Modifying Season Schedules To Resolve Conflicts

[lajams]

I'm using GBPVR for the recording function only, for now. I have it running on my server in the basement, and I use the Web Scheduler to view and configure schedules.

I noticed recently my cable company has started airing one of my favorite shows to start 1-minute early. This causes a conflict with another one of my scheduled shows, which starts on the hour before my favorite.

Not much of interest happens right away in the first minute of the show anyway, so is there a way to modify (manually or otherwise) the schedule of the season recording to start right at the top of the hour, rather than one-minute before?

THanks in advance.

LA.

[Koenie]

Hi,

I second your question for another reason: some channels (usually the commercial ones) hve a large block of their own advertising with their own logo for 10 min or even more before the show. If this is in a different aspect ratio than the show itself comskip will pick-up the logo of the first part and not the show itself which makes the quality of the recognition go down a bit (still it is a great piece of work that it works so well even with a wrong logo).

Setting a negative prepadding should solve this. You can not do it from the menu. Shame on me I did not think of putting it directly in the database. maybe you can try.

[erik]

I added in the past some logic to solve this "wrong logo" problem.
Can you provide me some info where it fails?

[lajams]

So in regards to my issue, I should go into the gbpvr config utility and set a -1 for pre-padding? The only issue I see with this is that if the recordings are based off the EPEG, the pre-padding doesn't even enter the picture in that respect. So wouldn't there still be a conflict even with pre-padding?

I'll give it a shot in a few minutes and reply back with results.

LA.

[lajams]

Tried -1 pre-padding, but it isn't allowed in the config utility.

I'm thinking it would be a nice-to-have capability to be able to do manual conflict-resolution in the web scheduler. For example, on a case-by-case basis, you could address conflicts by overriding the recording start-time in the conflicting episode.

Here is an example of what I see as the conflicting issue in the web scheduler:

Conflict

Quality: High
Delete Thursday, February 02, 2006
8:00 PM - 9:00 PM 4
WDAF The O.C.
Summer discovers the truth about Cohen, while Sandy and Matt encounter an obstacle with their hospital project.
Pending

Quality: High
Thursday, February 02, 2006
8:59 PM - 10:00 PM 8
KSNT ER
Abby's medical school mentor (James Woods) is left at the hospital, suffering from ALS and a case of pneumonia, and Abby and Fran (Ally Walker) make a controversial decision regarding his treatment.

As you can see, ER starts at 8:59PM, when the previous show doesnt end until 9pm. It would be cool to be able to click on either of those two particular episodes and do a "manual override" of the recording times. That same logic could also be applied to the season recordings, in the event the entire season of ER (which appears to be the case here) is scheduled in the EPEG to start at 8:59pm.

Anyone have any thoughts on this?

LA.

[stefan]

If you look at the plugins XRecord or the My-series, I think one or both of them can do something like what you want to do, with priorities and stuff.

[lajams]

Looks cool, but I'm only using the recording function of GBPVR, not using it to serve MVPs or MediaCenter PCs (yet). Currently, its just a simple setup to schedule and record the shows. I may move to serving my MVPs with GBPVR sometime this year, just a matter of finding the time.

LA.

[marm]

One other option would be to be able to set a priority and that program would be recorded in full and the other one that was a conflict would be recorded as much as possible.

I am kind of dissapointed in the way that it is handled now in that one of the shows will not be recorded.

[lajams]

I guess what I'm looking for is the ability to do the priorities or what-have-you in the Web Scheduler interface. That would make my day.

Guess I'm just a stickler for simple, straight-forward environments...makes troubleshooting so much easier. Well, in the mean-time, I'll look into serving my MVPs with a skin that supports X-Record, or My-*, rather than the straight Hauppage MVP load.

Thanks everyone for the tips and feedback.

LA.

[lajams]

Heh, found that Snapstream had to do a workaround (probably similar to one of the options above) to fix this same issue.

***From SnapStream's BeyondTV Feature List***

"New Feature allows users to work around unusual 1-2 minute program guide conflicts (such as the infamous ER vs. CSI conflict)"

Of course, mine is the "infamous ER vs. OC conflict"

LA.