[solved] Puzzling Two-Colour EPG Cell (1 Viewer)

[CyberSimian]

I am using MP 1.9.0 pre with the aMPed skin, on 32-bit Vista.

This morning I displayed the radio EPG in order to schedule a couple of programmes to record, and I was surprised to see the two-colour EPG cell shown in the attached screen shot. I have never seen this before. It looks intentional (rather than a mistake), but I cannot fathom what it signifies.

The two-colour EPG cell is for the programme "The Reith Lectures", which I had scheduled several days ago. So I would expect it to be displayed with a red background. But the cell is split diagonally (bottom left to top right), with the lower right triangle displayed in red, and the upper left triangle displayed in blue.

You can see from the screen shot that the focus was in an EPG cell two rows below the two-colour cell, so I pressed the UP button and moved the focus to the two-colour EPG cell, whereupon the blue triangle changed to bright green.

I moved the focus away from the two-colour cell so that it reverted to blue and red. I then obtained the screen shot by pressing the "PrintScreen" key, switching MP from full screen to windowed, starting "Windows Paint", and pasting the image from the clipboard. I then switched MP back to full screen intending to take a screen shot showing the green triangle, but by that time the EPG no longer showed any highlighting (this is a known problem for which there isn't a known solution), so I was unable to obtain a screen shot with the green triangle.

So, what does this two-colour EPG cell signify? Thank you.

-- from CyberSimian in the UK

 

[Dadeo]

Hi CyberSimian - you will likely find the same in any skin (though the actual texture/image used may vary). So you might get a better response asking in the TV/Radio forum. IIRC it occurs when you schedule a recording (either TV or Radio) which is a series and has several parts - and you have recorded one part but still have other parts scheduled? But as you know I haven't used TV/Radio in years, so maybe someone else can offer a clearer response.

 

[CyberSimian]

IIRC it occurs when you schedule a recording (either TV or Radio) which is a series and has several parts - and you have recorded one part but still have other parts scheduled?

Over the last three months I have recorded a variety of programmes, with varying patterns of repetition, but I have never before seen this two-colour EPG cell. The UK broadcast EPG supported by MP (which I use) does not contain any information about season number or episode number.

Perhaps plug-ins that use other EPG sources support the two-colour EPG cell, but in my case I will put it down to the "cosmic ray" problem!

-- from CyberSimian in the UK

 

[CyberSimian]

I think that I have discovered the cause of the two-colour EPG cell.

First, the problem with "The Reith Lectures" radio series recurred, only this time the effect lasted long enough for me to exit MP and restart using the "DefaultWide" skin, which showed precisely the same weird two-colour EPG cell as "aMPed". I was able to take screen shots, but I won't post them as I think that I now know the cause of this effect.

For the majority of recordings, I use option 8, which is "weekly on this channel". This fixes the channel, and fixes the day of the week, but does not fix the start or end times, so the programme can be broadcast at different times and MP will still record it (provided that it is on the same day of the week). If the programme is not broadcast one week (e.g. due to a sports fixture, or changed schedules at Christmas!), MP does not record anything for that programme.

For a small number of recordings, I use "weekly on this channel at this time", or "weekdays on this channel at this time". When the schedule changes and the original programme is not broadcast, MP still records something. The recording inherits the start and end times from the original programme, but inherits the programme title from whatever is now in the EPG. If the programme durations are different, MP ends up recording either too much, or too little. It is this latter case that I am fairly sure gives rise to the two-colour EPG cell.

Example: yesterday I had a "weekdays at this time" reservation for 18:00-18:30. But instead, a film was broadcast from 18:00-20:00. MP would have recorded only 30 minutes, but recognised that this was shorter than the full duration of the programme, and so signalled this in the EPG (two-colour EPG cell), and on the "Scheduled Recordings" panel (the red dot becomes an ellipse with a bite taken out). (Actually, I did not see the two-colour EPG cell, due to the on-going bug that results in EPG cells sometimes not being highlighted, but I did see the red ellipse with the bite taken out.)

So my conclusion is: mystery solved!

-- from CyberSimian in the UK

 

[mm1352000]

I confirm: two-colour means part of the program is scheduled to record.