The program name still listed in series recording, but red dot doesn't appear.

[whitford]

OK. This is the problem.
- I've got a series recording of "PostcardWA".
- Unfortantely, there's no red dot appears on next sat - and there're 2 shows next sat - one in the morning, one in the afternoon.
- When you click the "record" button on the remote, it will say, "you have made a series recording, would you like to add this into the series recording" - something like that.
- Unfortunately, only that particular Postcard WA has the red dot next to it, and not to the other postcard wa.
- The solution will be to delete the series recording and reschedule it again.

I haven't any problem with the other recording. Just poscard WA.

I guess it's easy to blame this as an MCE bug.

Questions;
- I haven't got any of this issues eversince the early quick quide way. Is this due to database error - i.e., assigning wrong id in your part?

Thanks...

[Russell at IceTV]

Hi whitford,

I can see that "Postcards WA" is on twice a day on Saturdays on Perth Nine: 9:30am and 5:30pm.  But the morning showing is marked as a repeat.  Could that be why it's not recording it?  If you just press the record button twice, what settings does it give you for how it'll deal with repeats vs. new shows?   (sorry, don't have an MCE machine handy to test it on just now)  Also, for the showings that it's not recording, does it say why it's not recording it?

Thanks,
Russell

[whitford]

Ok... There was NO PROBLEM with recording yesterday. The problem is ONLY with schedule recording for next saturday. The red series recording just doesn't come up. If you click twice on the recording it will say something like: "Do you want to include this as a part of series recording"? If you click yes, then a series recording red dot will appear, but ONLY to that show i.e., the afternoon one, and the morning show still doesn't have the red dot.

Thanks...

[Eaglehawk]

I've got the same problem here. It's hard to work out whether it's a MCE issue or an IceTV one. To me it's obviously a MCE problem of some sort, since it's the one storing the series recording, and it happily lists the Series Recording names, and then fact it's showing in X days time, but doesn't put a red dot next to it.

The same messages appear when I hit the record button on it, it says "Do you want to include this as part of series recording that already exists" or something like that.

[whitford]

HHmm... glad i'm not the only. Could it be due to somehow due to the "program id", or whatever id that MCE / EPG database generates??

I found this quote written by "impact" on the xpmediacenter forum: Could this be the problem. I hope I'm not breaching any copyright issues here....

Quote:

gslender - In answer to your question.... MCE operates at two levels...

It uses the name of the program to identify all series recordings... And it only checks on the names supplied, so if in week one, lets say you load up something like 'Survivor" and set a series recording for it, the following week the data load supplies the name 'Survivor Exile' - then MCE does not see this as the same program and does not record it.

All Series recordings are matched on program name.

Manual recordings are set up and tracked by a unique program identifier, this number which is meaningless should be a number that is only unique for that one program. So if you do a manual recording or cancel a one off recording - MCE does its business by using that internal number.

The problem is that in XMLTV DTD there is no real unique number similar to what MCE expects, and no mechanism to remember the numbers from the previous week. So these unique identifiers are calculated. Typically they are hashed from other available data - like channel its being shown on, start time, end time etc... this in turn creates a useable number that is hopefully unique. And why Monster says 99% accuracy - because the algorithm is flawed to give anything better.

BRP does not use a db to remember what occured in the previous week, so uses this algorithm method to generate a number each week, most of the time it allocates the same number to a repeating show week in week out, however if a program was to change timeslot / day etc, it would be generating a new number that was different to the previous one.

So over a period of time, you may find drifting of the numbers being generated and thus see some strange results - manual recordings disappearing, an extra recording appear, something recorded that you had canceled... but the most annoying one of all - recordings being grouped incorrectly.

Even though a series may be set up to record, MCE uses the internal id and not the name in the 'Recorded TV' section... Show by date works fine - as nobody fiddles with dates, but Show by Name which sorts shows by their name can often mix the shows up because of the inaccurate internal id's.


So over in Microsoft's real EPG solution - in the US and the UK and.... They do not use XML, they have a database, a proper database that knows what is shown this week, what was on last week, last month, last year. This guarantees a unique identifier for each unique show and thus all functionality works fine in MCE.

ICETV uses a database, so the integrity is there, BRP does not and can give you these annoyances. If BRP used a db then all these red dot issues and groupings would be gone too.

On a newly formatted machine, with BRP 3.5 and some automated test scripts I used previously, the grouping of program names inaccurately occured in the 4th week of data I supplied, and it appears once it occurs, it becomes more and more predominant - ie. it may take you 600 recordings before you notice the first issue, but then it starts occuring on every 100th...

Perfectionist I may be..... But I like my guide to be accurate, and if not to understand why - and thats the issue, others always ask questions and get no satisfactory replies...

[impact]

Yep - dats one of my quotes... and yet another post that Mike got upset about - apparantly you just cant criticise BRP... Oh well brings in so much web traffic for them at least.....

I don't live in WA so cant test it - and have not noticed anything of the sorts in the Melbourne guide.... but offer these suggestions to check;

- First Run or All - from what I can gather, you have it set to record All (this is how it sets recordings for things marked as repeat or not)
- What about the option - whatever its called - Anytime or specific time, the specific time only allows recordings of a show starting +-90mins of the time specified in the marked recording...

- Did you do the latest rollup update (this week) - it breaks the icetv settings, and you need to re-register... It did for me, and all my recordings seem to be fine, but I have noticed some other users suggesting it stuffed up their series settings - and they needed to clear them and start again?

If you into the series screen, check the priority making sure nothing else clashes - even though an exclamation icon should display and then you could find out why it will not record (typically clashes with another program or not enough disk space) - but by the sounds of it there is no exclamation mark...

If you look at the list of series - are there multiple entries for PostcardWA ? Delete them, set a new one - and if still there is nothing... then maybe it is an icetv data problem?

[Eaglehawk]

Ah...it was definately the rollup that broke the IceTV guide downloads, that was fixed easily. But yes, the series recording thing...it was sorta "working" then stopped. I'll watch it for the next few weeks...

[Russell at IceTV]

Ok whitford, I found the message I think you're getting:

ALREADY RECORDING SERIES
You are already recording this series. Would you like to change this one time recording to be part of the series recording?

This happens when you do the following:

1. Click the record button twice on a program.  This turns on the double red dot and creates a series recording.

2. Click the record button once on another episode of the same program that wasn't previously scheduled to record.  This turns on the single red dot for a single one-off recording.

3. Click the record button once on the program from step 2.  This prompts you with the message above, since it thinks you want to change it from a single red dot to a double one and make it a new series recording.

If you select Yes, it changes the single red dot to a double dot and now they both have the double dot and they're both part of the same series recording.  If you select No, it does nothing, and leaves it as a single dot on that show and a double dot on the first one.

I also notice that at least on this machine, when I created the series recording it set it to record "First run" only.  So I'm wondering if the fact that one of the two shows you were trying to record was set as a repeat (the morning one actually) has something to do with why it didn't set it to record when you initially created the series recording.  In other words, did you initially create the double red dot (series recording) on the afternoon show?  If so, that would make sense that it might not pick up the morning (repeat) show.

Let me know if you find out more,

Russell

[BJReplay]

I've sort of been quiet here, but I've seen this behaviour, and every time I do see it, it is down to one of two reasons.  The key reason is that the shows that don't appear to be set to record are flagged as repeats.  If your default record settings are first run only, and the iceteam are flagging a show as a repeat, it won't record.  That means that when you shedule a series for a show that is all repeats - for example - like Dr Who Classic - you must go into series recording, and change the settings for that series to all showings.

As far as I know, when you set up a series, it inherits the first run/all showings setting that was the default when the series recording was created, and even if you later change the default, existing series are not changed - which is the way it should be.  The last thing you would want is to change your default from all showings to first run, and then have existing series recordings stop recording because of that.

The second reason, which I've seen rarely - occurs when your icetv subscription gets lost (typically because you do something like apply MCE RU2, for example).  In this case, the series can still exist, but when you re-establish your guide subscription, MCE doesn't recognise that there are any shows for the forthcoming series.  The way to establish this is for a show that doesn't have a red dot, and you believe it should (according to the series that is already defined), is do a record series again on the show.  If you don't get any warning, what you should then find if you go into series recordings is two listings for the series.  One of them will have the start time appended in the list.  If you go into each series, one of them (it's random, can be first or second) will have no forthcoming episodes listed, and the other will have the episodes that are due to record listed.  Delete the instance with no episdoes - it's orphaned.