nPVR hates The Mentalist (on CBS)

[Stereodude]

Okay, so this is partially tongue in cheek, but I'd still like to know why nPVR just doesn't work right.

Is there something coded in nPVR that causes it to refuse to record The Mentalist correctly? It seems like no matter how I attempt to configure nPVR it will not record The Mentalist as instructed most of the time.

1) I can't create a "season" recording where nPVR is instructed to record extra time to account for schedule slipping due to football.

I bring up the recording options window, configure it like this:


and get this error:


But, it shows up in the Recurring section on the recording "tab".


However, there aren't any recordings show in the pending portion of the recording "tab" based on that Recurring recording.

(Continued in the next post)

[Stereodude]

2) Skip the "season" recording and record them one at a time.

I configure the recording like this:


Don't get any errors, it shows up in the pending section as expected:


However, when it comes time to actually record, you get this:


No extra time. I know you're saying, you must be mistaken and have configured it wrong. I promise you that's not the case. I must have double checked it 5 different times this past week to make sure I had it set correctly since the same thing happened the week before. But yet, last night just like the week before, it did not record the extra 90 minutes.

Now, I will admit it doesn't always do this. Occasionally, it does record the extra 90 minutes as instructed. But, it works less often than it doesn't. Why it works sometimes, but not others I have no idea. For example, I configured it to record Almost Human yesterday only a few hours before broadcast with an extra 30 minutes, and it recorded an extra 30 minutes. But The Mentalist which I configured early last week with an extra 90 minutes, it didn't.

[ElihuRozen]

I believe the Extend End Time Minutes field doesn't persist through an EPG update. You set it the day of the recording. If you set for a recording that is tomorrow & update your EPG overnight, it will get reset.

[Stereodude]

I believe the Extend End Time Minutes field doesn't persist through an EPG update. You set it the day of the recording. If you set for a recording that is tomorrow & update your EPG overnight, it will get reset.

That's highly inconvenient if true. Is there a workaround that doesn't require me to mess with it the day of? Like perhaps changing the post padding to 93 minutes?

[mvallevand]

Why not simply create manual recurring recordings for the 90 minute window you want to record until Sunday football is over? This option is on the Hidden menu in recordings http://www.nextpvr.com/nwiki/pmwiki.php?...denMenuBar

Martin

[sub]

I don't use NEWA myself, so I'm not well placed to support those screens, but if you want to reproduce the problems in NextPVR itself, and post the logs, I'm happy to take a look for you.

[Stereodude]

I don't use NEWA myself, so I'm not well placed to support those screens, but if you want to reproduce the problems in NextPVR itself, and post the logs, I'm happy to take a look for you.

I just checked and there doesn't seem to be an equivalent recording option in nPVR to the NEWA extend option so I don't think I can reproduce the problem in NextPVR.

FWIW, I use the NEWA web interface exclusively for controlling what I record. I do not use the NextPVR application for anything. The service makes recordings, and I play back edited .ts files with another application.

[johnsonx42]

It should be noted that the "Extend End Time Minutes" feature offered by NEWA is not supported by NextPVR itself (that is to say, there's no logic in NRecord that handles it), so it's a bit of a hack. It modifies the recording entry in the database to extend the time, but will break under various conditions.

Your best bet is to use a manual recurring recording for the desired time slot.

[bgowland]

It modifies the recording entry in the database to extend the time, but will break under various conditions.

If that's the case (and also the reason the extended time is lost after EPG update) then surely a post padding of 93 minutes on a recurring recording (as StereoDude suggested) would solve the problem.

Cheers,
Brian

[johnsonx42]

The problem with using padding for this purpose is that NRecord considers it optional. If there's any other recording scheduled during the padding time, the padding may be canceled.