Friday, 1st of August Ch 9 9.30pm

[mscheurer]

Listed is "The Closer", actually showing is "Cold Case"...

It' time for ICE to seriously consider extending our accounts to compensate for the unreliability that's plagued this service as of late! And I'm not just talking about the guide, remote scheduling has been next to useless for the past 2 month.

[csutak40]

Listed is "The Closer", actually showing is "Cold Case"...

And then "Close to Home" for the second hour of Closer.  :D

Just checked, last weeks eps were the end of Season 3, so I suppose we won't be seeing the Closer again for heaven knows how long.  >:(

[Daniel Hall at IceTV]

And I'm not just talking about the guide, remote scheduling has been next to useless for the past 2 month.

Can you please email your problems to support via the Contact Us page of the IceTV website as we have no idea why remote scheduling has been "next to useless" for you recently and would like to fix whatever problem you are having.

[mscheurer]

I prefer to post here...(the one and only time I used the support area it took 4 weeks to get a reply to a ticket)

http://www.icetv.com.au/iceforum/index.php?topic=1181.msg5224#msg5224

What I'm seeing is programs scheduling themselves & scheduled programs never showing up in EyeTV.
I've stopped using remote scheduling, instead using Smart Guides in EyeTV which works as it should.

I'm seriously contemplating going back to buying the paper on Sundays for their printed TV guide.

Can you please email your problems to support via the Contact Us page of the IceTV website as we have no idea why remote scheduling has been "next to useless" for you recently and would like to fix whatever problem you are having.

This forum is full of problem reports and you have no idea???

[futzle]

What I'm seeing is programs scheduling themselves & scheduled programs never showing up in EyeTV.

That'll probably be because EyeTV fetches scheduled recordings five days out from the day of the event.  It just becomes a day+time+channel recording, so when the event changes in the intervening 120 hours EyeTV doesn't notice.  Ergo, wrong show recorded.

I think that five days is a bit optimistic at the moment, and that it probably wouldn't hurt for IceTV to cut that down to two days or so.  Better would be to change the protocol that EyeTV and IceTV use to communicate schedule changes.

[mscheurer]

What I'm seeing is programs scheduling themselves & scheduled programs never showing up in EyeTV.

That'll probably be because EyeTV fetches scheduled recordings five days out from the day of the event.  It just becomes a day+time+channel recording, so when the event changes in the intervening 120 hours EyeTV doesn't notice.  Ergo, wrong show recorded.

I think that five days is a bit optimistic at the moment, and that it probably wouldn't hurt for IceTV to cut that down to two days or so.  Better would be to change the protocol that EyeTV and IceTV use to communicate schedule changes.

Not entirely sure what that has to do with it...

[futzle]

What I'm seeing is programs scheduling themselves & scheduled programs never showing up in EyeTV.

That'll probably be because EyeTV fetches scheduled recordings five days out from the day of the event.

Not entirely sure what that has to do with it...

As an example I'll use Cold Case, the poster child for shows that jump around in the schedule.  Say that this week it's going to be on at 8.30 on Tuesday.  On the preceding Thursday, when EyeTV fetches scheduled recordings from IceTV, it will set a timer for the following Tuesday at 8.30, which is (at the time) when Cold Case is going to be on.

Over the weekend, Nine decides to move Cold Case to make way for Australia's Funniest Home Renovation Disasters.  The Ice guide eventually changes to reflect this, but EyeTV has a timer for 8.30 Tuesday, so what it records is not Cold Case, but something that you definitely didn't want.

The appearance is that EyeTV is recording things you didn't want, and not recording the things you do want.

I've had this happen a couple of times with EyeTV since the court case, after which the confidence of scheduling five days out fell quite a bit.  On my homebrew setup in another room, also fed by IceTV data (but updated each morning so it collects changes in programming) I haven't had this happen once.

Edit: PS, mscheurer, I'm not saying that this is the issue that you are having, but it is one factor that affects how much you can trust remote scheduling as it is currently implemented.

[mscheurer]

As an example I'll use Cold Case, the poster child for shows that jump around in the schedule.  Say that this week it's going to be on at 8.30 on Tuesday.  On the preceding Thursday, when EyeTV fetches scheduled recordings from IceTV, it will set a timer for the following Tuesday at 8.30, which is (at the time) when Cold Case is going to be on.

Over the weekend, Nine decides to move Cold Case to make way for Australia's Funniest Home Renovation Disasters.  The Ice guide eventually changes to reflect this, but EyeTV has a timer for 8.30 Tuesday, so what it records is not Cold Case, but something that you definitely didn't want.

The appearance is that EyeTV is recording things you didn't want, and not recording the things you do want.

I've had this happen a couple of times with EyeTV since the court case, after which the confidence of scheduling five days out fell quite a bit.  On my homebrew setup in another room, also fed by IceTV data (but updated each morning so it collects changes in programming) I haven't had this happen once.

Edit: PS, mscheurer, I'm not saying that this is the issue that you are having, but it is one factor that affects how much you can trust remote scheduling as it is currently implemented.

My setup was set to check every 3 hours so that's not it...

My feeling on this matter is that if ICE can create schedules it should edit them as well when program data changes. Anything else is just half assed.

[tonymy01]

We are all waiting with baited breath in another thread if ICETV reschedules timers or not (specifically related to scheduling on the Beyonwiz, but we have experienced similar issues you describe here Futzle).
The ICE Interactive protocol supports deleting and maybe changing, so it should accomodate this, but I guess the issue is that once the link between EPG and Timer entry has been broken (by the EPG being rescheduled), then when ICE checks your PVR/whatever what timers you have set, it doesn't realise any more that timerX that now ICE thinks you have set for a different show is really a timer that ICE effectively has incorrectly set.    You would hope that if ICE detects a scheduling change, then anything at the old timeslot should be altered by ICE.   The Beyonwiz supports a timer name which hopefully ICE can use to realise that this is indeed the correct timer to delete/rebuild, but sometimes we will see "*Nine" in the Wiz timer list, so maybe this isn't actually the case).
Regards

[Daniel Hall at IceTV]

tonymy01:

The reason that "*Channel Name" is created for a timer under the Beyonwiz is purely because there is no entry in the Beyonwiz EPG at the time (either because it has not downloaded or is just not available at the time of setting the timer), however the timer still has an ID number that can be used to cancel if need be.
I have also updated the other thread in regards to timers being updating once the guide changes.

mscheurer:

Part of the problem here is that you did not get the guide updates in time, you can only set guide updates to be once a day in EyeTV.

And if I am looking at the correct account for you then the remote scheduling requests are not set for every 3 hours, over the past 6 days I cannot see any checks for remote scheduling by EyeTV. Another thing that is looking a bit out of place is that there are requests coming through for both EyeTV 3.01 and 3.02 (and the currently released version is now 3.03), best option is to update to 3.03, then close EyeTV and stop the "eyetvhelper" application from Activity Monitor and then delete it from the "/Library/Application Support/EyeTV/" folder, when you restart EyeTV it will ensure that the currently running "eyetvhelper" is the correct version for the version of EyeTV that is installed.

[mscheurer]

And if I am looking at the correct account for you then the remote scheduling requests are not set for every 3 hours, over the past 6 days I cannot see any checks for remote scheduling by EyeTV.

That would be because I'm using Smart Guides for the last 6 days...