Recording 2, watching 3rd, why can't I record 3rd?

[SiHa]

Last night, my wife asked me to record something she'd spotted had just started, while I had the guide open. The box was already recording two shows, so it asked me which I'd like to stop to allow this new recording. I canceled this and thought I'd just use the web-if to find a repeat showing. I then absent-mindedly just pressed OK on the remote, and the box happily tuned to the channel and we started watching it.
Whatever I did, the thing wouldn't let me record what was being watched.
I understand that you should be able to record more than one show from the same multiplex at the same time, and I'm sure I've had three simultaneous recordings happening before.

I'm fairly sure two existing recordings were Dragon's Den (BBC2) Doc Martin (ITV1) and the new one was Hotel Inspector (C5). The first two are on MUX1 and the last MUX2.

Whatever the muxes, why couldn't I just press 'record' when watching?

 

[MartinLiddle]

Whatever the muxes, why couldn't I just press 'record' when watching?

Because the box is designed and marketed as only allowing two recordings at once. My suspiscion is that the hardware is capable of making more than two recordings but with only two tuners there would be a significant number of cases where subsequent recordings would fail because a tuner would not be available.

 

[Ezra Pound]

It is possible to record the contents of the live buffer after one of the other two recordings has finished, So 3 programs (on 2 muxes) on at say 9:00 'till 9:30 can be recorded by selecting 2 for recording and watching the third 'live' and then at say 9:35 re-wind the live buffer to the start of program 3 (at 9:00) and then press record

 

[SiHa]

Because the box is designed and marketed as only allowing two recordings at once. My suspiscion is that the hardware is capable of making more than two recordings but with only two tuners there would be a significant number of cases where subsequent recordings would fail because a tuner would not be available.

Thanks, you're probably right. I'm fairly sure though that I've had more than two scheduled recordings simultaneously recording in the past. I could be mistaken, of course.. I've had a few recordings where it says "Recording Failed", but on pressing 'OK' it plays quite happily, maybe those are the ones where there was a clash, but as they were on the same Mux it's recorded anyway, but still flags a problem.

Will have to investigate further later, I'll set a few recordings that will clash but are all on the same mux and see what I get.

It is possible to record the contents of the live buffer after one of the other two recordings has finished, So 3 programs (on 2 muxes) on at say 9:00 'till 9:30 can be recorded by selecting 2 for recording and watching the third 'live' and then at say 9:35 re-wind the live buffer to the start of program 3 (at 9:00) and then press record

Hmm, I suppose that's possible. Kind of makes recording it a bit pointless though. Thanks for the suggestion all the same.
Actually, while I'm on the subject. I've not played with this feature too much, because on the one occasion I tried it, it cut off the end of the recording when the Hummy helpfully jumped back to 'Live' at the end of the scheduled programme. Has this been fixed with a recent release of the FW?

Cheers all.

 

[MartinLiddle]

Will have to investigate further later, I'll set a few recordings that will clash but are all on the same mux and see what I get.

Let us know what you find.

 

[SiHa]

Let us know what you find.

Definitely.
I've just scheduled three recordings (C4, E4 and C5) all starting around 11pm tonight over the wonderful remote scheduling service (which did flag the conflict - all good) and will see what has recorded tmorrow.

 

[oijonesey]

During the RS service pre-testing I did come up against a scenario with three recordings as follows:

I scheduled up:​

BBC news at 6​

ITV1 calendar news (although translated to Anglia Tonight in the Pending list - nice one!)​

C4 - the simpsons​

They hit the Queued commands list as expected, and then once they sync'd I got the pink warning so I sent in a cancel for the BBC news (BTW does it need the 'Are You Sure' as I could still hit the trashcan icon on the unschedule task in the Queued list if I changed my mind? Don't know)​

The cancellation for the BBC news sync'd and everything was happy again - no conflicts.​

I'll put the BBC News in again and send a reboot at the same time to see what makes it out of Pending (Anglia Tonight and Simpsons are still in Pending at this stage)​

OK so it's refreshed and rebooted and I now have all three items in Active but they are in pink. I'll leave them in there as clashes and see which ones record. I suspect it'll be first come first served (Wallace I think found this before).​

It got to 6 oclock and a nice message appeared saying I had three recordings due to start and which two did I really want. I couldn't get to the remote in time so the message went after about 30sec and it turned out it recorded both the news shows and not the simpsons. Not sure why it dropped the simpsons (unless Mrs Oijonesey has had a word with it - she hates the simpsons!). All I noticed when the first message appeared is that the news shows had a time of 17:59 and the simpsons had 18:00. According to the schedule they were all timed at 18:00 so maybe it's down to the clock times on each individual channel? Never mind - with the new mod versions I'll know there's a clash anyway!

af123 then advised it would all depend which station transmitted the AR trigger first - in this case it must have been the news shows. Admittedly I haven't been through to see which muxes these stations were on so your test will prove that but if you are watching at 11pm you might get an on screen prompt asking what you want to do.

 

[SiHa]

Well, had a look this morning.

The three recordings were due to start at 23:00, 23:05 & 23:10, all on the same MUX. Not surprisingly, the 23:10 recording failed due to a clash with a higher priority recording.

I was sure that I had seen more than two before. Maybe it was a feature that Humax decided to 'improve' out with a later release of firmware.

Shame, as it is perfectly possible.