Does your ICE Interactive pick up series recordings scheduled within MCE?

Started by Nudge, January 14, 2010, 05:25:34 AM

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Nudge

Just trying to see what the behaviour of others machines with Interactive?

When I schedule a series recording within the MCE interface, it shows up in Interactive as a single red dot recording, never as a series and doesn't return the following week.

Nudge

cam

Sometimes my MCE series show up as single red dots, though often they don't show up in Interactive at all.  I found Interactive quite unreliable for scheduling recordings, so just use MCE Series for everything.  I'll see some things that are well older than a week as red dots, so it's not just the new series that are showing up.  It seems more random to me.

Cam
Win7, 2x Hauppague 2200

prj32

Quote from: Nudge on January 14, 2010, 05:25:34 AM
Just trying to see what the behaviour of others machines with Interactive?

When I schedule a series recording within the MCE interface, it shows up in Interactive as a single red dot recording, never as a series and doesn't return the following week.

Nudge

From what I have seen, series recording from Media Center and the Ice TV online service are managed exclusively within each environment.  If you setup a series recording on MC, it will only show up on Ice TV online as a single recording.  If you setup a series recording on Ice TV online, it will only show up within Media Center as a single recording.  I am guessing during the ongoing EPG updates both environments are populated with the defined recording metadata.

There is no reason why you can't use "both" Media Center and Ice TV to manage "series recordings", but it can get confusing and you may get some conflicts -- I certainly don't recommend setting up the same series recording within both environments.

I haven't seen this written up anywhere, but this is what I have seen on my end.  Hope it helps.

DDH

I had an issue about 2 weeks ago where a series setup in MCE Win 7 x64 was turning up in Interactive and then there were various cancellations back from Ice, etc.  In short a mess.  I reported the issue and got informed it was a bug and that a new version was going in (server side I presume) between 4 and 8 Jan.  Since that time no mess, but I only see a couple of the recordings for the MCE series setup in Interective via the web site.

In my opinion this is really not good enough.  I had to move my series recordings back to MCE because Intereactive's padding is "MCE default" at best, and MCE is "where possible" not hard padding which is NFG.  Interactive has no hard padding despite an insistive IceTV support saying it all works (rubbish).  So in short I've had to move my series back to the MCE.

Now that I can't see the series that I've set on the MCE reflected in Interactive the whole notion and benefit of using the iPhone app and interactive web site from remote / work is a non sense.  I can't be sure what is scheduled and what is not because Interactive is not picking up the recordings from MCE based series recordings.

In short the Ice system is now just a TV guide with none of the additional functionality able to provide the full picture.  This is a real shame because between denial of obvios bugs (ie padding) and series not working right Interactive simply can't deliver a full working system.

lukem

Interactive was initially designed for PVRs which typically could not handle series recordings themselves. Series recordings were setup on the website and sent down as single episodes. There has been much debate on being able to handle local series recordings as its pretty much limited to a Windows Media Center audience.

That said, with the number of Media Center subscriptions the discussion has been rekindled and we are working through the details. It _may_ be supported in the future but nothing definite yet.

The current Win7 Interactive app should detect local series recordings and upload each episode to the server. You would then be able to see (single red dot) that it has been scheduled to record. If this is not happening I would recommend submitting a support case and attach your log file (zipped) for us to investigate.

Mark

Quote from: DDH on January 19, 2010, 11:21:07 AM
In my opinion this is really not good enough.  I had to move my series recordings back to MCE because Intereactive's padding is "MCE default" at best, and MCE is "where possible" not hard padding which is NFG.  Interactive has no hard padding despite an insistive IceTV support saying it all works (rubbish).  So in short I've had to move my series back to the MCE.

I came to this same conclusion very early in my subscription to IceTV (I am still on Vista Media Center, and have no intention of moving to Windows 7 just yet!)  After some early experiments, I disabled Interactive and have never turned it back on.

Despite many apparent gripes about MCE (some no doubt motivated purely by general anti-MS sentiment), it's got some pretty smart features for series recording, if you use them appropriately.  For example, all series recordings have an associated priority to resolve conflicts, and MCE recognises duplicate screenings of a program (assuming the EPG data is correct) and will automatically record a duplicate if it has not recorded the initial screening due to a conflict.  Between priority settings and hard padding, it is possible to get MCE to schedule recordings in a totally predictable manner.

Soft padding, as you have noted, is essentially useless, but this is not the fault of MS or IceTV, it is because Australian commercial TV broadcasts never stay within their scheduled timeslots!  You are therefore quite likely to lose up to 10 minutes of the end of a program where it is not possible to apply the soft padding, and you would probably rather be informed of a conflict and given the opportunity to resolve it.

The only significant limitation of MCE (in Vista at least -- I'd be interested to know if this is improved in Windows 7) is its inability to recognise that two overlapping recordings on the same channel is not a true "conflict", because it could create both recording files using the same tuner.  Since it insists on scheduling both recordings on different tuners, unnecessary conflicts arise.  I know that there is other software that does not have this limitation, but the deciding factor for me is MCE's ability to work in the lounge room using my Xbox360 as an extender.

If IceTV Interactive could provide true synchronisation of MCE series recordings, including priority settings and hard post-padding, then it would be useful.  It also really needs to allow setting of hard padding on one-off recordings as well.

I appreciate that this would require a signficant MCE-specific development effort, and am therefore pleased to hear that the number of MCE subscribers is reaching a level where it is under discussion!

DDH

I went 3.0.0.8 yesterday and now my series recordings on the MCE are showing correctly via the Ice Intereactive site.

prj32

Quote from: DDH on January 22, 2010, 11:57:33 AM
I went 3.0.0.8 yesterday and now my series recordings on the MCE are showing correctly via the Ice Intereactive site.
'

So just to confirm, you create a "Series Recording" on your MC (Windows 7) and it will show up as a "series recording" on the online Interactive Web Site?  Or are you talking the other way around.  Did it also update existing "Series Recordings" or only new creations?  My configuration which is also running .8 is still disjointed.  You create a series recording in either environment, and the other environment only shows the single recording.

Same as "Luke at IceTV" details.

lukem

There are some benefits to the way it works..

1) we have excellent series management features on the website and very simple google style keyword matching.

2) We can keep improving the series management and add features not available in any other system and,

3) The Interactive scheduling is available via iPhone and desktop widgets, (soon Android),

4) best of all should your system crash of be reset, it easy to download all the recordings again with a few clicks.


prj32

Quote from: Luke at IceTV on January 23, 2010, 02:36:43 PM
There are some benefits to the way it works..

1) we have excellent series management features on the website and very simple google style keyword matching.

2) We can keep improving the series management and add features not available in any other system and,

3) The Interactive scheduling is available via iPhone and desktop widgets, (soon Android),

4) best of all should your system crash of be reset, it easy to download all the recordings again with a few clicks.



I certainly agree the functionality is better online, but generally your wife doesn't want to sit in front of a computer to select programs to record on TV.  The 10' interface is where it needs to happen (well in my household anyway), where she can use the TV remote and look at the TV guide --- keyboard, browser or phone free!  Maybe it's just my wife that still wants to treat MediaCenter like a TV.

Any chance a future version of IceTV will be a native MC application?


mjdoz

MC is certainly more WAF friendly and accessable than ICETV.

I had been using the ICETV batch service for W7 since upgrading in August and finally got interactive installed on the main PC today.  Suddenly strange shows started being scheduled - ICETV had held onto the scheduled recordings from when the PC was running Vista and was now adding them back in!

Quick cull of the series requests held on ICETV and no more issues.

In my case ICETV interactive is an emergency backup in case I forget to schedule something I can add it when I am not at home from any browser.

And yes all my series recordings on MC are shown as single episodes on ICETV but that is not an issue for me.  As far as I can tell both MC and ICETV are in full sync with scheduled records which is what I need to see.

Michael

Nudge

Thanks everyone for the replies - it wasn't written up anywhere how it was working.

Just to follow up, when I first started this thread I was using v3.0.0.7 and series recordings set up within MC would show up on interactive a single red - once and never again.

Now that 3.0.0.8 is out these are now showing still as single red dots BUT they keep recurring - so I can live with that.

Much better.

Later,

Nudge

lukem

Quote from: prj32 on January 23, 2010, 05:22:36 PM

Any chance a future version of IceTV will be a native MC application?


We certainly could provide a native MCML app to replace the current user interface, the "engine" would remain the same. We have some plans for some exciting Media Center functionality but I can't say any more at this stage.

Let us know what you want, anything is possible.

Adrian3

I've just installed IceTV (thanks to the St. Patrick’s Day special) and I was excited to try out the IceTV Interactive scheduling. I setup all my shows to record via the Interactive web page and then after installing the IceTV app on my Win 7 machine, the first few shows were scheduled automatically.

BUT, I was sad to see that each of the recordings were scheduled with the "Stop:" setting set to "10 minutes after if possible" (which is my recording default setting). It seems like I'm going to have to go into every episode for ever show every week, so I can adjust the "stop" value to "10 minutes after" (without the useless "if possible"). This is much more work than I'd have to do just using the normal Media Centre series recordings (which I only have to adjust once - not every week).

Will "Interactive" be enhanced any time soon to properly schedule series recordings within Media Centre and/or to set the "stop" value to something other than the Media Centre default?


Also, what happens if I alter one of the IceTV scheduled single recordings into a series recording within MediaCentre - will the next sync from IceTV have some kind of conflict?

It's really looking like Interactive is next to useless with Media Centre (at least where Series recordings are concerned).

Would it be best to remove all my series recordings from Interactive (and set them up manually within Media Centre) and then use Interactive only for one-off shows like movies etc.

Or perhaps, I should go back to Guide Only and try to forget about Interactive (it did look promising though).

tonymy01

I see this as a 50/50 option for some people.
Reason:  if you are recording 2 back to back shows on the one channel/tuner, and want to record something on another channel, the "add 10mins regardless" might cause the other channel timer to be rejected, where as the "if possible" will mean the back to back shows record fine and your other channel show records fine, however the 1st ep of the back-back show will stop recording at the scheduled time, and possible the last few minutes of it will be in the following recording on the same channel.

On the Topfield and Beyonwiz PVRs, this "if possible" strategy I just essentially detailed is the only way they do soft padding.   But it means you have another tuner available to do other things (of course one could argue that to overlap record the same channel you don't need a second tuner, but it seems most PVR software coders don't like to use this tricky strategy of trying to record the same thing twice effectively for the overlap).   I guess for a PVR which you are watching 100% of the time (due to all the nice features it has vs a TV tuner) I would prefer the "if possible", but for something that you only ever record a few things on and use as a recording box only (not a watching live & swapping to watching recordings or timeshifting a current recording etc) the "always apply" is probably better, as long as you don't mind missing a recording or two to support overlapping on back to back channels.

Well, at least this is how I interpret the posts here about this particular recording option for W7.
Regards
Regards
Tony

Beyonwiz DP-S1 & Topfield 5K (using PerlTGD to upload ICE EPG/timers for the 5K, normal ICE interactive for the Wiz).