Strange behavior on my series for "Lost"

[popechild]

Background:
I have 3 tuners, all of which receive the local ABC station, 2 are OTA and 1 is the HD-PVR
I have a series setup for Lost, set to record first runs and re-runs.

Problem:
Every week they show the previous week's episode at 8pm and then the new episode at 9pm. The 9pm new episodes are not being scheduled to record until the repeat episode that they show a week later at 8pm, instead of on its original air date. For example, last week I sat down at about 11 o'clock to watch the new episode and found that it hadn't been recorded. I had no idea why. Tonight, it recorded that episode when it re-aired at 8pm.

Then I noticed that tonight's new 9pm episode was not showing up in the schedule, but next week's 8pm airing of the same episode was. It's not an issue with conflicts, because there's only one other show set to record at the same time, so I have two free tuners.

I "fixed" it (at least for today) by just doing a manual recording for the 9pm episode, which is working fine. But I'd like to know why it's not recording it to begin with, and how I can prevent it from doing this in the future.

Any ideas?

[Fuzzy]

Are you sure ABC is showing on the OTA lineups? Is there perhaps a situation where the only available ABC station is the HD-PVR one? are your three ABC's all combined as the same channel in the EPG? If not, then perhaps it's an issue of the OTA EPG having incorrect data, so it thinks the HD-PVR is the only one available.

When you added the manual recording, what tuner is it planning to use for it, and did it reschedule the other show? Finally, where are you located, and what lineups are you using.. might help us look at zap2it to help figure out what might cause the problem.

[popechild]

Yes, ABC is definitely available OTA, and all the ABC tuners show in my EPG as a single tuner. When I manually recorded it, it's being recorded by on OTA tuner, and it did not have to reschedule the other show. I'm in zip 30024, using the Atlanta local lineup for OTA and the Dish lineup for the HD-PVR.

[Fuzzy]

definately strange.. not sure I've seen this behavior, though I do know there are others here who have reported problems with Lost for some reason. i don't know if maybe zap2it has some quirks in the guide data for that show specifically... don't watch it myself...

Only other thing I can think of is if for some reason there's a timeslot restriction on your Lost favorite limiting it to the 8:00 hour, that would prevent it from catching it until next week.

[GKusnick]

The usual diagnostic for this sort of thing is to go to the Favorite Details screen and click the Additional Airings button. (At least that's what it's called in the stock UI.) If you don't see your missing airings in there, then there's something about you favorite settings that's excluding them.

[korben_dallas]

I noticed tonight's episode was 1 hour and 2 minutes. Related?

[SWKerr]

I had the same problem. I think it was the 2 minute overrun. When I recorded it manually it moved the Southland recording on TNT to another time. So there was a free tuner at 9:00 but not a 10:00 but the 2 minute over run was in the 10:00 space. Since the Lost episode was available in the guide for the next week it did not report it as a conflict.

I have similar problems with NASCAR races. It wants to record it during the middle of the night instead of the first instance. There is no way to weight recording to record as soon as possible.

[popechild]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

Only other thing I can think of is if for some reason there's a timeslot restriction on your Lost favorite limiting it to the 8:00 hour, that would prevent it from catching it until next week.

There's no timeslot restriction on it - I thought about adding one for 9:00 to force it to not see the following week's 8:00pm showing as an alternative, but then I would miss it if they ever showed moved the new episode earlier or later one week.

Originally Posted by GKusnick

The usual diagnostic for this sort of thing is to go to the Favorite Details screen and click the Additional Airings button. (At least that's what it's called in the stock UI.) If you don't see your missing airings in there, then there's something about you favorite settings that's excluding them.

When I look at the additional airings, it shows the "new" 9pm listing there, but it shows that it's not planning to record it, then it shows that it will record it the following week at 8.

Originally Posted by SWKerr

I had the same problem. I think it was the 2 minute overrun. When I recorded it manually it moved the Southland recording on TNT to another time. So there was a free tuner at 9:00 but not a 10:00 but the 2 minute over run was in the 10:00 space. Since the Lost episode was available in the guide for the next week it did not report it as a conflict.

I have similar problems with NASCAR races. It wants to record it during the middle of the night instead of the first instance. There is no way to weight recording to record as soon as possible.

I thought at first this may have been it, and maybe it's somehow still related, but I'm not sure. I did have three shows set to record at 10 last night, but:

a) One of them was on ABC, so even though Lost was scheduled until 10:02, one of the shows I was recording at 10 was 20/20, which was actually scheduled to start at 10:02 after Lost, so that shouldn't have been a conflict

b) last week it skipped the new Lost even though I did not have 3 shows set to record at 10

c) and even after I manually recorded Lost, all three of the 10pm shows (including 20/20 at 10:02) still recorded - nothing was pushed or missed due to my recording Lost.

So for some reason, Sage is deciding not to record the 9pm episode of Lost and to wait for the following week's repeat airing, even though there's no apparent need for it to do so. ie., when I force it to record, it doesn't cause a change to any other recordings that are planned.

[wrems]

For the past several weeks the recording schedule has been messing for me too. More here:

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=47020

Last nights episode of Lost actually scheduled and recorded as it should, for me. I think my problem revolved around padding my favorites to record 1 minute after to avoid the black pause of death. I've padded my recordings for a very long time and still not sure why it seems to be only now interfering with my other favorites. I hate shows getting hastily chopped during scenes for the next week, but would rather have my favorites take precedence over that measly one minute.

I'm still watching it like a hawk though since I have other favorites that aren't properly being queued. I've removed the padding and will see if that was the only problem.

[Fuzzy]

Did you perhaps have a bunch of things recording at 10? that 2 minute overrun would cause a conflict to arrise, because it knew it couldn't record the entire thing. Sage would rather wait a week to record the whole show, than record all but the last 2 minutes of it tonight. If ABC gets in the practice of doing this, then the only way to force it to record then is to restrict it to the 9 oclock timeslot, and make sure it's higher priority than the 10 oclock programs. this will cause the lowest priority 10 oclock show to be missed.

[popechild]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

Did you perhaps have a bunch of things recording at 10? that 2 minute overrun would cause a conflict to arrise, because it knew it couldn't record the entire thing. Sage would rather wait a week to record the whole show, than record all but the last 2 minutes of it tonight. If ABC gets in the practice of doing this, then the only way to force it to record then is to restrict it to the 9 oclock timeslot, and make sure it's higher priority than the 10 oclock programs. this will cause the lowest priority 10 oclock show to be missed.

I did have all three tuners recording at 10, but one of them was the ABC show, which the schedule showed as starting at 10:02 after Lost ended. Accordingly, when I manually recorded lost, it did not reschedule any of the 3 10pm shows, it recorded them all as it had planned.

Also, I don't have any padding on any of my favorites.

[src666]

Try moving Lost up the priority list, ahead of the the Favorites that would record before or after it.

[SWKerr]

Originally Posted by src666

Try moving Lost up the priority list, ahead of the the Favorites that would record before or after it.

I don't think that will make any difference. The problem is that Sage has that episode available in the guide for the next week and assumes it can just get it then. It will still record the other shows first if it thinks it will be able to get it next week.

I would like to see some kind of first available flag in the future. I have this same problem with NASCAR since it is played on speed in the middle of the night.

[src666]

Originally Posted by SWKerr

I would like to see some kind of first available flag in the future. I have this same problem with NASCAR since it is played on speed in the middle of the night.

But the middle of the night commercials are so much more fun than the during the day commercials!

But I do see your problem, and thinking back have encountered it myself a few times. Hope you find a solution that works well for you. Mine was to add more tuners. Of course, I may have gone a bit overboard, since I now have 9 tuners (counting my 2 HD HomeRun units) on the system.

But I never miss a show!

[wrems]

Yeah, more tuners is definitely a sure fire way to resolve this! 9 is a lot.

[SWKerr]

I had a problem with having to manually select "Lost" again last night. This time there was no 2 minute overflow and I know I had a tuner free at 9:00pm.

Any ideas?