pre-empted recordings

[SirJYK]

I have a question. Tonight, after missing the last 20 minutes of 24, I was pissed. When I checked my recordings to play 24. I found the 1 hour recording with the 2 minute overlap like normal. However, since 24 was pre-empted by a presidential address being 20 minutes long, i missed the end of the show. In my recording folder for this show, there was another 20 minute recording of 24 that had failed. There was no option to play, so i deleted it. I checked the program guide and it showed 24 with the 1 hour segment as normal and it showed the 20 minute long overlap as well as another listing. My question is why did the 20 minute overlap recording fail? It obviously tried to record it, but could not. Did the 2 minute overlap interfere with this? The settings for recording were: all season this time slot on a weekly basis. Does anyone have any information for me so that I can avoid this happening again?
Thanks.

[SirJYK]

sub? anyone?

[limiter]

This doesn't help you, but lots of stuff gets preempted all the time in the US and it would be cool if someone with more programming skill than me developed a system to try and do dynamic recording fix. So...

Three possible ways I can think to accomplish this:

1. Use the close caption and look for key words related to the title or subtitle of the show. For instance "How I met your mother" would likely appear at some point one would hope at the beginning of the show? Take the time difference and adjust the recording. The problem with this is I think most capture cards don't support close caption.

2. Look for that little TV rating logo. (TV-PG, TV-M or whatever) I know comskip does some amazing things to figure out commercials, perhaps there would be a way to check for that logo and if it doesn't appear as expected (aka within 2-4 minutes of a scheduled show start) it starts scanning for it until it finds the logo then adjusts recording.

3. Some other visual or audio scan. Again I point to the amazing things Comskip does. Perhaps there is a way to pick up on suspect recordings?

Just throwing this out there, and not to Sub, maybe plugin authors? I know the standard response typically is "You build it if you want it" and granted I would, but my math skills have been bad since elementary school, and attempts to learn anything more than basic, VBScript, and PHP have ended in a lot of frustration and no results so this is not something I'd probably be able to pull off.

[SArth]

Interesting - I have found just exactly the opposite happening, in other words any time there are pre-empted shows, or any sort of variation from a show's normal time, GBPVR always records the entire show with no intervention on my part. This is for shows I've set up to record in advance of course. In the month or so since I built my PVR-PC I have observed this on several occasions and wondered how it knew exactly when to start/stop the recording even though the show was broadcast at a non-normal time.

For example last night's episode of "24" recorded perfectly with no 20-minute cut-off either before or after due to the Presidential address. I was watching this very very carefully as I thought I might have to manually start the recording myself so as not to miss the show, but I didn't.

I have no idea why it would work on my system and not on someone else's, I'm using the Zap2it epg source, in case that has anything to do with it?

[sub]

This doesn't help you, but lots of stuff gets preempted all the time in the US and it would be cool if someone with more programming skill than me developed a system to try and do dynamic recording fix. So...

Three possible ways I can think to accomplish this:

1. Use the close caption and look for key words related to the title or subtitle of the show. For instance "How I met your mother" would likely appear at some point one would hope at the beginning of the show? Take the time difference and adjust the recording. The problem with this is I think most capture cards don't support close caption.

2. Look for that little TV rating logo. (TV-PG, TV-M or whatever) I know comskip does some amazing things to figure out commercials, perhaps there would be a way to check for that logo and if it doesn't appear as expected (aka within 2-4 minutes of a scheduled show start) it starts scanning for it until it finds the logo then adjusts recording.

3. Some other visual or audio scan. Again I point to the amazing things Comskip does. Perhaps there is a way to pick up on suspect recordings?

Just throwing this out there, and not to Sub, maybe plugin authors? I know the standard response typically is "You build it if you want it" and granted I would, but my math skills have been bad since elementary school, and attempts to learn anything more than basic, VBScript, and PHP have ended in a lot of frustration and no results so this is not something I'd probably be able to pull off.

Honestly, I'm never going to do any of that.

This is just one of those situations the PVR where you need to swear about the broadcaster for days. You guys need to get a president that doesnt interrupt important shows.

[bgowland]

SArth. Was the presidential address literally a last minute inclusion or had it been announced/publicised at some (short) time earlier?

The only way that I think this could work is if it was announced a short time earlier before your EPG was updated that day. If the listings people had included the change, the GB-PVR scheduler would have spotted the new timing for Lost and scheduled it. If you have the 'Complete EPG reload' option set, the original recording (now invalid) would have been removed.

Cheers,
Brian

[bgowland]

You guys need to get a president that doesnt interrupt important shows.

LOL

In my case (Saturday) it was bl**dy football that over-ran by about 25mins and cocked up the recording of Doctor Who. As far as I'm concerned they should take all sport and stick-it on a channel of its own. One that I would'nt be enabling in my EPG grabber.

On a related note sub...

I know you've said in the past that NZ doesn't have any kind of programme delivery signal in the transmissions and you probably wouldn't ever be trying to implement it for GB-PVR. Has anything changed that would make things different? I'm wondering if DVB streams have PDC embedded somewhere in them.

Cheers,
Brian

[sub]

I know you've said in the past that NZ doesn't have any kind of programme delivery signal in the transmissions and you probably wouldn't ever be trying to implement it for GB-PVR. Has anything changed that would make things different?

No, nothing has changed.

I'm wondering if DVB streams have PDC embedded somewhere in them.

There is a running status that in theory tells you this, but most broadcasters (including mine) dont use it the way it was intended, and you end up with it telling you what was originally intended to be played at that time.

[bgowland]

No, nothing has changed.

Shame. But as ever I respect your decision. It isn't something that happens often and if I'd had the sense to think about it, I would have made provision. In this case it was the FA Cup Final and there are no re-matches so they always play until there is a deciding result. My bad.

I think the BBC are actually pretty good with PDC - a couple of the other UK channels are like you said - it tells you what 'should' be there and not what actually is there. I think it relies on a VT tech. to flick the right switch at the right time.

Cheers,
Brian

[SArth]

The US presidential address was indeed scheduled - not sure how far in advance - there was a 30-minute block for it on the guide, and all programs after that point were listed on the guide delayed by 30 minutes.

However, the actual address was only 20 minutes yet the recording still started at the correct time so somehow there is something "dynamically" happening to start recording at the correct actual time of the show's start. Not only that, but since I have a "2 minute padding" before and after, somehow it knew to start recording two minutes before the show actually started!

It seems to me I've seen this same behavior even when a program is delayed due to a NON-scheduled event, like Golfing which always seems to run long. I know I've found myself wondering on several occasions how the heck did the software know when to start recording after that sort of un-scheduled delay? I'm going to have to experiment around a bit more and try to reproduce an occurance of a scheduled recording gone wrong I guess. The setting I use most often is "record entire season on this channel" and it's always got it exactly right so far even after pre-emptions or time delays.