Messages

Can ICE or anybody suggest how best to set up ICE so that I don't miss the top Rugby League games? E.g. we missed the Rugby League Trans Tasman Test today because it had a different title to all the other NRL and representative games (actually we just missed the start because my wife was out and heard about it so she madly called me to record it manually). Given that sport, particularly the footy codes in Oz, are usually of strong interest to most ICE subscribers then there must be a better way for ICE to accommodate this?

If I use just a generic keyword search, e.g. "Rugby League" then I will get way too much junk recorded. I am not interested in the footy chat shows, local leagues etc. All I want (and most subscribers I suspect) is the NRL and representative games. How can I set up ICE to always get these games but not the junk?

My understanding is that the IceTV feed for the PVR can (and possibly does) contain the extra information: directors, actors, etc. Some PVRs (Topfield and Beyonwiz certainly, and possibly others) don't make use of the information, even if it's there. So the conversation is more with the PVR manufacturer than with IceTV.

Oops, sorry I did mean "C'mon Topfield", not "ICE" in my comment  :-[

Perfect!!!! Thats just what I needed...

Well it's not perfect. You have a PVR with ICE so you watch all your stuff time-slipped and set your timers via the web/iphone etc. So JustEPG ain't going to improve things much really. ICE should to tack this actor/director data into the program description so we can see it embedded on our recorded shows. C'mon ICE, that's easy (I know because my own home grown ICE xmltv grabber for my SD TF5000 from 6 years ago did exactly that).

There's an FAQ on the Topfield Forum about how IceTV works on Topfield PVRs. Unfortunately, for reasons unknown to me, the Topfield forum is now completely closed to non-members (even for reading), so I no longer post links to that forum.

Geez, I had not heard or noticed this but you are right. That is ridiculous.

Topfield have their hardware and the essential part of their firmware mostly right but they make heaps of decisions which I think are just plain stupid.

We will certainly consider IMDb, Metacritic & Rotten Tomatoes links as they are just as applicable to the website as the iPhone.

Hey Daniel, I am sure you would have seen this too but Rotten Tomatoes recently introduced an API. See http://developer.rottentomatoes.com/. Just something for you to consider.

I also occasionally get the yellow warning when the timer has actually been sent successfully (on Beyonwiz, I don't know whether that happens on Topfield).

Yep, occasionally happens on Topfield as well.

I have been forecasting this announcement from when Packer and Murdoch (owners of Fox Sports) bought into Ten recently. It was inevitable.

I stumbled on this last night and watched it live but did notice the ICE guide data seemed to have the correct duration for this program but had the next program starting about 1 hour earlier than that earlier duration would imply. Can't remember the conflicting programs or times sorry but this was in Brisbane. I am surprised that the ICE guide build process does not have some kind of sanity check that reconciles start times and durations etc.

Great show btw. Very talented and smart man.

Haha, spoken like someone who doesn't own an iPad!

Actually I bought an original 32GB 3G iPad at launch. Had it for 4 months and could not get enthused about it so sold it on ebay. Load of rubbish, should call it an iFad. ;)

Unfortunately reverting back to a channel based system would require changes across the board and updates to APIs used by third parties, in short a hell of a lot of work, so we certainly have no plans to do it any time soon if at all.

Daniel, of course I am aware that you used to have timers set by channel and that you improved this by allow them to be set by network. That is, in general, a better option and I WOULD NEVER suggest you take that away! All I am suggesting is that you provide an option for a user to set by specific channel if he occasionally wants to, as an addition the present functionality and api's etc. There just are some cases where setting by network is too coarse (as others around here have recently complained).

Why do ipad users want a specific app? Why not use the standard web site? The iphone is a little special because it is screen constrained compared to a PC but that is not true of an ipad.

I'd rather ICETV devote their meager resources to improving the standard web site which would benefit everybody, including ipad owners. They need at least to fix the obvious bug (discussed on these forums again today) that you can't set a timer for a specific channel (only network). BTW, as a developer myself, surely this is an absolutely trivial addition?

Also, I personally really would appreciate IMDB, metacritic, and rottentomatoes links added like has been done for the iphone app. Improve the consistency between iphone app and web site. The diagnostic facilities need to be improved so a user can see the last EPG, and last timer fetch, on his account, etc. Preferably provide a history log of such fetches. etc ....

Still has the "fail to return to previous position in guide/search" page bug.

Also, you really need to fix that problem where one-off shows such as movies etc are by default recorded as a series. We experienced users are used to toggling the series option off immediately but it is very confusing for new/infrequent users. A number of others on this forum have complained about this specific issue.

Daniel, this version still exhibits the same bug previous versions (or at least the immediate previous version) exhibited that sometimes returning from a programs detail page drops you back to the start of the search or guide page. I have also seen it return to a page full of horizontal lines but no content at all. Somebody else here mentioned this bug recently. Please ensure this bug is on your list.

My 2c of comment.

I wrote my own xmltv grabber, favorites matcher and timer setter etc for my slug with my old TF5000. I have used it for many years now. At one point long ago, I tried to add priorities on favorites matches with an algorithm for dealing with timer clashes but it is surprisingly difficult. What do you do with coallesced programs with mulitple priorities etc? What if that coallesced series clashes with a much shorter but higher priorty program. Eventually I realised that the clashes can only really be satisfactorily dealt with by human resolve. So I changed my program to merely email me whenever it detects a clash. The email tells me the clashed programs etc and I resolve them manually. With my families (admittedly light) viewing habits, I only get about 2 emails a year so it works well for me and I suspect for many others. So perhaps ICE could also consider adding an "email on timer clash" option?

It's a pity a refresh takes so long though ...