Calling all MP New Zealanders (Both of you!!) (5 Viewers)

[Bleazle]

@kiwijunglist Damn! how fast can you type??? I was halfway through my reply and you already had yours up there - I think I'd better turn on my Dragon Naturally Speaking software, the only problem with that is that it can type faster than I can talk!! D

...On the subject of ForThe Record, what is it exactly? Is it some plugin for MP? The website doesn't give me much info...

Yeah, you're right I've just had a look and the FTR home page doesn't do a very good job of "selling" it does it?

I'm no expert but here's what I like about ForTheRecord:
1. When you set a programme to record every week it records it every week. Sounds simple but if you're using the standard MP TV plugin if the TV programme starts 5 minutes early (or finished 5 minutes later) next week you'll end up with a "manual" recording - I hated that, I may as well have been recording stuff onto a video tape. When you're using FTR you never end up with manual recordings. This point alone is the main reason I decided to start using FTR..

2. Advanced recording rules means you can do things like tell FTR to record anything that has Will Smith in it, but not if it has already been recorded before - how cool is that???

3. (I use this one a lot) Tell it to record a programme every day (I record the News and Vodafone select Live) but only keep the 2 most recent recordings (for example). Ever turned up to work and had someone say "did you see XYZ on the news last night?" Now you can say "no, but I'll check it out when I get home tonight!" I don't have time to watch the news every night (too busy doing MP skinning stuff most of the time!) but it's great to have it there if I want to watch it...

4. I have Comskip set to run at 3am every night(morning). I'd hate to go back to TV without Comskip...

5. I don't know if you can do this with the standard MP TV plugin but with FTR you can set different pre-record and post-record times for every programme. This is important for me because if I want to record 2 consecutive programmes every week on Prime via my PVR 150 I can set the first programme to have no post-record and the second to have no pre-record and they will record fine. From memory the standard TV plugin would record the first show but not the second (I could be wrong though)

+ other stuff like the ability to access FTR from work and tell it not to record your wifes programme because you've had an argument etc

Put it this way - ForTheRecord is pretty close to being the holy grail as far as a TV plugin is concerned. It's easy to use yet highly flexible - the standard TV plugin doesn't even compare imo.

Bleazle.

EDIT: @ meesham man you're just as bad as kiwijunglist - I was just about to hit "Submit" on my post and yours was already up! What are you guys? receptionists or something?? I've worked out that maybe it's the Steiny Pures that have compromised my typing abilities (correcting all of my typing/spelling MisTaksss tAkkse AgeZ )

 

[kiwijunglist]

5. I don't know if you can do this with the standard MP TV plugin but with FTR you can set different pre-record and post-record times for every programme. This is important for me because if I want to record 2 consecutive programmes every week on Prime via my PVR 150 I can set the first programme to have no post-record and the second to have no pre-record and they will record fine. From memory the standard TV plugin would record the first show but not the second (I could be wrong though)

Default TV Plugin is fine for this. If you do 5 min pre + post record for 2x consecutive shows, then the overlapping 10 mins will feature in both recording files.

 

[meesham]

Default TV Plugin is fine for this. If you do 5 min pre + post record for 2x consecutive shows, then the overlapping 10 mins will feature in both recording files.

FTR does this too, but it won't work in this case on both FTR and the default plugin as it's an analogue channel (Prime), so he'd need 2 analogue tuners.

FTR actually uses the MediaPortal tv server to do the actual recording, FTR just handles the rest.

 

[rlevis]

1. When you set a programme to record every week it records it every week. Sounds simple but if you're using the standard MP TV plugin if the TV programme starts 5 minutes early (or finished 5 minutes later) next week you'll end up with a "manual" recording - I hated that, I may as well have been recording stuff onto a video tape. When you're using FTR you never end up with manual recordings. This point alone is the main reason I decided to start using FTR.

I usually don't have this problem in MP as I usually select "Record every time on this channel", so it records at a different time next week if it starts later or earlier.

Excluding 5 which MP does, 2 could be useful, but I'm not sure I would use it much. I believe 3 & 4 can be done now with 3rd party MP plugins. But it does sound nice.

 

[thekiwi]

I wasted time again installing the latest version and had to go back to 1.0 again. I wish they could get it right.

I watch Prime using the analog part of the HVR-2200 which was working initially after installing 1.0.2 but after changing channels a few times, Prime kept coming up with no signal. Restarted but could not get it working again.

MP also hung a few times while watching TV. The picture just froze but the audio continues. No controls work and I need to forcefully kill the MP task.

And same as in 1.0.1, the occasional recorded TV entry refuses to delete after watching it. So back to1.0 and all working well again.

Ross.

For me 1.0.2 has been brilliant.
Ive had a continual problem where we would be watching TV, changing channels ... all good. Would then play a recorded TV (eg One News), watch that for its duration and then play the next recording (eg Close Up) ... and get a Black Screen. Audio would be fine, just no Video. Go back to watching TV, black screen. Ditto the other way around, with watching recording, go to Live TV and black screen. Wouldn't happen all the time, but definetly the majority. Right royal pain.
So far after 2 days with 1.0.2 not a problem. THe behaviour appears different (eg I cant seem to go direct from recorded TV viewing straight to Live TV, I have to actually stop the recording, at which time TV seems to jump in straight away. BUt so far its been a great improvement for the Wife.

2. Advanced recording rules means you can do things like tell FTR to record anything that has Will Smith in it, but not if it has already been recorded before - how cool is that???

So does it do that by having a link to the internet to get the info?
Im pretty sure the EPG info we get doesn't have that sort of info.

In fact on the EPG, would be so cool if Freeview would include Episode and Series info. NOt a major hassle, but having to edit the files/database so MyTVSeries works is a bit of a pain.

 

[shacknasty]

sounds good. ill give FTR a go next time i go home.

can see it being useful for the daily show, which is on 4 times a week and quite often at slightly different times. it also repeats in the morning, so with the default tv recorder you cant quite configure it correctly.

 

[mdsflyer]

Hey all, I'm having trouble getting reliably detected commercials with comskip on DVB-T channels. I'd be grateful if someone with a good setup could post up their comskip.ini file

Thanks

 

[rlevis]

For me 1.0.2 has been brilliant.
Ive had a continual problem where we would be watching TV, changing channels ... all good. Would then play a recorded TV (eg One News), watch that for its duration and then play the next recording (eg Close Up) ... and get a Black Screen. Audio would be fine, just no Video...

I've been using 1.0 for many months and never seen that with live TV. But I do get that occasionally watching DVD's. I sometimes have to start and stop between 2 to 5 times before the video appears, otherwise it's a black screen with audio only. With the couple of hours I tested 1.0.2, this appeared to be fixed, but not being able to watch Prime, and the occasional UI hang spoiled the party.

 

[meesham]

So does it do that by having a link to the internet to get the info?
Im pretty sure the EPG info we get doesn't have that sort of info.

In fact on the EPG, would be so cool if Freeview would include Episode and Series info. NOt a major hassle, but having to edit the files/database so MyTVSeries works is a bit of a pain.

I'm pretty sure it just works off what information is in the program description from the EPG, so a rule like that isn't 100% reliable (but still cool!). I've noticed some movies list the stars, but not all and it usually gets cut off. My girlfriend loves documentaries & shows about animals, so I have the following rule:

Channel: Any
Time: Any
Title: "animal NOT Party Animals AND Animal Academy"

You could also do something like "CSI NOT Miami" to record all the CSI shows minus the Caruso. The rules can also be used just to suggest programs to you, or to alert you that the show has appeared (without it actually recording). I believe this feature with the boolean logic is only available in the donator's preview version at the moment, but that'll be available to everyone shortly.

Another nice feature is if 4TR has any problems you can have it email you. I had a situation recently where I moved my tuner card to a different PCI port and the drivers stopped working but I didn't notice it had dropped off the tuner list in the TV server, 4TR emailed me letting me know there was a problem.

 

[shacknasty]

how do i get prime to work with a pair of hvr-3000's? never bothered trying till the other day, but if i run a scan from a tuner then it picks up hundreds of channels, none of which work.

is there a way to manually enter the frequency or something?