Conflict Manager didn't work right - WAF factor spiraling down

[raoul]

Ok... I love Sage. I am a complete convert... WAF factor is in the middle somewhere and after this latest mishap, I am starting to hear moans about switching back to BTV. Help me understand what happened as I don't want to move back to BTV and have to get the WAF factor back up.

Last week, I was out of town and it didn't record american idol for her. I worked it out afterwards that there was a conflict due to the padding and I removed it and told her it was all fixed. I hadn't yet explained to her about the conflict management stuff. My bad.

This week, I notice that there is a conflict between moment of truth and the season premiere of Lost. I used this conflict to walk her through the steps of resolving it and all seemed to go perfectly. Came home last night and found that it still recorded the moment of truth and skipped the first hour of Lost. WAF is down... she is pissed (but willing to forgive since it was just a recap show)

I have only 1 tuner that is set up to record OTA. Both shows were on opposing OTA channels (I don't get these channels elsewhere). MofTruth was on from 8 - 9pm on channel 18 and Lost was on from 8 - 10pm on channel 6. Both shows were first runs. I went to manage conflicts and selected "always record Lost first runs over moment of truth" option. I then looked at my upcoming recordings and Moment of truth disappeared, lost was there, and no other conflicts. It remained this way for the next day or two, and I believe I verified it yesterday afternoon but not sure.

Anyway, we got home last night and found that it had recorded moment of truth and the second hour of lost, but not the first hour. What did I do wrong? I think I did it correctly. I checked the FAQ and I don't see the mistake.

This is one area that BTV may have Sage built (I say may because who knows what features I haven't found yet). It was very easy to go into your list of favorites and they would be listed in priority order and whatever was higher automatically would be recorded over something lower in the list in the case of any conflict.

I may have another conflict tonight where lost is recording again OTA but at the same time it lists that it is recording American Chopper. If I look at that recording, it tells me that it is recording it on the satellite input via s-video on the same tuner which is not possible. I assume it is picking it up on the other tuner on my other satellite service and it is doing the channel remap thing (HATE THAT) but I have no way to know for sure.

Like always... thanks!

[carlgar]

Are you sure the Moment of Truth started at 8PM? My guide shows it starting at 8:01. I suspect this may have had something to do with it.
If you do not trust Sage, then make Lost a manual recording (when you see conflicts) to insure it has priority over a favorite.

Do you have logging enabled? It might show what happened.

[Opus4]

This sounds like it might be more of a tuner configuration problem rather than a scheduler issue. You mentioned having only 1 OTA tuner, but mentioned some other tuner(s) also being active & shows being scheduled on a source where you can't receive the channel...

What exactly is your tuner setup -- what tuner(s) do you have, how are they connected, and how are they configured in SageTV?

Are you using the same channel lineup for multiple sources?

- Andy

[sleonard]

I can't see where you made a mistake and Sage should never record only half of a show like it did. If it can't record the entire show it shouldn't record any of it so something went screwy in Sage's scheduler.

BTW, The favorite priority works the same in Sage. Favorites higher in the list get priority over the ones lower in the list.

S

[raoul]

Originally Posted by Opus4

This sounds like it might be more of a tuner configuration problem rather than a scheduler issue. You mentioned having only 1 OTA tuner, but mentioned some other tuner(s) also being active & shows being scheduled on a source where you can't receive the channel...

What exactly is your tuner setup -- what tuner(s) do you have, how are they connected, and how are they configured in SageTV?

Are you using the same channel lineup for multiple sources?

- Andy

Sorry about the tuner confusion... I shouldn't have my second concern in the same thread and mixed it all up. Too be clear:

I have two Haug. PVR150 tuners installed.

Tuner 1 - I have dish network installed via the S-video connection and have its channel lineup. I do not get any local channels through this. Nothing else is connected to this tuner.

Tuner 2 - I have Direct TV installed via the S-video connection and a set of rabbit ears plugged in for OTA SD local channels. I do not get any local channels via the DTV input - only from my antenna. I have the channel lineup for DTV and also the channel lineup for my OTA locals.

Since the only networks I get are through the antenna, that is were both shows were set to record hence the conflict. I picked lost over MofTruth and the upcoming recordings reflected this.



I had it set to not allow partial recordings, so I do not know why it recorded the second half.

I am glad to hear the favorites list works the same as far as priority goes... now I just have to find it


I do not know off the top of my head if MofTruth started at 8:00pm or 8:01pm, but it shouldn't really matter as the tuner should have been locked into Lost either way.

I do not know if logging is enabled. I have never intentionally enabled it so it comes down to if it is enabled by default or not?

It isn't that I don't trust sage... I just need to get this set right to avoid this in the future. Ok...I know, I can add another antenna to my second tuner... just never got around to it as I didn't have any need.

Thanks for all the feedback.

[Opus4]

You can check the Fav priority by going to the Favorites Manager menu, then use the right arrow to start adjusting the Fav priority. This info starts on p. 65 of the v6.3 PDF manual.

If you haven't moved the Favs, there may not be an explicit priority between those two, so try moving one higher than the other. If it thought MofT was the higher priority, it could record that, then record what was left of Lost since that episode doesn't air again in the current 2-week EPG data.

And, while you shouldn't normally need to do this, if you want to be sure one specific show gets recorded & you only have 1 tuner available for it, you can make it a Manual Recording. If you could hook up the other tuner to the antenna too, like you said, you may have fewer conflicts for the OTA channels, though that might increase conflicts with DirecTV due to both inputs going to single tuners.

This FAQ covers enabling debug logging, if you feel a need for that.

- Andy

[Fuzzy]

Not to sidetrack your thread too much, but I'm pretty sure you can add a splitter from your antenna and send your locals into the rf in on the dtv's capture card, and basic all add it as anotherota source. It won't be able to record from both ota and dish at the same time, but this may help cut down on some of the conflicts.

asically, if you give sage as many sources as you can, it will work extremely well.

[OttoNP]

I have part of an answer, it did not record half of Lost, Lost was actually two separate episodes. The recap was called Past, Present, and Future while the actual first episode was The Beginning of the End. Sage will treat them as two separate shows.

I thought I had the other half of the answer as well, sometimes the same show will be twice the same week and in that case Sage may record another show with lower priority if it can get the higher show later in the week. I checked my lineup and moment of truth was on weds while lost was on thursday, so this could have been what happened to you. For example, you had Moment of Truth and Lost Recap episode as conflict with Lost higher in priority. If the Lost Recap is running again at a different time, it will pick moment of truth over it and then record Lost recap later in the week. It will only not record a show if it can not get the other episode anytime in the future.

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by OttoNP

I have part of an answer, it did not record half of Lost, Lost was actually two separate episodes. The recap was called Past, Present, and Future while the actual first episode was The Beginning of the End. Sage will treat them as two separate shows.

... moment of truth was on weds while lost was on thursday

Not in this case -- you are missing an extra airing of Lost that was being discussed in this topic: on Wed, there was a different 2 hour airing of Lost called "Through the Looking Glass", described as "Jack and the castaways begin efforts to make contact with Naomi's rescue ship; includes on-screen facts and back stories to allow viewers to catch up with the action." I haven't watched it, but it sounds like yet another recap of an episode of the same name & description from last season... stretched to 2 hours.

- Andy

[mistergq]

conflict manager, although it appears it didn't work, probably worked. ABC is repeating last weeks new Lost episode this Thursday at 8 PM. I saw it because I was watching it live on my HD tv through the cable box. I actually got into heated discussion with my wife because there were a lot of reality shows she put in that caused the conflict this past Thursday and Lost got bumbed for one of her shows that I wouldn't want to watch...she, although defensive, agreed that Lost should not have been bumped.

[Fuzzy]

Ahh, wives.. is there any better reason for having as many tuners as possible?

[raoul]

Thank everyone for helping with my problem. I hope that this was a one time hiccup, as it really seems that I did everything correctly. Since this one time, I haven't had any other problems, but I also haven't had any conflicts to manage yet.

I will put a splitter on the antenna and that will help minimize future conflicts. I have talked my wife down from the ledge, so all is forgiven although I keep hearing some rough remarks from time to time. My goal was really to understand what happened to know how to avoid it in the future. It doesn't look like that is going to be possible as I didn't ever enable the logging.

I did find the favorite priority list and it works the same as in BTV. Just to be clear, Lost was set at a higher priority than MofTruth originally when this problem happened.

Also, I am talking about the 2 hour event that was on Wednesday that was a recap of last years finale with some pop-up video commentary added. It was definitely listed as a First Run.

My confusion is that there was a conflict and I made the decision on how to handle the conflict (record lost instead of MofTruth). The Upcoming recording schedule reflected my desires (2 hours of lost to record... Moment of truth gone from the list), yet that isn't what it did. From what I am reading, I didn't miss anything... it simply screwed up. Oh well... things happen.

thanks for all the information.

[waynedunham]

Raoul,
The favorites manager in SageTv is FAR better than what's in most DVR's, but it won't be perfect in all situations. Certainly you have reason to complain and ask for answers in the situation you had where mere hours before the recording, after you had told it what to do via the conflict manager, it was showing the proper show being set to record.

I guess what you have to take away from all this is that your SageTV machine is a machine, and a machines aren't perfect. A corallary of Murphy's law will apply and the likelihood of a show recording is in inverse proportion to how important it is to you.
Just like back in the days of VCR's when you'd miss a show because the power blipped causing the VCR to lose it's time/programming, the tape was full, the tape jammed, or the wife/kids pulled out the blank tape to watch a movie and never put the blank tape back in.

So if you absolutely must have a show recorded set it up as a manual record.

[OttoNP]

I have been using sage since 2004 and it has never made a mistake. All the times I thought it did, it really was me. The two things that it has done to make me think it messed up were:

1. Not recorded favorite because it was on later in the week as repeat
2. Accidentally marked future recording as watched, so it did not record it

So, I trust it...

[matt91]

Originally Posted by OttoNP

I have been using sage since 2004 and it has never made a mistake.

I concur with this statement as well, with one additional note: the EPG data has been wrong before, so a show gets recorded twice, perhaps bumping something else, because Sage thinks it's new.

Not Sage's fault at all - if the EPG was right, it would have known what to do.

[DFranch]

Yeah, any time a show did not record (which has been few and far between) it has been my fault.

[grauchy]

The program guide looks ahead to resolve conflicts and since they will be repeating last (err, this) week's Lost next week just before the current episode your Sage decided to record Moment of Truth knowing that it can always catch the new episode of Lost next week.

I believe there is a setting somewhere that you can reduce the number of days it'll look ahead for conflict resolution but I'm not sure where. I don't have this problem anymore because I added more tuners.