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AR on a per-recording or per-service basis

I shall eliminate another variable (I don't mind using iPlayer for these). If I ditch the Wales channels and I still get tracking errors, that will tell us something (if I don't get tracking errors it will not prove anything - you can't prove a negative). Do we think it's enough to delete the channels, or do I have to do a retune?
 
Black Hole said:
Royal Institution Christmas Lectures has failed to track (BBC FOUR, 8pm) - that's another one for iPlayer. Perhaps AR doesn't work with anything "royal" in the title.

Three Men Go To New England (BBC2 9pm) has started recording OK (lending support to my royal theory).
Click to expand...
My box recorded "The Royal Bodyguard" OK using AR.:)
 
Black Hole said:
Do we think it's enough to delete the channels, or do I have to do a retune?
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I think for research purposes it would be better to start from scratch with a manual tune so you know you have a defined state. However if you prefer you could simply delete the channels above 800 and see if AR performance improves and if not then do a manual tune.
 
I'm getting a bit tee'd off with this. Top Gear has failed to record, and the Royal Institution Lecture again. There is a degree of commonality with last night: when the Lecture failed I had the Humax in playback pause, and again tonight it was in playback pause. One doesn't expect that to have anything to do with it, but you never know.

As an aside, I used iPlayer to download a radio programme (and copied it out of the buffer), and it is listed in media as a broken AVI (and not listed at all on DLNA). Anybody know why that is? It plays OK locally and by sneakernet.

Update: Three men in a boat has started recording successfully, the box was playing live at the time.
 
I checked my box tuning and all channels are off Crystal Palace with ch31 being the only HD specific group. Hope things work out during the proposed 2 switchovers for London come April/June time. So far I've only had one AR failure, and that was an early morning film many weeks ago. All other recordings with the box on or off using AR have worked fine on BBC & Ch4.

Although it will be great to have BBC2 content in HD, it will be a shame to lose the mix of programmes on BBC HD as it seems many programmes that go out 1440 on BBC1 HD are repeated at 1920 later on BBC HD i.e. Merlin, Great Expectations.
 
Joy of joys (since I know you're all following this avidly) I now have a full set - tonight's Institution Lecture (AR) failed again, this time the box has been off all day and I noticed the external drives light up for the 15-minute run-in, but some time later everything went dead (failed to track). Fortunately I've been making a back-up recording with padding on the late night retransmission.

Must get around to a retune minus the Wales channels - very little chance it will do any good, just for the doubting Thomases.

All you who claim AR is the bees knees - ever tried BBC FOUR? I wonder if there is a geographic correlation (some regions more reliable than others)? For the record I'm on Mendip.
 
Frosty said:
So far I've only had one AR failure
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Is one AR failure acceptable, when you could use ultra-reliable padding (never fails to record, even if it doesn't record the right thing) and just mark programmes that are liable to late timing changes for AR?

I wonder if that is a plausible alternative modus operandi? Instead of blacklist/whitelist (which, assuming my problems are not multi-region related, would still be unreliable), we could pool information via the RS web site as to which programmes were likely to need AR, and if a programme like that was detected in a user's schedule it would automatically be tweaked to AR. (That's for us safety freaks who like padding of course)

Another thing: I'm not sure how long AR gives a programme to start, but my experience this evening is it's not all that long. The expected programme has to start within -15 to +30(?) minutes of the scheduled start, and if it's later than that (which it could be if the football is into a penalty shoot-out after extra time) AR is no better than padding. In fact, with the facility to allow an hour end padding, padding would be more effective than AR!
 
Black Hole said:
All you who claim AR is the bees knees - ever tried BBC FOUR? I wonder if there is a geographic correlation (some regions more reliable than others)? For the record I'm on Mendip.
Click to expand...

Yes, I record often from BBC4 and have never had an issue (Winter Hill) and am very happy with AR in general despite making lots of recordings every day. There must be something about your setup (receiver or location) to account for the differences in behavior you are experiencing...

For some BBC info on AR you might find this interesting.
 
Hi

I've managed to join up, tried before but never got the email to complete the registration!

I have to add another plus 1 to using padding. Whenever AR is tried it doesn't take long for something to get truncated. Nothing more frustrating getting to the end of a program for it to stop abruptly before the credits, you don't know if you have missed 5 seconds or 5 minutes. Padding for us is 100% reliable, can't fault it, but as soon as we try AR.....

You are just too reliant on some real-time triggering using AR, if it goes wrong it's frustrating. We've always lost more programs to AR than we have had saved by AR working around a major schedule change. PDC on VHS video recorders was exactly the same, complaints to the BBC gave the response it was more reliable to simply add 10 minutes extra to a recording than use PDC.

With the Olympics coming up this year however, I can see AR potentially being more useful as I expect the schedules to be constantly shifting around. Assuming the TV companies keep up with the changes to make AR work, it will be helpful to use it during that period. Having the option to use it on trusted channels will be a super plus point.

I don't care if it is an opt in, opt out, black list or white list as once you've selected the channels you want (or selected the ones you don't want) to use AR, the end result is the same.

Also AR data is regional, so while one area may see very good reliability, another region may not be so lucky.

Regards

Phil
 
Hi Phil. I still have only had one AR failure, which coming soon after purchasing the T2 dented my confidence in AR. That said, and I've only recorded HD programmes with my Humax (for SD I'm using my 5 year old Topfield), I've had no other AR failures across 60+ reocrdings from BBC1 HD, BBC HD and Ch4 HD. Not the largest selection of recordings and just HD ones. In all cases the AR kicks in just before the programme on BBC, and if anything records much more after the programme than before the start.

What channels have you seen issue with? SD/HD, what transmitter are you on? (if known).
 
That's interesting, because I don't record very much HiDef. When my AR foray worked (StDef), the recordings ran from the channel ident immediately before the programme to the channel ident immediately before the following programme.
 
Black Hole said:
That's interesting, because I don't record very much HiDef. When my AR foray worked (StDef), the recordings ran from the channel ident immediately before the programme to the channel ident immediately before the following programme.
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Perhaps you should try recording a few things from the HD channels using AR, and see what results you get. Like Frosty, I only record HD channels on my HDR's, and use my Toppy's for SD recordings.
 
AR needs to work with StDef as far as I am concerned. If you are singing its praises based on HiDef channels only, you have (possibly unwittingly) skewed the results by pre-selection. I would hazard a guess that not many people are running a PVR exclusively for HiDef and another one exclusively for StDef.

Perhaps you should try it on StDef. From where I'm standing, the white list looks like the HiDef channels only.
 
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