Automatically picking alternative broadcasts that go back-to-back with other recordings

rowanmoor

Member
I have noticed an oddity and I am wondering if it is normal and whether it can be worked round at all.

I had 2 recordings scheduled for Sunday evening - one from 8-9pm and one from 9-10pm (both series recordings). I then set a recording (one off - single program) for something else on the following Wednesday evening. I then didn't think anything of it until I looked on Monday and discovered that it had recorded all 3 already. The problem is that it moved the Wed program to an alternate broadcast on Sunday which went from something-9pm. This meant that when the 9-10pm program started the AR had not stopped the other 2 recordings and so it missed the start of the program and gave the 'did not track as already recording 2 things - do you want to play it anyway' type message.

It didn't miss much, but the recording started a couple of minutes into the actual program.

I'm used to a system where it would automatically use a later showing of one of the programs to avoid the potential truncation of one. In this case it worked against me and created the truncation by moving a recording to a different time than I set even though there were no other recordings scheduled on the Wed. I really don't care if it records something a few days later, but I do care about missing the start of a program (though that is better than the end of a program).

Is that normal behaviour? Is there any way I could have done things differently to avoid it?

I presume if I had padding on the later recording or both the earlier ones then it would not have because it would have been a true 3 way clash - but I would rather use AR on channels I know I can rely on it (and I haven't found any I can't rely on so far).
 
I don't think there is a way of avoiding this if you are scheduling from the EPG, if you had known what it was going to do (which obviously you didn't), then you could have manually scheduled the third recording to avoid this. One small consolation would be if all 3 recordings were on the same channel, if this was the case at least the missing few minutes would be on the end of one of the other recordings, if however the recordings were on different channels you will have as a replacement for the missing section, a few minutes of something you don't want, which isn't very useful
 
Last edited:
Yes - it was because it was different channels that the problem happened. If they were the same channel then the full program would have been somewhere, and the main channels do seem to be quite accurate with the AR signals now (a lot better than a few years ago) so I would expect it to have got it right anyway. The problem is that the channels are never in sync with eachother, even from the same broadcaster.

When you say manually scheduling it - what do you mean? Literally setting the time manually so there is no AR etc, or just using WebIf/RS to do it from their EPG rather than using the remote in the EPG on the Humax?
 
One small consolation would be if all 3 recordings were on the same channel,
One small miracle in fact :)

When you say manually scheduling it - what do you mean? Literally setting the time manually so there is no AR etc, or just using WebIf/RS to do it from their EPG rather than using the remote in the EPG on the Humax?


It's not the AR that's the problem, it's the Series Linking.
I've had this a few times, but I usually check that recordings are in the schedule correctly after programming them, so intervene. Usually it's been a case where the 'offending' programme is the previous episode.
My strategy is to cancel the series recording and then set the programme up as a single event. (This is really just a reminder to me.) After the offending programme has aired I'll go in and cancel the single event and reprogramme the series. That usually sorts it out.
Sometimes I still get duplicate reservations, presumably because the broadcaster has cocked up the IDs, though sometimes it gets corrected before broadcast time. All you can do is keep an eye on your schedule.
 
It's not the AR that's the problem, it's the Series Linking.
I've had this a few times, but I usually check that recordings are in the schedule correctly after programming them, so intervene. Usually it's been a case where the 'offending' programme is the previous episode.
In my case the one that moved was a single recording - a film, so there was no series as such. I presume it just worked on the program ID and found the earlier showing of it and moved the schedule to be 'helpful'. And I can quite understand that some users would rather have everything recorded on first showing and miss the odd few minutes of program starts so that they can watch everything near transmission time. It just isn't my preference.
 
In my case the one that moved was a single recording - a film, so there was no series as such.

Ouch! I didn't know that could happen. Have to watch out for that - I'm wondering if that has been responsible for the odd hiccup in the past.

[Rant]It's annoying that these features that try to be helpful are so often not. (The 'Here's another programme you might be interested in' offerings seem to be 90% garbage - I just gape at it thinking (out loud) "What possible connection can you draw between the thing I've chosen to record and that?" Apart from being on the same channel!) I wish the setup menu had a few option buttons for them.[/Rant]
 
You realise these recommendations are tagged by the broadcaster?

I am wondering if this displaced single event recording was scheduled via the RS.
 
When you say manually scheduling it - what do you mean? Literally setting the time manually so there is no AR etc
Yes, This would stop the Humax searching for and finding an alternative you don't want, however you would only be in a position to do this if you were aware there was going to be a problem in the first place
 
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade CRIDs:
BBC three HD Sun 17th CRID: FP.BBC.CO.UK/4J4584
BBC three HD Wed 20th CRID: FP.BBC.CO.UK/4J4584
BBC three Wed 20th CRID: FP.BBC.CO.UK/4J4584

Looking at Party Girl for tomorrow all 3 Channel 4s have the same CRID as each other.

It is similar with ITV's Couples Retreat tomorrow evening with all 3 broadcasts having the same CRID as each other.

It looks as though this is normal.

I frequently set recordings for non-first showings and so far it has not recorded an earlier broadcast.
 
You realise these recommendations are tagged by the broadcaster?
I hadn't really thought about it, but it is still s**t. It's an annoying pop-up which defaults to "Ooh, yes, record it", so you have to make two button actions to dismiss it. There should be a setting in the native firmware to disable it (along with a fair few other things like auto-update).
 
I hadn't really thought about it, but it is still s**t. It's an annoying pop-up which defaults to "Ooh, yes, record it", so you have to make two button actions to dismiss it. There should be a setting in the native firmware to disable it (along with a fair few other things like auto-update).
Or one mouse click from rs with no stupid recommendations.
 
Back
Top