Tasks not getting to my BW P1

[seanslife]

Hi all

I have updated the FW on my BW P1 today and initiated a bunch (approx 20) tasks on IceTV Interactive ...II. Some of the tasks have been sent to my BW and some have not, for instance a series-record task for Insiders and Offsiders tomorrow is still not on my BW even though I enetered the tasks on II over four hours ago. The icons are showing as 'queued series' ie they have the black dot in the series-record icon. Other tasks, series and single, have made it through to the BW but nothing I've entered most recently.

The BW says it is 'getting shedule tasks: OK'. To me it seems the BW is talking to the II server but the II server has nothing new to tell the BW. Any thoughts?
Edit: I just set a brand new series task (the Giro i'talia on SBS), and it worked fine on both the II website AND it was on my BW within the hour, weird... is it something to do with timers named the same as old but now-deleted BW timers perhaps?

Cheers
Sean

[j s]

I'm really just guessing but from my own observations it seems to have everything to do with previously existing timers. Interactive seems to have serious bugs and design flaws.

[prl]

I agree about Interactive being a bit flakey, but I'm not sure about pre-existing timers being he cause. I have two timers on the BW that were created on the BW; they show up correctly in Interactive. I have has a number of "interesting" problems, especially with recordings showing up correctly in My Shows, but not in My Upcoming Shows, and not on the BW. I've often found that if I delete the recording, wait a day or so and re-try, it comes good. I also occasionally get error messages about duplicate entries.

[j s]

"waiting a day or so" is not exactly the responsiveness needed when setting timers remotely  :(

The relevance of pre-existing timers seems to be if you delete them - Interactive then seems to decide that you don't actually want them. But all of this is just guessing till Ice actually explains the logic of how the process works (or is supposed to work).

These first few days I've been doing a lot of experimenting which has possible stuffed Interactive up - but it shouldn't because I haven't been doing anything other than what I would  expect to be able to do, though perhaps a bit more of it.

[prl]

I wasn't saying that "waiting a day or so" was acceptable; just that over time some of the problems I had resolved themselves.

Since I have stopped experimenting, the number of problems I've had has diminished, too, but I don't think I was doing anything really out of the ordinary. The reduction in problems I've had may also have been partly due to IceTV Interactive changes since I started playing with IceTV Interactive; I also had many more problems using BW firmware 1.05.232 than I've had with 1.05.235.

[j s]

That last bit is good to hear - I moved to 235 yesterday.

Wasn't having a go at you about "waiting a day or so" - just that it seems to be the IceInteractive design philosophy that waiting an indeterminate period for things to happen is acceptable.

They seem to forget that people won't wait - they'll then start trying to make it happen - which is when Interactive seems to get *really* screwed.

I hope Beyonwiz releases a public web api so I can  build my own web application - based on ToppyWeb of course  ;)

[seanslife]

Update: Some (approx 75%) of the stalled tasks got through to the BW which is good news. The tasks that didn't make it are now much later in the week ie they begin again on Fri... I wonder if there is a 'day of the week' batch processing of tasks issue here.

Alas after raising a service ticket with IceTv support on Sat night I have still not heard anything from them, so I guess it's up to us to figure out?

I too am still confused about the intermittent sending of Tasks, sure some that haven't made it to the BW have been old BW timers I cancelled but not all.

Sean

[prl]

...
They seem to forget that people won't wait - they'll then start trying to make it happen - which is when Interactive seems to get *really* screwed.

Agreed, some of the problems I had were after doing a few operations fairly close together (but always waiting for the page refresh to complete after the change). I don't think I should ever need to wait longer than that on a web interface.

I hope Beyonwiz releases a public web api so I can  build my own web application - based on ToppyWeb of course  ;)

Not a public Beyonwiz interface, but Eric Fry's WizRemote was an attempt to do allow Web programming of the BW.

[j s]

I hope Beyonwiz releases a public web api so I can  build my own web application - based on ToppyWeb of course  ;)

Not a public Beyonwiz interface, but Eric Fry's WizRemote was an attempt to do allow Web programming of the BW.

I know - I added (incomplete) alpha support for the BW to ToppyWeb (aka PVRweb & WizWeb) using Eric's interface. Having to reboot is the major downside of that method and it also seems that timers added/deleted that way screw up InterActive. Presumably because the Ice code in the BW gets confused about timer changes that it doesn't get to see happen.

For the moment I'm not using WizRemote except to monitor what timers are actually present on the Wiz (ie checking up on what InterActive is doing and when)

[prl]

...
For the moment I'm not using WizRemote except to monitor what timers are actually present on the Wiz (ie checking up on what InterActive is doing and when)

The BW firmware updates for IceTV Interactive appear to have added some extra attributes to the XML file containing the timers. Possibly Eric's code doesn't handle them. If processing timers through his code means the extra attributes get lost, that would confuse things mightily. I don't think there's been an update to WizRemote since 1.05.232, which introduced IceTV Interactive to the BW.

[j s]

I'm not using Eric's latest anyway - all the more reason to use it only for display. And I don't have telnet running any more since going to 235