Won't Record a Specific Show (1 Viewer)

[Newkid64]

I'm a new user of the forums, so I apologize if I've left something out that I should be including. However, I am not new to MP as I've been using it successfully now for the past three years and have always been able to figure it out if I've had any problems - until now...

My wife likes to watch The Bachelor on ABC and so I have MP recording it every Monday from 8-10pm. But every once in a while, MP will not record it and there is no apparent reason for this. Today she decided to start watching at 8:15 and that's when we realized that, once again, this was one of those weeks when it wouldn't record. So I tried to start the recording manually and MP said it would record until the end of the program and gave every indication that it was recording - but it wasn't... No new recording showed up in the Recordings list and the red "currently recording" dot did not show up in the top left corner. Then, I went to a local Canadian channel that runs The Bachelor simultaneously and tried to manually start the recording on the different channel and it still would not start. So I then changed the channel to CBS and tried to manually start recording Scorpion and it worked just fine. I've attached the log file in case that helps.

So, as it turns out, it's just The Bachelor that won't record, but only on random weeks. Has anyone else ever had this problem - just one specific program that won't record? My wife is getting pissed off at me even though I'm just the messenger.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Dell XPS Intel Core i7 4770 @3.4GHz, 12Gb RAM, Windows 10 64bit, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti, ATI TV Wonder Tuner card

 

[mm1352000]

Hello and welcome to the forum!

...and may I also commend you on an excellent first post. You've provided all the information anybody would need to help you.

The reason the recording is not performed is as indicated in the TV service log file:
[2016-02-29 19:59:04,827] [Log ] [scheduler thread] [DEBUG] - Scheduler: Check recordings for schedule The Bachelor...
[2016-02-29 19:59:04,847] [Log ] [scheduler thread] [DEBUG] - Scheduler.CancelSchedule: The Bachelor 2/29/2016 8:00:00 PM
[2016-02-29 19:59:04,996] [Log ] [scheduler thread] [INFO ] - diskmanagement: recording The Bachelor ended. type:Once max episodes:2147483647
[2016-02-29 19:59:05,067] [Log ] [scheduler thread] [INFO ] - Scheduler: Schedule 2/29/2016 8:00:00 PM-The Bachelor (-) has already been recorded (2/22/2016 7:59:16 PM) - aborting...

What this is saying is that based on your scheduler settings:
http://wiki.team-mediaportal.com/1_...V-Server_Configuration/07_Recording#Scheduler

...TV Server thinks it does not need to record the episode. It thinks this because it has already recorded an episode with the given episode name/number, and you've told it not to record duplicate episodes.

Now, from the log file we can see that the episode name/number of this particular episode is "-". That's obviously completely bogus. TV Server could perhaps do better to recognise that it is bogus and skip the is-previously-recorded check. However if possible, a better solution would be to fix this problem at the source: your EPG data.

I can see that your EPG data comes from SchedulesDirect via the SchedulesDirect plugin. I can also see that you have TVDB lookups enabled. So, either the episode name/number as provided by SchedulesDirect is bogus... or the plugin and/or TVDB lookup process it performs is adding the bogus detail.

Based on what I see in the SchedulesDirect plugin code, I think it may be responsible for this problem. You may not understand this, but here it is anyway:

const string EMPTY = "-";
...
string zEpisode  = string.IsNullOrEmpty(tvProgram.Subtitle) ? EMPTY : tvProgram.Subtitle;
...
string zSeriesNum  = string.IsNullOrEmpty(tvProgram.Series) ? EMPTY : tvProgram.Series;
string zEpisodeNum  = string.IsNullOrEmpty(tvProgram.SyndicatedEpisodeNumber) ? EMPTY : tvProgram.SyndicatedEpisodeNumber;

In other words, when the episode details are not available, it looks like the SD plugin is assigning "-". That's... not the best thing to do.

So, to reiterate: this problem appears to be caused by the combination of your TV Server scheduler settings (prevent duplicate recordings), the SD plugin adding bogus episode details, and TV Server not recognising that the episode details are bogus.
The solution could be one or more of the following:

• you change your TV Server settings to not prevent duplicate recordings
• you report the problem to the SD plugin developer(s)/maintainer(s) and they fix it by not adding bogus episode details anymore
  
• you report the problem to Team MediaPortal and we try to fix it by recognising and ignoring bogus episode details
• you switch to a different EPG data source which doesn't provide bogus episode details

 

[Newkid64]

mm1352000,
Thanks for a very thorough explanation! I will make the changes to the TV Server and hopefully get out of the doghouse with my wife.