BTV & The "Law and Order" Problem

[Arknovich]

Other people must have what can be called the "Law and Order" problem. Law and Order is on, roughly, 157 times a day in rerun. Let' say you want to record two or three episodes a day. You cannot set BTV to record all episodes. Your disk will fill up in two days, and, anyway, you might want to record something else sometimes.

So you have to manually enter the times to record the show. But then:


1. When you do set up a manual (time-based) recording, there is no program info associated with it. So, after a couple days, you have a bunch of episodes of Law and Order with no descriptions -- so you cannot tell if you've seen it before.

2. Setting up manual recordings is a pain. Having to manually enter time/duration/channel/title with a remote is very tedious. You should be able to set up time based recording through the guide. My DirectTV PVR worked like this.

A really good PVR needs to have good support for both program- and time-based recording

[weezer1024]

First, law and order should also have the show titles in the description, BTV in theory shouldn't record more than one unique show per day, but as you said there are dozens of different law and orders on a day too.

This is the same problem with many shows on Discovery, or any of the specialty channels. For example, Daily Planet is on 7 times a day (3 times before 10am even). Daily planet has no show title, just the name. If you do a "record all" you'll get 7 recordings a day, and very often shows like that (particularily in the case of the thousands of law and orders) are always displayed as repeats so doing a "record new" doesn't work either.

I guess what would be ideal is for BTV to have an option to record at most one show (or however many) a day. You could select record all, and then change the recording setting to a max of one recording a day, or however many. Add it to the feature request list, who knows...

[mrgrocery]

Law and Order is not the only problem. In Canada I have the 'Simpsons' and 'Seinfeld' problem. The way I solved it was selecting a few channels to always record from(I find with the episodes the rotate through anyways between the weeks) plus I scan through snapstream search once or twice a week to see if there are any other episodes of interest. Personally I don't see a realistic solution for the PVR to automatically record a certain number of episodes in one day, everyday.

[Papa Smurph]

Originally Posted by weezer1024

I guess what would be ideal is for BTV to have an option to record at most one show (or however many) a day. You could select record all, and then change the recording setting to a max of one recording a day, or however many. Add it to the feature request list, who knows...

Kind of like the request in this thread: Combined "Max Shows"/"Keep Until I delete it" Feature!

The only difference is that thread is requesting an absolute limit, not a limit per day. In my experience, the absolute limit is much more useful. With a limit per day, if I go on vacation or get busy and can't watch much TV, my hard drive might fill up. Not a good thing.

[HomeyFour]

Originally Posted by weezer1024

I guess what would be ideal is for BTV to have an option to record at most one show (or however many) a day. You could select record all, and then change the recording setting to a max of one recording a day, or however many. Add it to the feature request list, who knows...

There is an option in BTV to set a max number of shows to record for a giving recording event. This doesn't reset every day, though... so you'd have to either watch and delete the recorded shows, or setup a batch file of some sort to move them to a different folder after midnight or something.

[jmtyra]

You know, this could be the cable provider.

I record all 4 flavors of Law & Order (Regular, Trial By Jury, Special Victims, Criminal Intent).
There is always a description of what the show that I watch.

So, I wonder where SS gets the guide information for each area?
Maybe some providers give more detail then others?

@ HomeyFour, I think you've got the answer there.
I use the limitation on max number of recordings, and it works rather well.

Good luck all...

[boomerang]

I must be lucky...my EPG data is pretty good, using just the standard Snapstream feed and Comcast cable. I have Law & Order set to record all episodes. I don't have any problems with duplicate recordings...

[kramsauer]

Why not set it to record 2 - 3 max, and give it a low priority? That way it will always have new episodes for you to watch and it will never pre-empt another show? That's what I do.

[weezer1024]

Originally Posted by kramsauer

Why not set it to record 2 - 3 max, and give it a low priority? That way it will always have new episodes for you to watch and it will never pre-empt another show? That's what I do.

If you miss a day you've just lost the previous day's show.

[nanook105]

Originally Posted by weezer1024

If you miss a day you've just lost the previous day's show.

But, they are reruns anyway, and there isn't any guarantee of order, so does it matter ?

[Arknovich]

Is it just me, or do other people have the problem of not getting guide info (program description, etc) for manual recordings?

[weezer1024]

Originally Posted by nanook105

But, they are reruns anyway, and there isn't any guarantee of order, so does it matter ?

Well, we're not just talking about one show here. While we've focused on Law and Order the problem exists with a show I watch all the time, that's Daily Planet on Discovery. The show airs several times a day and they are not (usually) reruns as it's a news program of sorts. The problem with the solution suggested (just set it to record only 2 or 3) will not work as shows that I have not yet watched will very quickly get overwriten with one of the new shows from a single day.

It's not just Law and Order. It's every single show that doesn't display a show title with it's guide data. (Daily planet in particular display only the show's name and a description in the guide. There's not the typical "<show name> - <show title>: description" format you'd see with lots, but not all, other shows.) Granted that type of guide data for a show is typically seen, at least in my experience, around shows that are in syndication, but again, not all. It's an unfortunate combination of poor guide data and bad logic (at least in this specific case) behind the recording scheduler.

Here's a question for someone, what does a Tivo do in this case? BTV claims to be better than tivo...

[nanook105]

So, is this issue limited to new shows with either bad/not specific guide data or a BTV logic issue ? I think that reruns are covered.

[kramsauer]

Originally Posted by weezer1024

If you miss a day you've just lost the previous day's show.

Yeah, but you have one to replace it. Do you really want to watch every law and order that's on? It seems like having 3 ready to watch at any given time would be enough.

[weezer1024]

Originally Posted by kramsauer

Yeah, but you have one to replace it. Do you really want to watch every law and order that's on? It seems like having 3 ready to watch at any given time would be enough.

I'll re-iterate, it's not just law and order. See my previous post.