EPG (TV Guide) Would Update For Already Scheduled Programs

[LewE]

I download the complete schedule of 14 days worth of program EPG every night and generally when I learn of a program that will be coming up I schedule it as soon as I find out about it. This is frequently more than a week before the scheduled air date.

One very frustrating thing about GBPVR is that once a program is scheduled to be recorded in a time slot, even if subsequent EPG updates would find that the program is no longer scheduled at that time or the particular episode has changed, it doesn't get corrected.

This just happened to me again yesterday when a program showed up in the EPG at a particular time and many days in advance I scheduled it to be recorded. This got changed in subsequent days that the program was replaced by a completely different one but that time slot got recorded and was identified as the incorrect program anyways.

It's my understanding that once a program is scheduled in GBPVR then that time slot no longer updated by subsequent EPG downloads.

Right now, fixing this would be the NUMBER ONE item on my wish list.

[johnsonx42]

I'm pretty sure I've traced this problem to a flaw in the "Don't Record Duplicates" logic. When GB-PVR first schedules a recording, it adds the episode number of the recording to a list; any further EPG updates to episodes on the list are ignored, with a message like: "2009-12-01 02:05:04.134 VERBOSE [10] Already has recording: EP000186930478"

See this thread: http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php?t=41640

I think this issue also causes a conflict resolution problem as well. Example: with two tuners, schedule three season recordings of daily shows that overlap, creating a conflict so that the third recording won't record (let's also presume multi-record is not a factor). Every episode of the third show will show up in Conflicts. You can resolve individual conflicts there by canceling individual recordings. After a week of always choosing to cancel one of the other shows in favor of the third, you decide to just drop one of the first two season recordings altogether.
So you go into Recurring and delete one of them. However, the third show STILL shows up in conflicts, now there's no way to resolve the conflict (since the conflicting recording itself is gone, there's nothing to cancel), and no episodes of the show will be recorded. This goes on until you reach the end of your original epg data (ie, if you had 14 days of EPG data, then this goes on for 14 days).

I suspect that in absence of the "Don't Record Duplicates" logic, these conflicts would go away either immediately, or with the next EPG update. I could be wrong about it being associated with the "Don't Record Duplicates" logic: maybe this is just a general bug in the scheduler, but I'm guessing sub would have noticed it by now if it affected everyone.

[zehd]

Actually it's not a flaw.

In the database, a recurring event is based on the specific day's show that you start the recurring event on. GB-PVR locks the record in the Programme table. Whenever you do an empty or update of the EPG, those records aren't deleted, in favour of being dedicated to the Recurring event.

I've known this for a long time. I've been working on having UltraXMLTV run through the Programmes table and straighten it out. In fact it has been quite successful. But I haven't looked at the code lately, and I forget if it's an option that is enabled or disabled by default or whether it is even user configurable.

I'll look into this.

[johnsonx42]

That's interesting, as Sub said it's supposed to do exactly what you say it doesn't do. He said when it does a complete EPG update, it's supposed to process through all the scheduled recordings and reschedule them. He said the only case where this won't happen is for the very first scheduled recording of a recurring recording.

That's what led me to conclude it had something to do with the "Don't Record Duplicates" logic, since sub added that code for North America users who get the episode numbers from Zap2It!/Schedules Direct, but he doesn't use the feature himself nor does the rest of the world. Since not many were complaining about this problem, and (AFAIK) all those that did were NA users, the logic fit.

I'll be quite interested to see what you can come up with, though to me both conditions are significant flaws in GB-PVR's scheduler that ought to be fixed in the core code whatever the root cause(s) may be.

[zehd]

That's interesting, as Sub said it's supposed to do exactly what you say it doesn't do. He said when it does a complete EPG update, it's supposed to process through all the scheduled recordings and reschedule them. He said the only case where this won't happen is for the very first scheduled recording of a recurring recording.

That's what led me to conclude it had something to do with the "Don't Record Duplicates" logic, since sub added that code for North America users who get the episode numbers from Zap2It!/Schedules Direct, but he doesn't use the feature himself nor does the rest of the world. Since not many were complaining about this problem, and (AFAIK) all those that did were NA users, the logic fit.

I'll be quite interested to see what you can come up with, though to me both conditions are significant flaws in GB-PVR's scheduler that ought to be fixed in the core code whatever the root cause(s) may be.

Actually I believe we're talking apples and oranges. The issue that sub described as working, does work.

When you update a epg, it wipes out all the one-offs and reschedules, based on new time info.

But if you set a recurring event, it is linked to a PROGRAMME record and that record is locked so long as the recurring event exists in the RECORDING table...

And that's why the Recurring event looks like the very first episode of that series. It uses the same Program info, subtitle, decription etc...

What I have done and try to do, is actually edit the locked record.

[johnsonx42]

Actually I believe we're talking apples and oranges. The issue that sub described as working, does work.

When you update a epg, it wipes out all the one-offs and reschedules, based on new time info.

Yes, we are talking apples and oranges then. What you describe above as working is EXACTLY what does NOT work for me, LewE and other NA users of GB-PVR. That's why I'm back to blaming the "Don't Record Duplicates" logic, as we are the only ones using that logic, and the only ones having this problem.

[whurlston]

Sorry Frank, but jx42 is right. According to sub, only the inital episode that was used to create the season recording would not have the times updated. All episodes after that should be updated to the correct times should they change. Also, the one-offs are not supposed to be rescheduled.

The general story is that season recordings will get the times updated if they change (with the exception of the first episode which was used to create the season recording). When it does an EPG update, GB-PVR deletes all pending episodes of a season recording, then goes through the matching process again (looks for name matches etc), and reschedules them, which leads to them being the correct time.

One-off recordings, or the first episode in a season recording are not deleted and re-created (due to several complications with doing this).

[sub]

I promise I'll take another look at this for the next release.

[johnsonx42]

Thanks sub.

It looks like there are actually two different issues here as well, if I understand correctly what whurlston quoted you as saying.

LewE is complaining about One-Off recordings not being updated. Apparently this is a necessary limitation that he is wishing could be improved. So that's a valid wishlist item (whether or not there's any possibility of improving the behavior... I can understand the reasons for the limitation)

I misunderstood LewE's issue as being related to my issue of recurring recordings not being updated properly, and ASSumed it was the same issue. So I've hijacked LewE's wishlist request a bit with what is more of a bug (though both do ultimately have to do with the way the scheduler works).

Hopefully you'll be able to look at both matters.

Thanks.

[LewE]

Thanks sub.

It looks like there are actually two different issues here as well, if I understand correctly what whurlston quoted you as saying.

LewE is complaining about One-Off recordings not being updated. Apparently this is a necessary limitation that he is wishing could be improved. So that's a valid wishlist item (whether or not there's any possibility of improving the behavior... I can understand the reasons for the limitation)

I misunderstood LewE's issue as being related to my issue of recurring recordings not being updated properly, and ASSumed it was the same issue. So I've hijacked LewE's wishlist request a bit with what is more of a bug (though both do ultimately have to do with the way the scheduler works).

Hopefully you'll be able to look at both matters.

Thanks.

I can't say for sure whether the issues I've had were related to one-off or recurring recordings. When I schedule things I use both types. A person who can look at the actual code can see which situations can cause this issue so I am satisfied that sub will look at it.

I have found (I think) that if I try to schedule a recurring recording for a show that will happen towards the end (i.e. the second week of the two week download) of the downloaded EPG shows I can't seem to get it to take and I have to make it a single recording.

Will PVRX2 allow a recurring schedule to be entered if it can't find another instance of the selected programs in its downloaded EPG? If not, then I guess this would be another of my Wishlist items.