Increasing the W.A.F. (Wife Acceptance Factor)

[gEd]

I endorse the Harmony Remote - absolutely essential (for me, too ).

Are you using the Harmony 659 that bdgbill is using?

I'm off to the states (first trip) in a week and was thinking of having a few goodies delivered to the hotel (what with £1 = $1.98)

[HtV]

I use a Harmony aswell. They work very fine, can be a bit of work to configure but after that.........wonderful.
Only thing is, I can't get my wife and kid to use it:mad: . That is the situation where a Harmony does not work very well, because of the way it works.(with activities). The Harmony logic is mixed up when another remote is used at the same time.

[kayak4ever]

I agree that not changing too many things at a time is a good idea (in our house, I adapted to the computer faster than my husband but I am more or less a 50 year old woman who could be perceived as fitting in the category of being unable to open email).

What I notice is that my husband has a need to watch broadcast TV without the use of the GB-PVR at least some of the time for some unexplainable reason.

I think it is important to know\explain that season recordings won't record perfectly all the time because the networks will do strange things like change the date, time or name without warning. To compensate for this, I try to manually review the shows pending on a regular basis to make sure that the shows I expect to record are listed. As far as HAF\WAF goes, I think you will lose a lot of ground if gb-pvr is promoted as capable of recording "all your shows" and then something messes up.

There is a certain helplessness feeling you (the French "on") can get when the computer guy shows you just how easy it is to record a show and then when you try it, it won't work; possibly because the program chose to freeze a couple of hours before you ventured to record a program yourself. This happened to us. I had been recording Men in Trees, and watching it through the GB-pvr at the same time. When I was finished watching it, I thought I deleted the pending recording that had not yet finished the last commercial. However, the program must have froze because when I came home from work the next day, it still showed the show as recording the show from 10-11 last night. I rebooted the whole computer and everything is fine. And it was during the 12 hours when the computer was frozen without my knowledge, that my husband decided to try to record stuff for himself! Didn't help the HAF. However, he is reasonable and by explaining what had happened, I am hoping he will be willing to try again another time.

He also seems to be amused that I can spend up to 1/2 hour or more scanning showsearch to see what's coming on. This is way easier than trying to read a paper TV guide and you are less likely to miss something you would enjoy. I would like him to sit with me when I do this because I don't know what new shows or movies he would like so I am mostly picking our programs just for me. Anyone else with that particular WAF\HAF problem? If so, any suggested solution?

[rscheller]

gED...

You said that you've changed a config parameter to insure the use of alternate tuners to minimize loss of end-of-programs.

Is this the line you refered to by changing false to true?

<PreferAlternatingCaptureSources>false</PreferAlternatingCaptureSources>

What exactly does this line do?

Thanks everyone, this is a great thread and as pointed out flat missing a recording or the tail end of a recording can take big points off the WAF GBPVR score regardless of the reason.

[K.S.]

He also seems to be amused that I can spend up to 1/2 hour or more scanning showsearch to see what's coming on. This is way easier than trying to read a paper TV guide and you are less likely to miss something you would enjoy. I would like him to sit with me when I do this because I don't know what new shows or movies he would like so I am mostly picking our programs just for me. Anyone else with that particular WAF\HAF problem? If so, any suggested solution?

you can't force someone to use a specific feature. i hate scanning the guide myself & prefer some hard paper between my fingers. i find some recommendations in the printed guide usefull and most often find so shows/movies worth seeing on channels/timeslots i would otherwise miss/disregard worth of scanning. another point: search guide has limited space to display on screen, it can never compete with a printed guide, has no nice pictures to gape at, etc... i use the guide, but i'm never going to use it exclusive, so: try to accept some things as given, not everything is a problem, i have my own quirks as everybody else may have

[ike]

gEd's rule #1 is an absolute imperative. We watch exclusively via MVP and PC client (and very occasionally remotely via internet) so rule #6 is easy. I keep the dedicated pvr in the garage. Occasional MVP reboots are no longer a big deal since we can 'resume' where we left off, as long as rule #1 is strictly adhered to!

[gEd]

gED...

You said that you've changed a config parameter to insure the use of alternate tuners to minimize loss of end-of-programs.

Is this the line you refered to by changing false to true?

<PreferAlternatingCaptureSources>false</PreferAlternatingCaptureSources>

What exactly does this line do?

That's the one.

Setting this to true to tell gbpvr to alternate tuners when recording shows.

The scenario that I had was that I was recording SHOW1 followed by SHOW2 which followed immediately afterwards. With the config variable set to false, gbpvr stops recording SHOW1 at exactly the time it is scheduled to end and then starts recording SHOW2. If SHOW1 runs over, you end up with the end of SHOW1 appearig at the start of SHOW2.

With the parameter set to true, gbpvr will simply start recording SHOW2 on tuner2 and let SHOW1 continue to record until end of show + end_padding.

Thanks everyone, this is a great thread and as pointed out flat missing a recording or the tail end of a recording can take big points off the WAF GBPVR score regardless of the reason.

LOL, it seems I struck a chord with that comment!

The WAF (and HAF to be PC) takes ages to build up but only a moment to demolish.

[Lindsay]

gEd, mine is the 688 model. The newer ones are rechargeable with bigger LCD screens etc but the simpler ones are fine. Like Htv says, you do need to use a Harmony exclusively as it remembers what devices are on or off. It will obviously get stuffed up if you use some other device to turn things on or off. It does take some setting up but after that, the one key approach is really good.

This forum can answer any questions http://www.remotecentral.com/cgi-bin/mbo...y/list.cgi

Cheers.

[sub]

gED...
You said that you've changed a config parameter to insure the use of alternate tuners to minimize loss of end-of-programs.
Is this the line you refered to by changing false to true?
<PreferAlternatingCaptureSources>false</PreferAlternatingCaptureSources>
What exactly does this line do?

That's the one.
Setting this to true to tell gbpvr to alternate tuners when recording shows.
The scenario that I had was that I was recording SHOW1 followed by SHOW2 which followed immediately afterwards. With the config variable set to false, gbpvr stops recording SHOW1 at exactly the time it is scheduled to end and then starts recording SHOW2. If SHOW1 runs over, you end up with the end of SHOW1 appearig at the start of SHOW2.
With the parameter set to true, gbpvr will simply start recording SHOW2 on tuner2 and let SHOW1 continue to record until end of show + end_padding.

These days it should be better to have
<PreferAlternatingCaptureSources>false</PreferAlternatingCaptureSources>
and
<TryToHonourPaddingIfPossible>true</TryToHonourPaddingIfPossible>