Series record not scheduling all episodes

[hairy_mutley]

I have seen this issue discussed on another thread, but cannot remember which one...
I have a series where not all episodes in the series have been scheduled.
Person of Interest series 3, 5USA weekday mornings at 10 & 11.
I probably scheduled it originally via the WebIf.
I noticed today that it has not scheduled Thursday's and Friday's episodes, it has just skipped to Monday, Tuesday &Wednesday of next week.
I have cancelled the series and rescheduled it from the SUI, using Monday's episode as the selection. All episodes are now shown as scheduled.
The seriesCRID appears to be the same, but maybe someone else would have a better idea of what to look for (to find the source of the problem). It crosses my mind that my schedule history may have some helpful info if someone can guide me to it.

 

[jxp]

I have seen the same issue in the past.
In my case it appeared that the EPG data had been loaded out of sequence after an episode had been recorded.
So the next match found was next Monday instead of Thursday (i.e. Thursday and Fridays EPG data was empty).
When the missing EPG data is subsequently loaded, it doesn't go back and find the missing episodes.

I think this is probably an issue with the standard Humax software, but wondered if there was some way the custom firmware or Remote scheduler could alert you when it occurs.

 

[Black Hole]

When you say "has been scheduled", I presume you mean pressing right to see more episodes in the Guide >> Schedule (yellow) view?

Be aware that these "more episodes" are not actually scheduled. It is an information view only, and the next event to be scheduled in the series recording is not resolved until the completion of the current scheduled recording. Bear in mind also that if there are changes in the EPG data, the scheduled recording will track them.

It needs confirming, but I predict that the Thursday episode would have been correctly scheduled after the Wednesday recording, regardless of what the "more episodes" view showed prior to that - alarming as it might have been.

 

[af123]

There is a field within a scheduled series which lists the CRIDs of episodes already recorded and this is usually why episodes are missing from the list of upcoming recordings. Cancelling and re-instating the series record clears this out.
If the broadcaster has messed up the CRIDs then this would explain the symptoms you're seeing.
Could you look at an old scheduled back from before you cleared and reset it to see if there is anything in there? (You'll need to look at the raw backup file or post it somewhere for us to look at).

 

[hairy_mutley]

Black Hole
As you say, not listed in "Schedule + right" list, nor marked in the actual EPG listings.
Since I was looking at this on Wednesday evening, the day's recordings had been completed, so it was showing Monday on the schedule list (not on the right click part). So, unless it changed its mind overnight, I am not sure that it would have recorded Thursday's.

af123
However, af123 has a point that I had overlooked (or not fully appreciated) regarding episodes already recorded. I knew that I had had a recording failure on E13 last week, so when I saw that it was repeated on Thursday, I was keen to make sure that I got it. What I had missed was that they are repeating episodes quite a lot and that between missing it and today, they had already repeated it and it had been recorded. In addition, all the Thursday and Friday episodes had already been recorded, so Monday was actually the first new episode. It probably also explains why for the last couple of days it has only been recording only 1 of the 2 episodes each day... I thought that there had been recording problems, whereas it was presumably just filling gaps.

I could look at the schedule backups (not sure where to find them or how to decode them), but I'm suspecting that it will just show that the series scheduler was doing its job; I just hadn't appreciated that it dealt with duplicate episodes. I suppose that with "normal" series of just one episode per week this behaviour is not normally so apparent (to the user), but this series is rather unusual with so many re-runs built in.

Thanks for the help.

 

[af123]

I could look at the schedule backups (not sure where to find them or how to decode them), but I'm suspecting that it will just show that the series scheduler was doing its job;

It doesn't sound like there's any need to look at the old backups. If you're interested then the schedule page has a Raw database button at the bottom and you can view the schedule data in there. The column that stores episodes already recorded is called szRecordedProgID. I assume data in there are expired based on some criteria but I don't think anyone has ever analysed that.

 

[Black Hole]

It probably also explains why for the last couple of days it has only been recording only 1 of the 2 episodes each day... I thought that there had been recording problems, whereas it was presumably just filling gaps.

Yes, for a series recording (all programmes with the same S-CRID) it will only record one instance of programmes with the same P-CRID. Sometimes alternative broadcast times for the same series (like, for example, BBC documentaries tend to have two transmissions during the week) have different S-CRIDs, so it becomes possible to record both as independent series (and if it is particularly important to you, you would have to do that to ensure any failures had a fall-back - something which is implemented automatically when such circumstances occur using the same S-CRID, but I think I prefer to handle that myself than rely on the Humax software and broadcasters correct use of the CRID system).

Nonetheless, the "more episodes" display is still only showing you what's available in the EPG and not what is literally scheduled to be recorded, even if it is also filtered by the log of recordings so far completed.

 

[af123]

Nonetheless, the "more episodes" display is still only showing you what's available in the EPG and not what is literally scheduled to be recorded, even if it is also filtered by the log of recordings so far completed.

Not strictly true. It is showing exactly what is "literally scheduled to be recorded" at that point in time.

The "more episodes" (and the list of upcoming episodes in the webif schedule page which should be the same thing), is the current candidate list stored against the schedule entry (aulEventToRecordInfo field). The field is refreshed against the EPG at least on boot (so it can change) but in the absence of changes it will definitely be used to record events. An example is when two episodes run back-to-back, with the system in half-awake mode there is no EPG refresh but the second event still records.

The Thu/Fri episodes weren't showing for Mutley not because they were being filtered at the display stage but because they do not appear in the aulEventToRecordInfo field for that schedule entry. The filters are applied when that field is built.

 

[Black Hole]

I can agree on the concept of a candidate list acting to buffer the EPG data relevant to that S-CRID.

 

[prpr]

If you're interested then the schedule page has a Raw database button at the bottom and you can view the schedule data in there. The column that stores episodes already recorded is called szRecordedProgID. I assume data in there are expired based on some criteria but I don't think anyone has ever analysed that.

It stores a maximum of five entries and doesn't appear to have a time limit. The first one in is pushed out when it tries to add the sixth.

 

[Black Hole]

So if a single S-CRID linked set of transmissions happened to repeat episodes with the same P-CRID from earlier in the series, they would be re-recorded if the original transmission occurred more than five episodes previously?

 

[prpr]

Yes. How else would it know that it'd recorded them previously?

 

[MymsMan]

So if a single S-CRID linked set of transmissions happened to repeat episodes with the same P-CRID from earlier in the series, they would be re-recorded if the original transmission occurred more than five episodes previously?

Five is probably a reasonable number for traditional weekly episodes of a series but starts to be become a problem with daily episodes that also have repeats and with some of the broadcasters who schedule back to back episodes of a series and then repeat the same set of episodes later the same day.