Is NPVR Recording?

[jcjefferies]

Can anyone suggest a test to check if NPVR is currently making a recording? The reason is that I want to reboot the server overnight at least weekly and possibly nightly but obviously not if a recording is being made. I want to see if regular reboots reduce the frequency of some Windows and NPVR problems. A typical problem is that sometimes some unknown process prevents the server from sleeping and a reboot cures the problem.

[martint123]

I think the windows standby tool - MST ISTR, has an option to reboot the server on a daily, weekly or somesuch option. http://slicksolutions.eu/mst.shtml/

I find my nova-t-500's are much more reliable now that I'm running it, although I'm not sure why?

What o/s are you running? I found with an upgrade (??) to win7 my PVR didn't like hibernating after a while. Goodly with w7 is a tool that says what is keeping it awake - mine was a file open on another server (that had closed days before) and I found a registry tweak that let W7 sleep in these cases.

[itsonlyme]

Three ideas that might help.

First. Recently I have started using the Gadget at http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php...g-Schedule this indicates if the progam is recording.
Second. Using a file manager look at your download directory. Sorting by time/date is a file currently being made, and is it more than 0 bytes. If it is 0 bytes something has gone wrong.
Third. Is the NPVR icon Red.

A combination of the three to suit your requirements may provide a 10 second solution.

Malcolm

[jcjefferies]

Thanks for the suggestions. I know several people do regular reboots and I think someone did it after the EPG update

martint123 - Using the MCE Standby Tool was my first thought but the “Reboot” function does not seem to be available under Vista in either version.

Itsonlyme – The red tray icon was an obvious source of the “Recording” info but what test would you run to detect if it is red. The Gadget is another source of the info but I dont have the Java script knowledge to access it.

[JonnyCam]

You can probably parse the output of the RSS feeds from the web interface.

http://www.nextpvr.com/nwiki/pmwiki.php?...l.NEWA#rss

Code:

http://youraddress:yourport/public/rss.aspx?filter=in-progress

will give you an RSS of the currently recordings programs.
You could also use the =pending option and check that there was no a recording starting within 5 minutes.

[jcjefferies]

Thanks JonnyCam that method has possibilities. If the output is "No items found." then nothing is being recorded so it is safe to reboot. However have not been able to find a way to redirect the output to a file so I can test the contents.

[mvallevand]

The windows version of wget allows you to create a file.

wget http://localhost:8866/public/rss.aspx?fi...n-progress -O test.xml

Martin

[sub]

You can try this updated NScriptHelper.exe.

It supports two additional command lines, which use different mechanisms to indicate largely the same thing. "-isrecording" which checks if there is any recordings in the in-progress state, and "-isinuse" which checks the server status to see if any live tv or recording streams are active.

[jcjefferies]

Thanks sub that sounds very usefull. Will try that tomorrow.

[soccerdad]

You can try this updated NScriptHelper.exe.

It supports two additional command lines, which use different mechanisms to indicate largely the same thing. "-isrecording" which checks if there is any recordings in the in-progress state, and "-isinuse" which checks the server status to see if any live tv or recording streams are active.

Will these show status of network tuners (or recordings therefrom) like the DCR-2650? I know the tray does not show what the DCR is doing.