Recording Schedule - Beta 6.5.8

[jm987]

Has anyone else noticed shows not scheduled to record with this new beta? I used to run 2X HD PVR's but have since changed to 1 unit. When I look at my recording schedule for Monday I have several shows not showing up that are first runs. Has anyone else seen this?

JM

[thaddeusv]

I have the same thin on 6.5.7. It appears to be a first run, but is not being picked up by my first run favorite. I have an HD-PVR and an HVR-1800.

[dadof4]

Has happened to me twice since I installed 6.5.7. Both times a favorite did not record. I never had this issue prior to 6.5.7. Fortunately I was able to catch "The Office" on NBC.com and "Life on Mars" scheduled itself on an additional airing.

[jm987]

I have submitted a bug report. Some of my shows that were supposed to tape on Monday are now showing up but not all. My Tuesday shows are not showing up at all anymore.

I suggest others with the same issue to do the same.

JM

[Opus4]

Before filing a bug report, check the points in this FAQ. Tuesday is beyond the 3 day scheduling lookahead & Monday could just now be coming into it... and other things pointed out by that FAQ. Also look for scheduling conflicts.

- Andy

[tedson]

Is there any way to push that out from three days to seven (some setting)? Schedules tend to repeat on seven day boundaries and it would make me feel better to see seven days ahead, so I know all my favorites are going to record.

[Razillian]

The "scheduling_lookahead" line in the sage.properties file controls this. It is in milliseconds. Here's the exact line for seven days:

scheduling_lookahead=604800000

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by Razillian

The "scheduling_lookahead" line in the sage.properties file controls this.

... and I always comment that SageTV says to make change that property with caution. If you run into performance, scheduling, or other issues after such a change, revert that property back to its default setting before contacting support.

- Andy

[jm987]

The shows that were scheduled for today are now showing that they will be recorded.

Maybe it's not a bug after all but will keep my eye on it.

[TwistedMelon]

I've definitely seen a scheduling oddity tonight that I have not seen previously. That is to say, I have not seen something "like" this previously. The current schedule is brand new so this is the first time this exact combination of shows and time slots has happened.

Setup 2 tuners (PVR500)

What happened:

Grey's Anatomy was skipped tonight (Thursday 9pm) and instead scheduled for recording on Saturday.

At 9pm tonight Sage recorded The Office and Hell's Kitchen.

All shows are set as favorites for First Run Only, Any Channel, Any Day, Keep All, AutoDelete No.

Relative to each other, they're in this priority: The Office, Grey's, Hell's Kitchen

All episodes were starting at 9pm, The Office running until 9:30 and the other two until 10:00

An additional airing for Grey's exists on Saturday and an additional airing for Hell's Kitchen exists for tonight (Thursday) at 10pm (where there's no conflict)

I understand that looking forward 3 days Sage saw there was another airing for Grey's so instead of popping a conflict for tonight it rescheduled Grey's. However, there's another airing of Hell's Kitchen on tonight at 10pm which would have made it possible to grab everything.

Why wasn't Hell's Kitchen set to record at 10pm (bumped) instead of having Grey's bumped to another date? If priorities were also used to choose which shows to bump, the lower priority show should be bumped first.


The last EPG update was at 7pm. The EPG did not change between the recording times and me noticing the issue and writing it up in here (meaning that 10pm Hell's didn't appear after the recordings started)

As an aside, is there some option that can prevent a higher priority show from being bumped at all for a lower priority, even if a future airing exists? This would then show a conflict which I'd have to resolve manually by explicitly choosing to record the future airing.

[TallMomof2]

The only thing you can do is to restrict your favorite to a certain day and/time. I do that for a couple of shows that I want to watch right away.

[TwistedMelon]

Restricting a favorite for Day/Time means making it a fixed recording, which looses nearly all the benefits associated with having a favorite in the first place (namely the ability to accommodate for changing schedules).

What needs to be done is having the issue fixed. What happened in my illustrated case was clearly an error in program logic. Possibly a bug, maybe just an oversight. But it needs to be fixed as the result is flawed.

[Tiki]

Do you have padding on your shows?
It you have shows set to start early and/or end late, Sage may have figured it was better to record the whole Grey's with it's padding intact on Saturday than to record Hell's at 10:00 when it would overlap a little with something else...

Sage has never published anything on exactly how its scheduling and conflict resolution engine works, so it's difficult to know what criteria it uses to make certain decisions like this. Sometimes the solution it chooses to a conflict isn't the one that you or I might think is the best solution.

In this case, it did find a way to schedule all of the shows without a conflict, so it's not fair to call it a bug. However, you may want to send a bug notice to Sage anyway if you have an idea on how they could improve things (they don't read every post in these forums, but they do at least read all the bug reports).

[phelme]

You also have to factor in the network's ploy of padding shows by a couple minutes on their own, this can screw up DVR scheduling as well. ABC loves doing that. Is it possible that Grey's or The Office overran into the 10 PM hour (those shows often are padded) and caused a conflict with Hell's Kitchen repeat at 10 PM?

And another possibility, was Hell's Kitchen marked as a repeat in the schedule or first run?

I admit that now that Hell's Kitchen is on Thursdays, it's messed up my own scheduling as well. There is too much going on that evening (I record Supernatural on the CW as well as everything you do).

[matt91]

Originally Posted by phelme

You also have to factor in the network's ploy of padding shows by a couple minutes on their own, this can screw up DVR scheduling as well.

Yeah, great point. You'd need to check the EPG and ensure that you could have recorded the full programs before considering it a bug.

Sage will record an airing later on rather than miss 1 minute (literally) at an earlier date.

Matt

[TwistedMelon]

Great suggestions guys, but unfortunately none of them apply to the situation last week. None of the favorites have any defined padding. I also confirmed that none of the episodes were scheduled at offset/overlapping times. All shows were marked as First Run and with IDs recognized by the favorites (they were all outlined in silver/white)

I consider it a "bug" because Sage re-scheduled a show that I have as a higher priority favorite rather than one that is a lower priority. It's a logic error because it resolved the conflict incorrectly, not because it wanted to resolve it to begin with. It was possible to get everything on that day instead of having one show record three days later.

I'd also like to be able to set an option such that moving a higher priority in favor of a lower priority would flag as a conflict ahead of time, so I could choose what to do.

[TwistedMelon]

Scheduling definitely seems broken, with another example tonight.

I had only three items on the schedule for today (Tuesday Feb 10)

9:00-9:30pm Scrubs 9:30-10:00pm Scrubs
9:01-10:00pm Fringe


The two Scrubs episodes were back to back on the same channel. Fringe was on a different channel.

As mentioned before, running with dual tuners.

My wife decided to set a manual record for American Idol 8:00-9:01pm on the same channel as Fringe.

She checked the schedule after setting the record (it was still before 7pm) and it listed all four recordings as expected.

Between then and now at 9:20pm, Fringe was rescheduled to Saturday. I was watching a movie from about 7-9:20pm (in SageTV) and just checked the status now.

This behavior is not consistent with the scheduling I've been using over the past few years with Sage.