Obnoxious program timing - a feature request

[Baylo]

I noticed this evening that setting ER to record (from 10pm to 11pm) caused my scheduled recording of CSI (9pm to 10pm) to get 'bumped'. Why? Because the program guide thinks that ER starts at 9.59 and therefore conflicts with CSI which finishes at 10pm.

Now, I know that I could set a manual recording to deal with this, but I wonder if there could be a way of giving BTV an 'overlap' parameter so that if two consecutive programs overlap by one or two minutes (user-definable, preferably) they would both be recorded and the user could define whether the first or second program would get priority for recording in the overlap period. Inevitably it will be adverts on one or both channels in this period anyway.

Or maybe this feature already exists, and I haven't found it yet...

What do you think?

Mark

[Brett]

Nothing exists yet to fix this particular problem, but your not alone, this was well debated in the beta forum, and seems to be of strong interest to Snapstream.

-Brett

[Gunn]

Yea, me too! I had this problem appear over the last two weeks in a row and couldn't figure out why one of my programs didn't record (they're on early in the morning on the weekend and so I never seen them on the EPG, labelled).

Now I found out that one starts at 0730, ends at 0800. The other starts at 0800 and ends at 0830, different channels. The second one was never being recorded, only because they overlap by the one minute overlap I have selected!! That's pretty crazy. If nothing else, when the one currently being recorded is done, it should then go to the next one that is in queue to be recorded.

[Cayars]

Yea, crazy thing is if you shut down BTV and then re-open it the software WILL start recording the second show.

Go figure.

[Brett]

Originally posted by Cayars
Yea, crazy thing is if you shut down BTV and then re-open it the software WILL start recording the second show.

Go figure.

Do you realize HOW GOOD OF A POINT this is

-Brett

[Baylo]

Yep, I noticed that too - though I forgot to mention that in my first post. Bizarre isn't it?

Mark

[bluchez]

I have actually noticed something different happening. I had 2 back to back programs that I recorded and watched them back to back as well. I think I have 2 minute padding or so, and the recordings actually overlapped all 4 minutes. I was under the impression that overlap was called off if you were recording back to back, but BTV actually recorded the same video to 2 different files simultaneously. Why did this work for me? Does Hardware encoding allow BTV to do this?

Just curious.

[Cayars]

Originally posted by RadioActive


Do you realize HOW GOOD OF A POINT this is

-Brett

Yes that's why I posted it

[Baylo]

Originally posted by Cayars


Yes that's why I posted it

OK - I'm dumb. I know this happens, but why is this a good point? How is this knowledge useful to me - are you suggesting that I sit in front of the TV and reboot at the appropriate time?

M

[Cayars]

Well if you don't have anything better to do...

[Cayars]

Sorry about that

Actually, I was showing/saying in a rather warped sense how much of a stupid code/algorithm bug this. i.e. You can't record the second show because of a conflict, but if you re-start the program then the conflict goes away and the second show IS recorded.

Bret (Radio Active) got the warped post I made and commented back "Do you realize HOW GOOD OF A POINT this is ".

Baylo, the knowledge isn't strictly useful to you in a "here's how you fix it" kind of way, but the knowledge is that SS is aware of it and is trying to fix it (at least one would hope)

[Baylo]

Got it! That's how I interpreted your post the first time, and then I began to wonder if I was missing something.

I agree, it's a strange bug to have - let's hope it's fixed soon.

Cheers,

M

[zachariah]

:crosses fingers:

[Rich A]

I haven't had the problem of missing the 2nd of two back to back shows. My HTPC runs 24/7 and it's rarely rebooted and the BTV is also rarely re-started.

But the problem I have is the way the padding is featured.

I would like to be able to "Pad" either the start OR end OR both of the shows. Also the lowest pad amount is 1 minute and when it's applied generally across the board, (to both beginning and end) it causes problems for me with some back to back shows.

1. allow padding of (at minimum 30) seconds, or 15, or 45 would be good too.
2. allow padding of EITHER front or back or Both as options
3. allow padding "by show" instead of being universally applied.

I guess the most useful of the three if I had to choose one would be # 3.

My ReplayTV appliance does #'s 2 and 3 and works out quite well. In fact if we were able to apply the padding to selected shows only, with a choice of pre or post padding (or both) I think we might even be able to do away with #1.

FWIW, when I do have back to back shows and a one minute pad envoked, if the show is starting early I DO get it recorded okay, but the second show ends up with it's beginning being part of the end of the first one. Then there is about a 2 to 5 second "gap" until the 2nd show starts. If I could only pad the beginning (at least) there wouldn't be a problem.

I would love to "pad" only the end of "Everyone Loves Raymond" as I always loose the last 15 seconds and miss the closing "joke". <grin> If I envoke the current pad option at it's minimum of 1 minute (front and back) then E-L-R is fine .. BUT it screws up other shows. To pad by show and optionally front or back would be a great upgrade IMHO.

[Brett]

Originally posted by Rich A
would love to "pad" only the end of "Everyone Loves Raymond" as I always loose the last 15 seconds and miss the closing "joke".

Padding by shows is expected in the mysterious 3.5 version

Also to note previous comments above: the behavior is not a "bug", but instead just not optimized algorithms. I was agreeing with Cayars that by reseting BTV it shows the capability is there, but not really. The fact is the TiVO does the exact same thing, go to one of their forums and all you hear from them is how they are threatening to run down to NBC and poke them with pitchforks until they fix the guide data.

The ideal algorithm would place highest priority shows first, and continue to fill in the 'blank' time up until an overlap. So if ER was #1 (yuck!) at 8:59p - 10:00p, and Friends was #2 and started at 8:30 - 9:00p. It would schedule ER from 8:59p-10:00p, and then Friends woudl fill the 'gap' from 8:30 - 8:59p (that is up until the overlap). Likewise, if you swapped them ER was now #2 on priority. It would schedule Friends from 8:30 - 9:00, and then see the gap available from 9:00-10:00 and schedule ER at that time (cutting the 1st minute of ER).

Currently it does highest to lowest, but if time overlap is > 0 it just skips it.

Absolutely no PVR I know of does this alogrithm, so I have to assume its more difficult then it sounds, but truly would be the ultimate solution without bandaiding the problem with dual tuners. Who knows maybe BTV v4.0?

-Brett