Can you prevent recordings during certain hours?

[Ralphjb]

Can't find an answer to this from the forum or the support documents. Is is possible to program SageTV so it will not record during certain hours every day? From observation, the greatest issue with stability appears to be recordings which are interrupted by the daily guide update on Dish Network.

Thanks!

[GKusnick]

You could create a Windows scheduled task to stop and restart the SageTV service at specified hours.

That said, I'm having trouble imagining how an EPG update on your satellite box would interfere with Sage's ability to record the signal coming out of the box.

(If Sage's own internal EPG update is causing damaged recordings or stability issues, you should report that as a bug.)

[Fuzzy]

Dish network boxes will go to sleep every night - there USED to be a STB setting to disable this, but that itself has been disabled for over a year now. This can cause all sorts of issues. I would also love to be able to configure a 'black-out' period on a per-tuner basis (instead of the all-or-nothing service shutdown).

[paulbeers]

With my HDPVR connected to my VIP211's, I never have a problem when it records something at the 3:00 hour. The only issue is that I end up with half a show of the default screen (and of course a momentary gap of recording).

[Ralphjb]

I have an R5000 and it can cause an issue. Not all the time, but some times. What happens is the R5000 keeps "recording" at also reports that nothing is being saved. The result is the R5000 is no longer available.

The Windows event will not fix that problem I don't believe. Really what I want to do is within Sage flag the time as unavailable, and therefore nothing will nothing will be scheduled for recording during this period.

[Fuzzy]

What I plan on doing (next time i get in to mess with things) is to use a windows event to kill the R5000 app (which will cause sage to see those tuners as not-functioning), then restart it a little later (3:25 or so) to get them running again. The problem would come from sage thinking they are available ahead of time (and therefore potentially screwing up some conflict resolution) I'd rather it never even consider that timeframe as an option by using a blackout period.

[GKusnick]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

I'd rather it never even consider that timeframe as an option by using a blackout period.

You could schedule a daily timed recording on that tuner to coincide with your scheduled downtime.

[Ralphjb]

Originally Posted by GKusnick

You could schedule a daily timed recording on that tuner to coincide with your scheduled downtime.

But wouldn't it then try to record on the tuner and trigger the problem?

[GKusnick]

That's why I said "to coincide with your scheduled downtime". The service can't record anything if it's not running. The timed recording is just to mark that time as busy for purposes of conflict resolution. So the overall solution would be:

Set a timed recording for 3:01-3:59.
Stop the service at 3:00.
Restart the service at 4:00.

[Ralphjb]

Got you. I did not read your post in context with the others. Thanks.

[CollinR]

Originally Posted by GKusnick

You could schedule a daily timed recording on that tuner to coincide with your scheduled downtime.

I do that plus setup an autotune timer at 3:15am so it will kick the videoback over on it's own.

[CollinR]

BTW I'm pretty sure you need to do the autotune timer on the RCVR too, otherwise you may get a bunch of "Press Select To Watch TV".

[Fuzzy]

The R5000 app automatically sends the SELECT command before tuning, (and actually periodically when NOT recording) to wake/keep awake the STB, so the autotune timer isn't needed here (at least with 3.1d). The manual recording is a good idea though, and it SHOULD work (though I'd have to create 3 of them... :-) Still, not as elegent as just telling the sage scheduling system that that time-slot doesn't exist... if that were possible...

[GKusnick]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

Still, not as elegent as just telling the sage scheduling system that that time-slot doesn't exist... if that were possible...

Write a plugin to delete those airings from the EPG.

[Fuzzy]

That would be my next route... would work for me, but not for Stanger, as with his mixed sources, it would be removing them from his HD-PVR source as well - he'd have to have seperate lineups for each, so that they could just be removed from the R5000 associated lineup.

[K O]

Here's how I fixed it for my (3) R5000 units:

I added 2 scheduled tasks that run as administrator and are allowed to interact with the desktop (that way the R5000 app runs with it's window visible)

At 2:50 am, server runs the KillR5000.bat which contains 1 line:
taskkill /IM R5000hd.exe /t /f

This successfully kills all R5000 threads, even if they are not responding.

At 3:50 am, server runs the R5000.exe which re-starts all 3 R5000 units.


Every since I switched to this method, I've been very happy with the R5000 units. When the units go offline at 2:50am, Sage automatically re-schedules anything that might have been in the 3am time slot, and, really, I never record anything between 2am and 4am anyway. It also doesn't generate any errors inside Sage like other proposed methods of solving this issue. Sage recognizes the tuners as offline and re-schedules appropriately - then when they're back on, Sage puts everything back where it was.

[briands]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

That would be my next route... would work for me, but not for Stanger, as with his mixed sources, it would be removing them from his HD-PVR source as well - he'd have to have seperate lineups for each, so that they could just be removed from the R5000 associated lineup.

It might benefit the HD-PVR as well to prevent weird stream changes within a recording.