Please Please consider a HD/SD preference :-[ and other interface quirks.

[tonymy01]

Ok, this has mucked me up yet again, something MUST be done about this.
I have a series record setup for "Californication" on TenHD.   I don't have a red dot for Sunday night, ahh, I see it is only on TenSD this week.    No problems, with the widget, I choose to series record the only episode of Californication this week.   Nope.  Nothing.    I go to the web page instead of the widget, search for Californication, choose to series record "this channel".  Nope.  Nothing.
Then a small synapse clicked "ahh, because I have a series record for the TenHD version, it might be rejecting my attempts to create one for the TenSD version".... and sure enough, in a grey bar at the top of the guide webpage, a "error: already a series recording in place" message is there.    You really need to put these errors in a pop-up, or next to the guide entry that you are attempting to create a series record for, since this was down the bottom of the web page that I was trying to create the recording, but the error was way up the top of the web page.
You also really need to have another preference, that if the show appears on both SD and HD, to choose one or the other, not both.   Then I can either choose "all channels" in confidence that I am not taking up two recording slots for the same show, or choose some kind of new option "record on this channel unless not on this channel this week but on the other channel" (I have a sneaking suspicion this option won't be considered  ;))
I am a fairly clued up person, and even I struggle with the interface quirks of ICE. 

example1:
Try to setup a series record for a show.   No red dot appears.  What is going on?   Ahh, I set it up for first runs, and this show is marked as a repeat.   I don't know how many times that has stung me!   You should provide a pop-up when initiating a series record that shows what timers are going to be created for the week, and if none, indicate that the current show you have attempted to initiate a series recording from is a repeat when you are asking for 1st runs.

example2:
All my timers for this week (created prior to DST changover) were all an hour too early.   Ok, so you send the timers to the PVR (in my case, Beyonwiz) in GMT.   Ouch, not many (none?) PVRs have logic to know exactly "ok, I will add 10hours to the timers this week, but I can see the transition is this Sunday, so any timers I create for after that transition time I will add 11hours to".   Can you please also add a GMT offset to your protocol, and work with the PVR teams to read this extra protocol info.   Of course you may already do this, but with no explanation of your protocol to date, I have no idea how it is meant to behave.    Your FAQ says to this problem "you need to resend your timers from this page"... so I deleted all the incorrect timers from the Beyonwiz timer interface, go to the ICE page to resend all timers, initiate the option and zip, nothing.   No timers got resent (well, maybe 3 timers out of about 30 and in about 6 days time!).   So I tried the "resend on Beyonwiz device" and "resend on all devices" about 4 or 5 times in 2 days.   Still not all timers re-appeared.   I had to see my shows were coming up in the Widget or Web (with no red dots!!), and ICE interactive knows there is series recordings setup for these shows (as I can't create a new series recording for them) so I have the option of "record" and this worked about 90% of the time.

example3:
May be related partially to example2.   It seems that if you want to make a change to a series recording, everything gets itself in a twist for that week.  It normally takes a week for it to iron out whatever the heck the quirk is.   Typically you delete a series record, then change your mind or want to make it a specific channel instead of all channels, and attempting to get ICE interactive to get that cute little red dot again on the show in nearly impossible.   If only the red dots could be as reliable as the Yellow Love hearts.  These little things are 100% reliable on my "favourites".


Something is not right, and needs more work.   Please don't try and pin all the blame on the STB manufacturer.   Sure, if you send timers in GMT, then the STB manufacturer should really think ahead about what happens during transition time, but given I haven't come across a STB that handles the DST transition seamlessly as yet (ok, I have managed to make the 5K do this by creating a TAP that uses timezone code and the TZ tables... but that is an exception), and you can read dozens of posts on dtvforums about broadcasters mucking up TOT and/or TDT tables, the chances of a STB getting the correct information for DST transition is slim at best.

I hope these points get considered, I think all of them have come up in the past in one way or another, sometimes I get a tad frustrated by the fragileness of the ICE interface and the lack of feedback about why something isn't behaving the way I expect it to, and also the lack of knowing how the whole protocol is really meant to behave for initiating and updating timers from Interactive to the PVR.

Regards
Tony

[deangelj]

Re DST, why is there talk of GMT and time offsets?  I view the IceTV EPG and timers with my local time. My PVR is set to my local time. Send the timers assuming local time! No special coding is required, right?

cheers,
John

[tonymy01]

When we complained about the timers being one hour out, ICE said it was because the Beyonwiz wasn't DST aware.   Thus I have to assume they send the timers as GMT, as there is no other way this problem could happen (as once the timers are created, the Wiz stores them in local time too, thus why my own daily timer didn't alter by one hour when I fixed the GMT offset for the clock).
I am guessing your statement was somewhat rhetorical, possibly questioning the way ICE does things.
The good thing about being GMT for timers is there is no question about what to do at 2am Sunday morning of the DST transition (as there is two 2ams when DST ends).   But I reckon for sure they should also provide the GMT offset to the timers in the protocol also, so that PVRs don't have to have a tonne of logic to apply different rules when creating timers before and after a transition.
Regards

[deangelj]

When we complained about the timers being one hour out, ICE said it was because the Beyonwiz wasn't DST aware.   Thus I have to assume they send the timers as GMT, as there is no other way this problem could happen (as once the timers are created, the Wiz stores them in local time too, thus why my own daily timer didn't alter by one hour when I fixed the GMT offset for the clock).
I am guessing your statement was somewhat rhetorical, possibly questioning the way ICE does things.
The good thing about being GMT for timers is there is no question about what to do at 2am Sunday morning of the DST transition (as there is two 2ams when DST ends).   But I reckon for sure they should also provide the GMT offset to the timers in the protocol also, so that PVRs don't have to have a tonne of logic to apply different rules when creating timers before and after a transition.
Regards

Hi Tony - yes I am questioning why they are using/storing times in GMT. If I was to record something that is scheduled for 2am from the icetv guide it would be ambiguous as to what time it would start regardless of using GMT or not for my timers. I know that when I set something to record at time "x" that the time is referring to my local time. The icetv guide is showing me the times in my local time - why then do any GMT manipulations at all? Therefore send the timers in local time for the PVR in question. The PVR (at least the Topfields) use local time for the timers.

cheers,
John

[Vortical]

Because the HD/SD preference isn't fixed/implemented people are going to miss TenHD recordings on Sunday night now that MotorGP has taken over Ten HD from 5pm onwards.
Anyone who watches Australian Idol and has their timer set to HD will miss Sunday Nights show.

I'm also getting mighty sick of checking My Upcoming timers to see if any are missing.
Every week there is always something not getting picked up that requires me to manually update the timer.

Admittedly a few weeks ago I set the Series timer up for my 7100 then deleted the timer, waited a few hours then reset it for the Beyonwiz this time.
Since then every single week it's missing a recording icon and states it's a 7100 series timer.  After I manually click on update after selecting the Series in My Shows it then corrects itself. but to be honest I should never have to do this.

[tonymy01]

Thank goodness I don't have two devices setup in the Interactive interface.  It is bad enough trying to understand the quirks when only one is setup :-)

I got an explanation (in a PM, sorry for those that have read this in the other thread) for why the "resend all timers" doesn't actually do what it claims (in the FAQ for the issue also!).    When you delete a timer from the PVR, it sends some kind of info back to ICE interactive to indicate that the user doesn't want to record the show for that week.   Fair enough I suppose.  So it becomes a tad difficult from that point in time (until the next week comes along an everything is back to normal) to get the ICE interface to send that timer back to the PVR (or light up the icon in the widget/web with a red dot).   You have to manually select the "record" option, face your PC and PVR towards the blue planet, and pray to the BSG Gods.
Regards

[Bluesuede]

+1 on the request for a HD/SD preference option.

I prefer to set my recordings for the HD channels. If something else gets scheduled on the HD channel and the regular program is only shown on the SD channel then the recording won't occur if you have the series option set to "This channel only" for the HD channel. If you set it for "Any channel" then you get recordings for BOTH the SD and the HD broadcast of the program if it is shown on both. The only way around this is to cancel the single episode scheduled on the SD channel, or to record shows week by week instead of by series. Kind of defeats the purpose of series recording doesn't it? I don't want to record both channels - I want to record a show on the HD channel, or alternatively if HD scheduling changes, on the SD channel. I would have thought this would be a fairly necessary feature for series recordings?

[Daniel Hall at IceTV]

We are looking at the best way to implement a HD/SD preference option for series recording, no time frame at this stage, but definitely being worked on.

[Trial_Master]

We are looking at the best way to implement a HD/SD preference option for series recording, no time frame at this stage, but definitely being worked on.

Any updates on this since Oct 08 Daniel?

[j s]

We are looking at the best way to implement a HD/SD preference option for series recording, no time frame at this stage, but definitely being worked on.

Any updates on this since Oct 08 Daniel?

There's been no effective update since they first said they were "looking at it" almost 12 months ago (though keyword recordings do help in some circumstances.).

On the subject of keyword recordings why is there no "SD Preferred" option? Surely this would be trivial since the logic would be the same as for "HD Preferred".  Ditto for a "High Definition" equivalent of the "Standard Definition" choice (though personally I can't see much need for either of these - no one who likes a series would want to miss an episode just because Channel X decided not show it in HD (or SD) this week).  Maybe also a choice that matches the HD flag of the EPG entry (ie if the show is flagged as HD in the EPG then treat as "HD preferred", if not so flagged then treat as "SD Preferred") - call it Auto Preferred maybe or whatever.

The "Preferred" option is a great feature but it needs to be taken a few steps further for Keyword recordings and extended to Series recordings also.

[tonymy01]

Argh, keyword recording sux (so I have just found out now the ratings season is in full swing and Sieben(7HD) and Tonne of SDonly(10HD) are shafting 90% of their HD shows to SD only, but not always).
I can't for the life of me get it to record "24" (not "Final 24"..... and I have already tried- 24 "Day 7" and there is still red dots against "Final 24"... so I tried- 24 "Day 7" -"final 24" and this hasn't done the trick either).  Regexp would be great to say match the whole title.   Similarly for "Lost", there is a heap of shows with "lost" in the description etc.  Why can't I just get it to match on the title (and then the whole title rather than just keyword)?   This needs some serious overhall to make it useful :-(

OR

Bring the SD/HD preference for standard (non-keyword) timers.  PLEASE PLEASE pretty please (and while you are at it, bring a preference system in for supporting no more than X overlapping timers, I found a couple of nights next week has about 6 timers and there is no chance in heck any dual tuner PVR will cope with that one without culling of the less important shows in a preference system).
Regards

[prl]

Another reason for HD Preferred.

The last season of Border Security screened on both Prime SD and Prime HD in the ACT. I had a series recording set on Prime HD, "This channel only," because "Any channel" being the way it is, would have recorded both the SD and HD versions.

So comes the new season of BS, and Prime decides that it'll program "The All In Call" on HD in that timeslot. So the first episode rolls around, and the Other Owner is frowning  >:( because there's no recording: "Why didn't Border Security record?" Well, clearly: each new season, I need to check all my "This channel only" series recordings against the whims of the program schedulers as to which shows they'll deign to make available in HD.  ::)

[Trial_Master]

Biggest Loser is on SD only later in the week. The HD/SD preference really needs to be fast tracked it's an elementary requirement with the networks chopping and changing their schedules.

[bed42]

Biggest Loser is on SD only later in the week. The HD/SD preference really needs to be fast tracked it's an elementary requirement with the networks chopping and changing their schedules.

I'd just like to add my vote to this - currently I have everything scheduled for "Any Channel" and am manually deleting duplicate schedulings or recordings. Not ideal, but better than missing a recording and having a grumpy wife!

[Trial_Master]

I'm running Keyword Record for The Biggest Loser to avoid what you've mentioned.