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Like I said, creating series recordings in Media Center isn't the issue... there are a few technical challenges on the server side to handle Media Center differently, no big deal... but whether or not our investment into this feature will bring a return ... that's the issue. There are better features that we can develop that give both the customer and IceTV more value .. like spreading recordings across multiple devices to avoid conflicts, streaming your recordings to your smartphone, offering more content, etc.

I think the thing to take away from this conversation is that how you support a platform like MC is just as important as actually supporting it.  I doubt most MC customers are typical "PVR" Customers and a high percentage will be Home brewed systems (mine certainly was and have a look over at the Aus MC forums for thousands of others), so to make ICE TV worth the money the way it operates has to take advantage of the already excellent feature set properly to win customers. (imo)

FWIW, I'm currently a Customer Delivery Manager in the ICT space and have spent many years in Business Analyst & Service Management roles.  8)

The hacks/workaround as you put it are a consequence of us having to reverse engineer Media Center as the published SDK is quite limited and thus we have had to hook in at a lower level, which is not published information, nor is Microsoft willing to provide any technical input, resources or documentation on how to achieve this. These problems exist regardless of whether we  create a one-time recording or a series recording. Programmatically they are similar, and to be honest, creating the recording itself is not a difficult task.

Im aware of this however others have managed it eg WebGuide for VistaMC and BigScreen Remote for 7MC

So in other words, our time is better spent enhancing the way in which recordings are managed "in the cloud" and ensuring that Media Center does the correct thing with the recording instructions. The type of recording is actually irrelevant, the ability to reliably communicate, instruct, and resolve collisions for the box is the key to it's success.

Im not saying dont keep things in the cloud, what im saying is the approach to MC is wrong and it shouldn't be treated as a dumb PVR (because it isnt - reminds me of Blackberry taking over MS Exchange instead of using Active Sync and look how well that's going for them).

With the current methodology of sending simple recording instructions to the box we can actually enhance the way series and keyword recordings are managed and offer it to a much larger PVR audience than just Media Center. Also note that if all your recordings are managed by Ice, and your Media Center box blows up it's a single click to 'resend all recordings' to a replacement box.

Your current methodology is well suited to "normal" PVR's, however all the features you have can be done by MC out of the box, I'm suggesting you "actively manage" those features in 7MC rather than duplicate them by implementing silly hacks like creating & deleting single shows that are part of a series.

Instead use the ICE Integration software as a management interface that takes advantage of all the built in MC features rather than trying to make MC just another dumb PVR! That way MC ICE TV subscribers can take advantage of all the great ICE Web/iPhone/etc features and know that they will work every time because they are managing existing features instead of implementing unnecessary hacks/work arounds!

Give me a compelling reason why you believe 7MC can do a better job at scheduling a series or keyword search?

My Experience was that the ICE TV method was unreliable under VistaMC and 7MC - I frequently had to purge caches etc and eventually gave up (I had over 40 Series) - like I said in my original posts, treating MC like a "normal dumb PVR" is ignoring its built in smarts and an inherently dumb decision!  ::)

You would likely also reduce traffic loads on your own servers by simply maintaining the series record list rather than creating one off shows every time - MC is smart, treating it like it's dumb is just counter intuitive! MC has a lot of power ICE are having to duplicate which is just a waste of time imo.

Our current developments address most the issues in this thread, even the pretty pictures that people like seeing... and content... much more content.

Are you supporting series record properly or still creating individual programs each time a series event happens? (cause that is just daft!)

Too late for me, we replaced our Media Center with a pair of TiVo's - SWMBO got sick of me tinkering.  :'(

I really dont see why
Whenever I see or hear of a show that I think I might like I just set it to series record with HD priority. Im never watching Live TV so Until they fix the recording issues, I wont be buying a permanent subscription

the Ice guide data is worth the money as it allows for very accurate series recording - the OTA guide data from the stations is of very poor quality most of the time. (NEIN is the worst offender)

I just set ICE TV interactive up on my PC and I am really disappointed at how basic it is. NONE of the cool WMC recording functions are avaliable. I am very happy that I have not paid for this service.

imo the Ice Guide Data is worth the money but it does suck that for Ice Interactive 7MC is stuffed into the "dumb PVR" box with all the STB PVR's.  :(

Daniel, is there a way to backup the scheduled recordings before doing this? (isn't it a separate file somewhere?)

Any chance of some insight by ICE staff?

BSE does not give you hard padding, Media center does however BSE by Remote allows you to override the default "if possible" padding for "always record" xx mins over (aka hard padding).

I hope someone at ICE TV is taking notes here, if they are then those missing links will come together very nicely.  Thanks for starting this post and I hope lots of people chime in and agree your suggestions are needed in the next release!

Fingers crossed. :-)

No Worries, I hope they take notice too as I really like Ice TV's Guide service and have been a customer for many years (originally owned a Toppy 5k with IceBox1).  8)

my memory is a bit faulty but I think you change your windows region to the US.

How do you get the extra meta-data? I'm using Yammm to get meta-data for my movies collection in the native movies section of 7MC and I notice that whenever I click on a movie it fills out details like full plot etc supplied by AMG and appears to be getting this info off the internet from some windows 7 source not from Yammm. Which program gets extra meta-data for tv shows in the tv guide?

Cheers, Dan

There is a US Region Flag that can be enabled in 7MC and it gets the extra data and show/movie thumbnails via Microsoft's own servers (AMG is the original source tho).

I've been setting hard padding manually once the back to back recordings have been set through IceTV Interactive which is double handling the recordings. If I set them directly in media centre then I don't have them backed up on IceTV and can't really use the iPhone app. If I set them through IceTV I have to manually set hard padding. I've found the hard padding essential as when two shows are recorded back to back the is often a delay between the end of one and start of the second. I've missed some vital final lines of tv shows!

The IceTV Interactive software has had a padding section under the recordings tab for a while now but it remains blocked out so hopefully this is something that is being worked on for the next release. At least I won't have to double handle every back to back recording.

I also remember reading somewhere that channel logos were on the agenda for a future release too.......

If 7MC was supported properly you wouldn't have to do that kind of thing!

What are the show thumbnails that you mentioned dJOS?

This is what I mean (btw, note how awesome channel logos are compared to just boring numbers!):



and here is the extra Meta-data you get including plots etc (you get the Ice Description + the extra info):