Topfield in standby polling IceTV - how is it done?

Started by ploughguy, December 11, 2013, 10:26:07 PM

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ploughguy

With the Christmas entertainment void about to hit, I am facing my first off-season of IceTV scheduling.
I anticipate that it will be educational.  I am trying to reduce the annoyance factor.

This time of year is characterised by two phenomena:

  • Days when there is nothing to record, so the recorder does not come out of standby, and so it does not pick up a new schedule;
  • Periods of time when we are not here, but might want to schedule something using IceTV.
In combination, these two features cause a breakdown of the system - if there is not much to record, it does not start regularly so it does not find out that there actually _is_ something to record.

I have seen references in this fora to "view timers".  This is not a term that I cannot find elsewhere.  After some monkeying around with the Topfield, I see that there is a "Record - No" option at the top of the manually-created timer editor.  I presume that this is the fabled View Timer option?  It creates an entry qualified by the letter "P" instead of "R".

I have optimistically created such a timer to start every day at 5 pm and run for 35 minutes. 

I chose 5 pm because there is nothing that anyone over 4 would want to watch before 6 pm, so this is unlikely to cause trouble.  And given the parlous state of modern news broadcasting, I would say that probably extends to 7pm.

I chose 35 minutes because I read somewhere that the topfield does not (or is believed to not, or perhaps is thought or suspected to not) poll for 30 minutes after it is awakened.

So in principle, the Topfield should awake at 5pm because no-one in their right mind would be actually using it at that hour, amuses itself watching the channel ten "news" (as they call their best-of review of the day's tweets and facebook accidents) until 5:30pm, download the latest schedule changes if any, mull over them for five minutes then go back to standby.

Does this seem like a satisfactory solution?
Thank you in advance for your feedback.
PG

Paul55

Quote from: ploughguy on December 11, 2013, 10:26:07 PM
I have seen references in this fora to "view timers".  This is not a term that I cannot find elsewhere.  After some monkeying around with the Topfield, I see that there is a "Record - No" option at the top of the manually-created timer editor.  I presume that this is the fabled View Timer option?  It creates an entry qualified by the letter "P" instead of "R".

I have optimistically created such a timer to start every day at 5 pm and run for 35 minutes. 

Does this seem like a satisfactory solution?

Yes.

"P" is the correct solution - 'Play' timer IIRC. Called "View" timer on the Beyonwiz, again IIRC. Whatever it stands for/is called, it should do what you require.