Favourites. Why?

[grahford]

I'm a bit confused over what the point of Favourites is.  I had House down as a favourite and a series record.  But I just found out that I missed an episode because House was off the air long enough for the series record to lapse.

Thinking it was a bug, I posted to tech support only to find this was normal behaviour.  So could someone tell me what the point of favourites is?

If I'm reading it right, I'm supposed to go to Interactive on a regular basis to see if any of my favourites have come back on the air and then set up a series record at that time?  Is this what favourites are for?

I originally thought that favourites was to set-and-forget your favourite show so that they would always be recorded.  Even if they had been off the air for awhile.

Is there anyway to make it so that you only have to tell IceTV about your favourite shows to always record once and not have to go back and check?

[csutak40]

Is there anyway to make it so that you only have to tell IceTV about your favourite shows to always record once and not have to go back and check?

Actually, I agree.  To me the whole idea is supposed to be so that if a favourite comes back (even if it comes back at 3am in the middle of summer) and I don't notice, it will still record it for me.  That's how TEDS favourites work, and I love that feature

[prl]

All the series recordings that I had set for shows that stopped during the non-ratings period came back when the shows re-appeared in the IceTV schedule as the ratings period kicked off. I thought that House had also only been off for the non-ratings period, too, so I don't see why that would be different.

I'm not sure why the title of the topic is "Favorites". IceTV Favorites never make recordings.  If you want to always record episodes of a series, set up a series recording, and just leave it. It should just reactivate when the series re-commences.

[grahford]

I'm not sure why the title of the topic is "Favorites". IceTV Favorites never make recordings.  If you want to always record episodes of a series, set up a series recording, and just leave it. It should just reactivate when the series re-commences.

I named the topic this way because my question was to do with my confusion as to what the Favourite section is actually for.  To use them it seems that you have to come back to the site and check it regularly or use the RSS feed.  They know enough to track an off air show when it comes back on, why can't it be made to reset your series recording if it needs it?

Also there are a couple of series I want to record that are off the air already.  As a result I can't set the series recording for them now.  The option just don't exist.  I can, however, add them to my favourites list.  But that won't make them record.  I have to remember to come back to the site and check or install an RSS reader and keep an eye on it manually.  Hence my original question, what is the point of Favourites?

And to be clear, House was set up as a series recording.  It didn't record when it restarted and I had to redo the series options.  Maybe it was a bug at their end? All my other shows picked up after the break.  Tech support told me the only way to catch series that had gone off air was to setup a keyword search and add it that way.  Maybe I misunderstood them.  I got the impression that when my series end this year I'll have to reset them next year. 

But I am a new user so I'm easily confused.

[prl]

I'm not sure why the title of the topic is "Favorites". IceTV Favorites never make recordings.  If you want to always record episodes of a series, set up a series recording, and just leave it. It should just reactivate when the series re-commences.

I named the topic this way because my question was to do with my confusion as to what the Favourite section is actually for.  To use them it seems that you have to come back to the site and check it regularly or use the RSS feed.  They know enough to track an off air show when it comes back on, why can't it be made to reset your series recording if it needs it?

Also there are a couple of series I want to record that are off the air already.  As a result I can't set the series recording for them now.  The option just don't exist.  I can, however, add them to my favourites list.  But that won't make them record.  I have to remember to come back to the site and check or install an RSS reader and keep an eye on it manually.  Hence my original question, what is the point of Favourites?

And to be clear, House was set up as a series recording.  It didn't record when it restarted and I had to redo the series options.  Maybe it was a bug at their end? All my other shows picked up after the break.  Tech support told me the only way to catch series that had gone off air was to setup a keyword search and add it that way.  Maybe I misunderstood them.  I got the impression that when my series end this year I'll have to reset them next year. 

But I am a new user so I'm easily confused.

I use Favorites to mark up shows that I watch but generally don't record, just to act as a reminder, but I don't think I'd miss them all that much if they weren't there. I have suggested on the forum that there be some way to get notifications of when shows that are marked as recordings or as favorites recommence, or when new shows appear in the recommendations.

I was mainly replying about your original post where you said IceTV had explained the problem with your House recording by saying that the cause was that House had been off air for a long time. I don't think it has been off air for a longer time than any of the other shows that have successfully restarted recording from their series recordings in IceTV. So, I think it's quite likely that it was because of some sort of bug at their end.

IceTV support is correct in saying that the only way to set a recording for a show that's currently off air is to set a keyword search recording. Though I think it would be a bit of a challenge to create a keyword search that would record House, and only House.

I think that not being able to schedule series recordings for programs that aren't currently airing is quite a serious deficiency in IceTV, and I don't really understand why it's not possible, since recordings that are already set (at least normally) don't go away just because a series has stopped airing.

But you're right, although I think that generally, IceTV is a good service, there are some things that are quite confusing about it.

[Vortical]

Favourites are a godsend when spotting shows that don't get queued to record.

All my series recordings are added as favourites so I can easily see which ones havn't been scheduled to record.
I just do a quick double check to see if they were a repeat or not then update the recording if it's still not getting queued a few days before the set airdate.

While this is annoying that this problem exists the favourites are extremely useful in spotting these errors with the ice servers not queuing recordings.

[grahford]

Thanks for the replies guys.

I'll subscribe to the RSS feed and see if it helps. 

The last time I tried using it I stopped when it seemed that shows appearing at the far end of the week didn't have [rec] on them.  From reading the forum I'm assuming that this is because IceTV does not queue them up until they get closer.  Will they reappear on the RSS feed when they get closer and get their [rec] status set?