New Interactive

[mcpaton]

I managed to get my 7 Qld recording timers set last night by clearing the ICE Cache on my Beyonwiz. When I went to bed, all timers were in the timer list. We were out tonight, and to my surprise, when I arrived home, the timers were still in the timer list, however none of the shows recorded.

Any ideas? I have since deleted all expired timers, and will see how it goes over the weekend, but we still won't get any of those shows back...

[dg]

Hi All,

Don't get me wrong I love IceTV BUT..........

I hate how they separate the items by PVR. The ability to manage multiple PVRs is one of the main reasons why I use IceTV.
Having the information separated by PVR makes it more difficult to manage recordings. I wish that there was always an "All" option and that it was the default.

On the "TV Guide" and "My Upcoming Shows" tabs, I hate how I can only view one device at a time.
There should be an "All" like in "My Shows" that displays which PVR is doing the recording.

While I'm at it I also wish that they would provide a "last EPG fetch" status for all PVRs registered.
They should move this status to My Account/Interactive in with Interactive Devices table.

DG

[mjordan]

This has to be the worse upgrade ever ....

Ive had shows just disappear from "interactive" ... i set the series recording options, it shows as being a scheduled recording, his refresh and then its goes to "unscheduled"

please please please please go back to the old system!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

otherwise i guess its time to cancel the subscription and just set recordings on the device itself

[stubbsy]

I just cannot get series recordings to work reliably with the new Interactive, but they worked perfectly before.  A simple example (FWIW I'm in Newcastle & using a Beyonwiz):

1. I choose Monday 3rd August, then click the 7pm Project on "SC Ten N NSW".
2. I choose Show Series Options
3. I choose Any Network / Any time / First runs only / Prefer Standard def (hey it's ten they don't know about HD!) /Record All
4. I click Record series

What happens next is highly variable.  It will always show the red series icon on Monday.  For the remaining days (Tuesday to Friday) some will show the red series icon (currently Firday shows that), but many (Tue, Wed Thursday in this test) show as grey icons.

At step 3 I've tried specifying the channel as Ten or choosing Stdnard Def only or even Prefer high def and it always does the same - some of the eps are grey.

This is driving me nuts.  I'm tempted to set it as a series recording on my Beyonwiz so I don't miss it but know that will screw things up in Interactive.

[A_G]

I just cannot get series recordings to work reliably with the new Interactive, ... What happens next is highly variable ... This is driving me nuts.

I am having similar problems. Try as I might, some of the grey iconed shows I can not get to record. I have also had series that were scheduled now show up with grey icons...

[JPP]

Hi All,

Don't get me wrong I love IceTV BUT..........

I hate how they separate the items by PVR. The ability to manage multiple PVRs is one of the main reasons why I use IceTV.
Having the information separated by PVR makes it more difficult to manage recordings. I wish that there was always an "All" option and that it was the default.

On the "TV Guide" and "My Upcoming Shows" tabs, I hate how I can only view one device at a time.
There should be an "All" like in "My Shows" that displays which PVR is doing the recording.

While I'm at it I also wish that they would provide a "last EPG fetch" status for all PVRs registered.
They should move this status to My Account/Interactive in with Interactive Devices table.

DG

I too expressed my disappointment in the new arrangement by PVR.

My initial post was answered by Russell of ICETV as below (in italics.)


Yeah, sorry about that.  We did try to make the pages show multiple devices at once, but found that the changes were going to be ridiculously complicated.  The problem in a nutshell is that if a particular show on the guide page is scheduled to be recorded on multiple devices, we'd need to display the status of the recording on each device, as well as give the user a way to cancel the individual episode and/or the whole series on each device.  The user interface changes alone were going to be very difficult to get working in a way that made sense to the user, but then the actual programming involved made it beyond the reach of what we were able to do in this version.  In the end, we decided the best way to handle both problems was to have a device list at the top of the page where you could select which device you wanted to deal with.

The My Shows page allows you to select "All" devices, which helps a bit.  We're also looking into the idea of making the Upcoming page work similar to the My Shows page, so that if a show is scheduled to be recorded on multiple devices, we might just list the show multiple times.  This wouldn't work for the TV Guide page obviously, but maybe it could work on the Upcoming page at least.  That might help with conflict detection.

Thanks,
Russell

I agree with you in that the previous version served me better too. If at least an ALL Devices shown could be added to the TV guide page, it would at least get us back to where we were and let us enjoy the additional goodies added in this new version.

[JPP]

I'm a little dissapointed that the scheme I suggested some weeks ago to use different recording colour icons for each device was not implemented. Instead we now have different pages for each device which I don't find very convenient to use.

Yeah, sorry about that.......  

Thanks Russell for the explanation. However, I think the new version is a retrograde step wrt managing multiple Devices. Could we at least add an option showing ALL Devices to the TV Guide page as suggested above? TIA.

[Russell at IceTV]

I have a keyword recording set for "Robert Carlyle" - this has correctly found and set the movie Eragon (Sun, 18:30, Ten).  However, as we already have the movie, I tried to delete it and couldn't... it gives no error but refreshes the page when I click the Cancel Episode button but the recording stubornly stays there, according to the web at least.

Thanks for reporting this.  I've been able to duplicate the problem, so we'll take a look and get it fixed.

From the opposite direction now.... the show "A Survivor's Guide to Plane Crashes" has been added as a keyword recording and I'm damned if I can see why and also cannot delete this one either.  I wonder if you could alter the code which shows the phrase "This show is part of a Keyword Record." to include the keywords/criteria which generated the recording so that this sort of thing can be more easily resolved?

That one was because of your keyword recording for: ashes to ashes.  It was picking up the word "ashes" in "crashes", and the word "to" was part of the description as well.  I think you can fix a lot of these types of problems by changing your keywords so they have double-quotes around the exact titles.  So change it to "ashes to ashes" and I think it'll fix it.

And I like the idea of including more info about which keyword it matched with.  We'll look into adding more info like that.

Thanks,
Russell

[Russell at IceTV]

Having the information separated by PVR makes it more difficult to manage recordings. I wish that there was always an "All" option and that it was the default.

There's more info about that in this forum post.

While I'm at it I also wish that they would provide a "last EPG fetch" status for all PVRs registered.
They should move this status to My Account/Interactive in with Interactive Devices table.

Good suggestion, we'll look into it and see if we can add the last fetch time for each device.

Thanks,
Russell

[Russell at IceTV]

1. I choose Monday 3rd August, then click the 7pm Project on "SC Ten N NSW".
2. I choose Show Series Options
3. I choose Any Network / Any time / First runs only / Prefer Standard def (hey it's ten they don't know about HD!) /Record All
4. I click Record series

What happens next is highly variable.  It will always show the red series icon on Monday.  For the remaining days (Tuesday to Friday) some will show the red series icon (currently Firday shows that), but many (Tue, Wed Thursday in this test) show as grey icons.

Hi, sorry you're having problems with it.  Fortunately I think there's an easy answer...

This is happening because of how your channel list is setup in My Account, on the TV Guide tab.  I can see that you have Ten Digital unchecked for "Show on IceTV Website", but you also have "Send to PVR as LCN" set to "All".  This section of My Account is new, so maybe we haven't explained it well enough yet.

What's happening is that since "Send to PVR as LCN" is set to "All", the scheduling engine is scheduling shows on Ten Digital, but you can't see it on the web site.  If you were to turn on the "Show on IceTV Website" checkbox for Ten Digital, you'd see that every episode was set to be recorded, either on "Ten Digital" or "SC Ten N NSW".

If you truly don't get the channel Ten Digital on your PVR, you probably want to change "Send to PVR as LCN" to "Disabled" for that channel, and then the scheduling engine won't use that channel anymore.

We also might need to put a warning on the My Account page so that it tells you about this, when you have a channel hidden on the web site but enabled for the PVR.

And I'm also going to look into why it's scheduling some shows on "Ten Digital" and some on "SC Ten N NSW" -- seems like it ought to use one or the other for all recordings, but I'll check.  That was causing part of your confusion as well, since it seems to select different channels each time, so you were seeing different results each time you tried it.

Let me know if you have other questions about it.

Thanks,
Russell

[Russell at IceTV]

I just cannot get series recordings to work reliably with the new Interactive, ... What happens next is highly variable ... This is driving me nuts.

I am having similar problems. Try as I might, some of the grey iconed shows I can not get to record. I have also had series that were scheduled now show up with grey icons...

Take a look at the forum post I just added about this.  I think you might be having the same problem, since you also have channels hidden from the web site but not hidden from your PVR:

http://www.icetv.com.au/iceforum/index.php?topic=1960.msg9546#msg9546

Russell

[Russell at IceTV]

I agree with you in that the previous version served me better too. If at least an ALL Devices shown could be added to the TV guide page, it would at least get us back to where we were and let us enjoy the additional goodies added in this new version.

The problem with the previous version was that although it wasn't limited to a particular device, it didn't work very well for multiple devices.  If you had a show scheduled to record on multiple devices, it was somewhat random as to which device it would say it was going to be recorded on.  And whichever device it picked, that device was the only one you could cancel the episode and/or whole series for.

I know this new solution is not perfect because there's no way to display all devices at once on the guide pages, but it's a lot more accurate because it lets you completely control each show on each device.  But we hear you, and we'll keep working on a better way to display all devices.

Thanks,
Russell

[stubbsy]

This is happening because of how your channel list is setup in My Account, on the TV Guide tab.  I can see that you have Ten Digital unchecked for "Show on IceTV Website", but you also have "Send to PVR as LCN" set to "All".  This section of My Account is new, so maybe we haven't explained it well enough yet.

Russell

Thanks for both the detail and the prompt response.  I have now set the LCN to disabled for all my channels set as unchecked for show on website (maybe that should be the default?).  I then deleted the series recording and added it back and all is now fine.  I agree it could be better explained as for the life of me I could not work out why some were grey and some were red.  Maybe you could add the comment for the grey icon "or may be on a channel you've hidden".  In my case these hidden recodings weren't being set on the PVR either since that channel doesn't exist in Newcastle.

[futzle]

I notice that the default Limit when you add a new series recording is "Record 1 per day".  Is this wise?  My mind is fast-forwarding to the future when a network broadcasts a Special Movie-length Episode two new episodes back-to-back, and the hapless user who just accepted all the defaults is surprised to find their recording cut off.

I suggest "Record All" as a safer default that will cop IceTV less flak in the long term.

lets you completely control each show on each device.

(Which was a feature I remember requesting a while ago, and which I am grateful is now implemented.  Thanks!)

[A_G]

I just cannot get series recordings to work reliably with the new Interactive, ... What happens next is highly variable ... This is driving me nuts.

I am having similar problems. Try as I might, some of the grey iconed shows I can not get to record. I have also had series that were scheduled now show up with grey icons...

Take a look at the forum post I just added about this.  I think you might be having the same problem, since you also have channels hidden from the web site but not hidden from your PVR:

http://www.icetv.com.au/iceforum/index.php?topic=1960.msg9546#msg9546

Russell

Thanks for the quick reply (and who says Ice isn't worth having!!!). I can now at least get grey icons to change to red. Will see how the scheduling goes.