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Any way I wanted to know why when making a series recording does it have to contact the server? What is it doing at this point and why can't whatever it is wait for the next 10min check in.
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If the SKIPPA series recordings work the same way (apart from being able to set them on the PVR), what happens is SKIPPA sends series recording to the IceTV server, IceTV server works out what recording timers need to be set, IceTV sends the recording timers to the SKIPPA.
If the recording should start in 5 minutes, you'd probably not want it to wait 10 minutes to set up the recordings

Why is this behaviour a problem? The amounts of data involved are very small.
Also if there is a conflict when setting multiple recordings you get an email to notify you (before or after the fact?) but is there no instant on screen message that says this?
No internal mechanism to know as you set recordings that there is a conflict
That's the same as for other IceTV devices. The server doesn't have a model of how recording timers interact with each other, so it doesn't know whether a recording that it wants to send will be accepted by the PVR. So when the server sends the recording timer, the PVR sends back a confirmation to the server saying whether the timers could be set. The server then marks an error on the web site/app and sends you an email.
The PVR could put up a popup error message at the time the error is detected, but I don't know whether any IceTV PVRs do that. Beyonwiz ones certainly don't.
Having such popups might be annoying if they happen when you'd rather just be watching a recording.