses days at a time of ICE updates... which is yet another nice thing to see if a show was scheduled to record... when it works.
it's interesting how talk of grid view has died off.
it is the most simple thing to do, yet you wont do it. You'd get far more subscribers if you had a grid view. You current list view is one of the hardest things to view, hard to see where conflicts are and is just over the top with minute by minute lists.
It's a joke.
oh well my subscription is back for renewal in a month, lets hope it's done by then or back to FTA guide for me that is mind you provided in grid view.
I guess it's one of those things where if it only impacts a small group or one of the developers then it's pretty much pointless to continue to talk about it. I guess they have more important things to code, like yahoo widgets over a native vista/win7 one :)
I, and about 90% of my clients (not all) think it is one of the few flaws with Interactive, not having a Grid view. We find it very hard to see when a particular program is ending, so as not to queue up too many over-lapping programs etc. I also find it a lot easy to read, and I like to record the program directly after say the golf I tape, as it always runs well overtime. Grid view, that is easy, in the current view, I have to hunt for the next show on that channel.
Quote from: lorenthehaloboy on December 01, 2009, 01:30:02 AM
Grid view, that is easy, in the current view, I have to hunt for the next show on that channel.
In the dropdown box for time/channel, you could click on the appropriate channel and see just the shows for that channel.
Mac
Quote from: strangr on September 03, 2009, 11:59:57 AM
it's interesting how talk of grid view has died off.
it is the most simple thing to do, yet you wont do it. You'd get far more subscribers if you had a grid view. You current list view is one of the hardest things to view, hard to see where conflicts are and is just over the top with minute by minute lists.
Why do you think it's simple? Have you ever done it? I did one for ToppyWeb and it certainly wasn't simple. I do agree though that it can be much easier to read.
BTW are you a member of the Horizontal or Vertical EPG grid camps? That's another topic of debate.
Another factor for Ice while it was having legal issues with Nine avoiding as many similarities with other online EPGs that might be construed as evidence of copying. Despite the legal victory that concern might still apply, just as they still need to use their "predictive" methodology.
Quote from: j s on January 19, 2010, 09:52:07 AM
...
Another factor for Ice while it was having legal issues with Nine avoiding as many similarities with other online EPGs that might be construed as evidence of copying. Despite the legal victory that concern might still apply, just as they still need to use their "predictive" methodology.
I don't get it. As far as I know, the Nine case was solely about the EPG content, in particular about IceTV's use of the published program guides for last-minute correction. There was nothing in the case about any IP infringement of "look and feel" of other program guide sites, so I don't know why any concerns about that would be "despite the legal victory". It wasn't relevant to that question. IANAL.
IIRC there was a lot of argument in the case about "arrangement" of the data. I'm pretty sure the grid structure of some of Nine's "schedule" documents was also pat of their submission.
I could be wrong though - I never made it through the entire transcript. And much of it made little sense anyway. I was just suggesting it as a possibile factor.
I've just had a quick look at the judgments, and there's more mention of the presentation than I recalled, but it didn't seem to be that significant. But since IANAL, I think I should let it rest there.
All I want is an easier way to visually get an idea on when and how long my devices two tuners are recording and what the chances of a clash is going to be.
Now that we've got channels like Go! with their repeated block programming throughout the week I'm finding I'm needing to keep a closer eye on my programs to manually sort out any clashes. It is becoming less of a set and forget arrangement. *edit* Plus my wife is now a big user of the web Interactive and goes a bit record crazy sometimes :)
Lately I've found it easier to pull out the newspapers TV guide and compare each day with my upcoming shows page. My TV guide lines up the starting times and has each channel in it's own column, (grid :) ) so it's pretty easy to grab a pen and block out my shows and see potential problems.
It's kind of funny to come in a full circle and start using a paper TV guide again.
One thing that people tend to forget when comparing EPG with paper guides is that the a half-page of broadsheet has way more resolution than a TV screen. You can simply put much more information into the space available. Especially since EPGs are still designed so they are usable at 576-line resolution.
I never use the EPG through my settop box for that reason. It sucks. I use the Interactive web page. I only use the settop box for watching and deleting recorded files.
Though I should point out that my paper TV guide is not broadsheet. It's a little weekly handout thingy.
Quote from: grahford on January 20, 2010, 11:24:38 AM
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Though I should point out that my paper TV guide is not broadsheet. It's a little weekly handout thingy.
It'll still have way more resolution than a TV screen.
Yes. And I don't use the TV for the EPG for that reason. Even though my settop box actually has a grid layout option it is almost useless because it can only display a limited number of channels and is too slow for moving between times and days.
I have no hope that that is going to change. Which is why I only use Interactive on my computer for scheduling. It's Interactive I wish had a better way of visually looking at the guide and scheduled recordings.
One online tv guide I like is the www.yourtv.com.au. They don't bother trying to squeeze everything into a tight layout. It's a grid layout as well. I don't mind having to scroll. Especially as I have a large, wide screen monitor so I don't even have to scroll that much anyway.