How can I stop favorite re-scheduling ?

[makutaku]

Sage scheduling algorithm gives too much importance to number-of-shows. It basically chooses to postpone a top favorite to record a much lower favorite. This gets worse as number of favorites grow.

The problem is that the higher a favorite is in the list, the sooner you want to watch it.

This problem could easily be solved with a favorites setting to the UI, but I couldn't find any.

Is there any way to change this behavior?

Adding more tuners will help prevent this problem, but will not eliminate it. I added one more tuner, but the problem keeps happening.


Now a feature suggestion:

SageTV should measure how soon someone watches a favorite after it has been recorded and take that into consideration when deciding if it should re-schedule it or not.

[CollinR]

Favorites manager, just move your more important shows to the top of the list.

Unfortunately since I use dynamic menus and have very customized menus I can't tell you how to get there but it is in the GUI.

[GKusnick]

Favorite priority is not about controlling which shows get recorded first. It's about controlling which shows don't get recorded at all in case of conflict. Sage will always try to record as many favorites as it can, even if that means recording them out of order. That's a feature, not a bug.

Personally I don't care what order shows get recorded in. For most of my favorites, I'm not even sure what day of the week they air. They just show up in my list of recordings at some point, and I watch them when I get around to it. So long as no recordings are being dropped due to conflicts, I'm happy.

[makutaku]

Originally Posted by CollinR

Favorites manager, just move your more important shows to the top of the list.

Maybe I wasn't clear enough, but the show being re-scheduled is ALREADY in the top of the list !

Let me re-phrase it:

Suppose your favorites consists of show A and B, where A is in the top of the list. Now suppose both shows will broadcast at the same time, but only A will repeat a X days later. What SageTV currently does is: it records show B first, then X days later it will record show A. However, it may be highly undesirable to wait X days to watch A, specially because it is higher in the favorites list than B!

[CollinR]

As Greg mentioned thats a feature, why care if you get the primetime or 2am airing? If it cannot be put on the schedule whatever is lowest on the list will be dropped.

[makutaku]

Originally Posted by GKusnick

Favorite priority is not about controlling which shows get recorded first.

Well, maybe it should be more than that.

Originally Posted by GKusnick

That's a feature, not a bug.

I agree it's not a bug. But I don't agree it's a feature. Behavior is not necessarily a feature, even though it may be by design. The feature is "favorite management", and the current implementation of this feature is assuming things not in the best interests of some users.

Originally Posted by GKusnick

Personally I don't care what order shows get recorded in. For most of my favorites, I'm not even sure what day of the week they air. They just show up in my list of recordings at some point, and I watch them when I get around to it. So long as no recordings are being dropped due to conflicts, I'm happy.

This is your personal viewing habits. However, I'd bet I am not the only SageTV user who has some favorites we wish it wasn't postponed!

If SageTV at the very minimum showed a conflict saying it will postpone the higher priority show, it would help a lot!

[makutaku]

Originally Posted by CollinR

why care if you get the primetime or 2am airing?

Maybe the person won't be awake at 2am, but she would like to talk about the show next day with her friends!!

The point is, always assuming the person can patiently wait is not a good assumption. Why do you think movie theaters are still in business ?

[Fuzzy]

If you would like a particular show to always record in its first time slot, and it is a higher priority, you can restrict that favorite to that particular time slot. This will make it do as you want, since that slot is the only time it will be able to record the higher priority show, and it will just skip the lower priority one (reporting a conflict).

[TallMomof2]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

If you would like a particular show to always record in its first time slot, and it is a higher priority, you can restrict that favorite to that particular time slot. This will make it do as you want, since that slot is the only time it will be able to record the higher priority show, and it will just skip the lower priority one (reporting a conflict).

That's exactly what I did when I had only one tuner and it works. Now that I have three it's not as much of an issue but for certain shows (Battlestar Galactica) I limit the recording to Friday night because I don't want to wait until Saturday night!

[makutaku]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

If you would like a particular show to always record in its first time slot, and it is a higher priority, you can restrict that favorite to that particular time slot. This will make it do as you want, since that slot is the only time it will be able to record the higher priority show, and it will just skip the lower priority one (reporting a conflict).

I did that a while ago. I was happy until they decided to change the broadcast time and the show was never recorded!

Improving on this idea, I decided to try having 2 favorites for the same show. The first favorite would be time slotted as you described. The second favorite, on the other hand, is open to record the show at any time, and would work as a fallback in case the show time unexpectedly changes. I hope this solves my problem.

[bjp999]

I certainly would expect that Sage would do its best to record ALL of my favorites (A and B) rather than record just one (A) at the expense of the other (B). That's sort of the point.

If there were an option like "record first available" on a favorite, that would be nice for special situations. But I wouldn't want that to be the default.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by makutaku

I did that a while ago. I was happy until they decided to change the broadcast time and the show was never recorded!

Improving on this idea, I decided to try having 2 favorites for the same show. The first favorite would be time slotted as you described. The second favorite, on the other hand, is open to record the show at any time, and would work as a fallback in case the show time unexpectedly changes. I hope this solves my problem.

This sould also work fine for you... I know I've done this for certain programs, that are constantly in re-run. For instance, i have South Park in twice. one, at a high priority set as a First Run only, and then a lower priority that is set to record ALL showings. Works quite well set up in this way.

[coryking]

This is a tricky thing.

While I agree that 95% of the time, it doesn't matter what gets recorded in what order, 5% of the time it would be nice to some how give a boost to a favorite to ensure it gets the first airing of a first-run :-)

I like the idea of setting up a favorite for a specific time & channel--that is what I do for my geeky political shows. I wonder if there could be a different, more elegant way.

Our use case is:

- First run of The Office, Flight of the Concords, etc
- She wants the *first airing* for the first-runs, darn it!
- She never cares about reruns, only first-runs.
- She could care less if it conflicts with anything else, no matter what the consequences are (though she will check anyway :-)
- She will usually settle on a later airing if necessary.
- Right now she goes "Future Airings -> (find first airing) -> manual record" to force it to a time slot.
- What she gets cranky about is when the SageTV will pick off some "stupid" show that is low in the priory list and then bump her first-run, first-air by a week. "Ah man Cory, Why did it decide to record something at the bottom and then push off The Office for next week?"
- The first thing she will do in such a case is futz with the priority list to bump her favorite to #1.
- I always assumed, and so did she, this would make said program record "first".

I think that SageTV should give weight to recording higher priority items sooner. I think if you asked a layman, they'd assume that a higher priority would record before a lower priority. I dont think most would assume the priority list is just for resolving conflicts. I know that until I read this, I always assumed it was for adjusting what got recorded first. I already know what she'll say when I tell her this--"Well, she should make it so higher priority items go first :-)"

PS: the WAF on SageTV is sky high--now my brother wants me to set up a 3 TV, 2 tuner system for his house :-)

[Jetracers]

If its really that important to watch the show right away and you catch it in time,You could always just mark the show as a manual recording.

[Fuzzy]

Personally, I like that SageTV does what it can to record EVERY program I want it to. Not much of a problem for me anymore as I have plenty of tuners, but it was VERY useful a year or two ago. Prime-time can get pretty crowded, and since shows like The Daily Show are right in the midst with everything else, but re-aired every few hours, it is nice that it can grab them later if it needs to.