Recording show that's on every weekday at same time but different length (1 Viewer)

[Nil Einne]

Hi,

Been using BeyondTV for a long while, meaning to move to MP for a while and have set it up for two of my friends, finally took the plunge.

Anyway am I right there's no way with the built in scheduler to record a show that's on every weekday (Monday - Friday) at the same time on the same channel but is on for different lengths (1h on Monday during winter, 30 minutes on Tuesday - Friday). And where there are also repeats on the same channel.

With the advanced record, I can set it to record Monday - Friday. But then it only records 30 minutes on Monday as I found out last Monday.

I can set it to record every time on this channel but then I get the repeats. I can of course manually deleted the repeats whether in the guide or after recorded but it gets a bit tedious. I know there is an option to not record repeats but this has a few snags. 1) Episode number info is never provided in NZ from what I've seen. 2) I could probably use episode title except that the repeats are actually a few weeks old. As I understand it, currently it doesn't go by a database of everything it's recorded, it only goes by what is in the recordings. I don't usually keep recordings of this show for that long. 3) Worse of all while episode title may work for this show, some of the guide info in NZ is a bit crap. E.g. it just gives a generic episode description. In other words I don't want to avoid repeats for all shows as it'll likely mean missing episodes of other shows. But as far as I can tell, it's a universal setting, you can't avoid repeats for some shows only.

I can set it to record every week at this time and do this for every day Monday - Friday. This sorta works, although I'm not sure whether this means my shows will end up being under seperate lists in the recorded TV, which will be rather annoying. The more important problem here is ironically emphasised by the upcoming Monday. There is a special promo episode which is 1 hour and 30 minutes long. If I hadn't noticed this, I presume I would have again missed part of the episode if I'd set it to record every week at this time (as it would only record 1 hour). It also means I have to pay attention to catch when they start in to 1 hour/winter mode next year or again I'll miss part of the episode (or alternatively record an unnecessary 30 minutes which I will be doing until I realise they've stopped the winter season).

Anyway, not complaining, just wanted to check. Although I'm pretty sure I'm right.

If I'm right, will probably move on to a better scheduler plugin. Well 4TR seems to be the only option :-P May be useful here in NZ anyway since they like to have stuff like 'All New XYZ' and seem to randomly decide to add HD to the name sometimes. And I've also been looking for a web guide interface (well I know there are other options).

MediaPortal Version: 1.1.3
MediaPortal Skin: Blue3
Windows Version: Windows 7
CPU Type: NA although it's a single core Sempron socket 754
HDD: NA
Memory: NA although it's only 768 mb :-P

P.S. For any fellow kiwis, yes I'm referring to Shortland Street ;-)

 

[Paranoid Delusion]

FTR will definitely do that for you, a bit surprised that MP's scheduler does not work to the epg data length of program, but then your program timings are not the best in the world for being accurate

 

[Nil Einne]

I think the problem is the 'record at same time Mon-Fri' means it always starts at the same time and stops at the same time on Monday - Friday. I.E. it's completely time based and completely ignores the guide. I presume only the record on this channel/every channel actually uses the guide data.

I actually noticed it only showed half (well a triangle) of my program as red before it recorded so i was suspicious but for some reason forgot to check properly (I thought I saw it change to be completely red but may have confused myself. So I only belatedly realised it had recorded 30 minutes (well 37) although this only happened once.

BTW from further reading something I realise the 'don't record repeats' is never going to work in the current state since from most programs here don't even have episode titles in the guide. Well I've never noticed any, but I wasn't sure what the title was, e.g. if it was part of the description. I know BeyondTV used to mostly work with the same guide data at avoid repeats, I presume it used the description or part of it. (Although it didn't natively support XMLTV anyway, I used an importer.)

 

[Paranoid Delusion]

FTR will use episode name if other details are not available.

For any recordings say that may start\finish anywhere in a 2 -3 or 4 hour time frame, you can specify that in the FTR management console, this is particularly useful after sporting events running late, this would require dvb epg grab to be active all the time, which seems to work in the UK fine, so hope it would for you as well.

 

[netexplorer]

AW: Recording show that's on every weekday at same time but different length

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