Beyonwiz erratically not recording

ice123456789 · November 01, 2011, 10:33:37 PM

My Beyonwiz P2 (old hardware but latest appropriate firmware) is failing to record some programs, while recording others. The ICETV guide shows all the programs as being scheduled to record, but some timers do not appear on the P2. There does not seem to be any pattern to which shows record and which do not. This has been going on for some months. If I clear all of the timers on the P2, and resend all timers from ICETV, then wait, most (all?) of the pending programs do appear as timers. However, as new timers come to be set, some will fail to appear. I'm not sure if this is an ICETV problem or a Beyonwiz problem. Any ideas?

Dave at IceTV · November 03, 2011, 06:42:26 PM

This sounds like what can sometimes happen when you have more than one Beyonwiz in your account.

Does the Beyonwiz have any old timers at the top of the Time List popup? If so, you must delete them. I also always check the timer list after doing a 'clear timers' from the menu because corrupt timers can get left behind.

Does the Beyonwiz have any other symptoms like HDD issues or file playback issues?

ice123456789 · November 03, 2011, 08:48:23 PM

Thanks for your reply. I only have one Beyonwiz. I'm not having any apparent HDD or playback problems. I recently changed the HDD. The problem was worse before that, but I put that down to constantly running out of disk space. The new disk is 1T and nowhere near full. I have occasionally noticed the leftover timers which I delete, but I am fairly sure that the missed timer problem occurs even when there are no leftover timers around. Since the problem is intermittent, it's hard to be sure.

prl · November 04, 2011, 06:35:18 PM

Quote from: ice123456789 on November 03, 2011, 08:48:23 PM
... I have occasionally noticed the leftover timers which I delete, but I am fairly sure that the missed timer problem occurs even when there are no leftover timers around. Since the problem is intermittent, it's hard to be sure.

Leftover timers are a normal indication that a timer did not complete (including failing to start). Despite what Dave at IceTV says, I've never found an occasional leftover timer on my Beyonwizes to cause any problems (beyond the fact that that timer's recording may not have been created).

Recordings failing to start from standby can be an indication of a problem with the front panel clock not keeping time properly. Beyonwiz Support has recently posted on the Beyonwiz Forum about how to check the front panel clock.

If it's not down to a faulty front panel clock, you may need to get systematic and note down all the timers you expect to be sent, check that they are marked as sent on your IceTV Web page, check that the timer actually got to your Beyonwiz, and then check whether the timer actually created a recording and whether it left a "leftover" timer. It's possible that you may start to see some sort of useful pattern emerging.

rickym · January 08, 2012, 06:57:29 PM

Quote from: prl on November 04, 2011, 06:35:18 PMIf it's not down to a faulty front panel clock, you may need to get systematic and note down all the timers you expect to be sent, check that they are marked as sent on your IceTV Web page, check that the timer actually got to your Beyonwiz, and then check whether the timer actually created a recording and whether it left a "leftover" timer. It's possible that you may start to see some sort of useful pattern emerging.

Hi,

I've been having similar problems lately with IceTV in that certain programs are not being recorded that should be.

1. If I go into IceTV and "My Shows", all programs are there that should be, including some (maybe ten) for which the series has finished and a new one is expceted.

2. If I then go into "My Week" some programs that should be there are not. Likewise, they are not in my "Timers" in my BeyonWiz.

Will resetting of Timers fix this or is there something more serious wrong with it? Is this a common problem?

Cheers,

Rick

prl · January 08, 2012, 07:19:46 PM

Quote from: rickym on January 08, 2012, 06:57:29 PM
...
I've been having similar problems lately with IceTV in that certain programs are not being recorded that should be.

1. If I go into IceTV and "My Shows", all programs are there that should be, including some (maybe ten) for which the series has finished and a new one is expceted.

"My Shows" lists all the shows that you've marked as somehow being interesting to you, either as recordings or favourites, whether they're currently showing or not.

Quote from: rickym on January 08, 2012, 06:57:29 PM
2. If I then go into "My Week" some programs that should be there are not. Likewise, they are not in my "Timers" in my BeyonWiz.

If they're not shown as recordings in My Week, then they shouldn't be appearing on the Beyonwiz. That much is correct behaviour. It's otherwise hard to tell what the problem might be from your description. Are the programs that don't show up in My Week marked as repeats in the IceTV guide? If they are, have you set the series recording to record First Runs and Repeats?

Quote from: rickym on January 08, 2012, 06:57:29 PM
Will resetting of Timers fix this or is there something more serious wrong with it? Is this a common problem?
...

Resetting where and how? It's hard to tell just what the problem is from your description, so it's hard to tell whether it's a common problem.

rickym · January 08, 2012, 09:22:19 PM

Hi Peter,

Thanks for your comments.

Quote from: prl on January 08, 2012, 07:19:46 PMIf they're not shown as recordings in My Week, then they shouldn't be appearing on the Beyonwiz. That much is correct behaviour. It's otherwise hard to tell what the problem might be from your description. Are the programs that don't show up in My Week marked as repeats in the IceTV guide? If they are, have you set the series recording to record First Runs and Repeats?

I would expect programs that are not repeats that are listed in "My Shows" to also appear in "My Week" such as Hogfather on the ABC the other night -- we were out and wanted to watch it on another night. I don 't belive that it was a repeat.

Cheers,

Rick

prl · January 08, 2012, 11:34:19 PM

Quote from: rickym on January 08, 2012, 09:22:19 PM
Hi Peter,

Thanks for your comments.

Quote from: prl on January 08, 2012, 07:19:46 PMIf they're not shown as recordings in My Week, then they shouldn't be appearing on the Beyonwiz. That much is correct behaviour. It's otherwise hard to tell what the problem might be from your description. Are the programs that don't show up in My Week marked as repeats in the IceTV guide? If they are, have you set the series recording to record First Runs and Repeats?

I would expect programs that are not repeats that are listed in "My Shows" to also appear in "My Week" such as Hogfather on the ABC the other night -- we were out and wanted to watch it on another night. I don 't belive that it was a repeat.

Cheers,

Rick

You're still leaving me with almost no explanation of what you've done and what has happened.

rickym · January 09, 2012, 08:49:06 AM

G'day Peter,

OK. I haven't done anything over the last week, having set it all up some weeks ago. Until this week, it all worked fine. What I see in IceTV is in the two attachments. True, most shows there are in recess. However, I thought I could leave them there for later this year when the new series started -- maybe not. The fact remains that one show, Hogfather, did not record when I believe that it should. It's listed in "My Shows".

Cheers,

Rick

PS. How do you run a spell check with this new system, please? I am on another forum that I think uses the same program (well, it looks and operates the same) and a button occurs beside the "Post" and "Preview" button for checking spelling. We don't seem to have it here.

rickym · January 09, 2012, 11:10:20 AM

Sorry Peter and anyone else who's been looking into this. It was a repeat :-[. I humbly apologise for wasting your time.

Rick

prl · January 09, 2012, 11:17:22 AM

No problem. That's what I suspected. Have you reset the "Record" setting for it to "First runs and repeats"? That should get it to at least record the second episode. I can understand the confusion, because the other recent Terry Pratchett miniseries, Going Postal, was not a repeat. Is this the problem for any of the other shows you expected to record, and which didn't?

If you want to watch the first episode of Hogfather, you can view it online on ABC's iView any time in the next 12 days. iView picture quality isn't all that great, but it's OK for many things. iView bandwidth is about 1Mb/s, so the viewing the whole show will be about 900MBytes. My ISP (iiNet) doesn't include iView in my quota, so using iView is quite handy for me. You may want to see if your ISP has a similar arrangement.

Shows that are "in recess" remain in your My Shows list (as I mentioned in my first reply), and if their settings are appropriate, the shows will start recording again without further intervention when they resume, if they do, when the ratings season resumes. This is a feature of IceTV, and as I mentioned before, is simply how it works. Don't be surprised if your My Shows list eventually gets quite large, though. Mine has close to 300 shows in it.

As for spelling checking, I just use the built-in spelling checking in my browser (Firefox, though I'm sure that many other browsers have a similar feature). It underlines any misspelt (or at least unrecognised) words in red, and if I right-click over such a word it shows a menu of alternatives. However, the forum's own Spell Check button seems to work fine for me.

rickym · January 09, 2012, 12:43:10 PM

G'day again, Peter,

Quote from: prl on January 09, 2012, 11:17:22 AM. . . . I can understand the confusion, because the other recent Terry Pratchett miniseries, Going Postal, was not a repeat. Is this the problem for any of the other shows you expected to record, and which didn't?

That is exactly what happened. Thanks for being so understanding. It was a problem with another program, but suspect now that I made the same error. I'll be more careful with repeats in the future.

Quote from: prl on January 09, 2012, 11:17:22 AMAs for spelling checking, I just use the built-in spelling checking in my browser (Firefox, though I'm sure that many other browsers have a similar feature). It underlines any misspelt (or at least unrecognised) words in red, and if I right-click over such a word it shows a menu of alternatives. However, the forum's own Spell Check button seems to work fine for me.

It seems that spellchecker was not enabled, but it is now. I don't know whether that was just for me or all users. Nevertheless, Daniel Hall had a look at it and it is fine now. And yes, with larger posts, like this one, I do it in a wordprocessor, then copy it into the forum and format it there. I tried deleting the reference to it in my post above, but it wouldn't let me -- please see http://forum.icetv.com.au/iceforum/index.php?topic=3254.msg15876#new.

Have a good day,

Rick

prl · January 09, 2012, 02:50:05 PM

Quote from: rickym on January 09, 2012, 12:43:10 PM
...
It seems that spellchecker was not enabled, but it is now. I don't know whether that was just for me or all users. Nevertheless, Daniel Hall had a look at it and it is fine now. ...

When I posted, it had been enabled. I hadn't see your discussion with Daniel about it in another area before I posted here.