New feature, non-recording previously recorded programs

[tb123]

Hi, IceTV have just released a new feature where it does not record any program that has been previously recorded. I’m not familiar with all the nuts and bolts of this feature however on the surface it seems like a good idea.

There is one issue though, what happens if I do actually want some series or shows to record regardless?
As an example, we record 8 out of 10 Cats does Countdown, the shows do repeat periodically and I still like to watch them - there does not seem to be any way to override this new feature (on a per series/program basis).

Anyone know of a workaround short of having to manually record everything?

[Grumpy_Geoff]

Anyone know of a workaround short of having to manually record everything?

Use an AutoTimer definition to record it.

[prl]

Hi, IceTV have just released a new feature where it does not record any program that has been previously recorded. I’m not familiar with all the nuts and bolts of this feature however on the surface it seems like a good idea.

Where did they say that it has been released? I haven't seen an announcement, though it's possible that it's been released before any announcement.

When I've seen that it has been released, I may be able to fill in some of the details about how it's intended to work. I don't think that your description of how it's intended to work is accurate.

[IanL-S]

Peter there was an email a few days back about the feature where conflicting recordings would be reschedled if there was a subsequent screening. There was a statment that iOS and Android apps should be updated to get the new feature. In the Guide Settings ther is an option to enable timer conflict avoidance.

I do not recall anything about a feature where subseqent transmissions are not recorded.

Like Peter I cannot say any more until there is confirmation that the new feature referred to has been added.

Ian

[prl]

Peter there was an email a few days back about the feature where conflicting recordings would be reschedled if there was a subsequent screening. There was a statment that iOS and Android apps should be updated to get the new feature. In the Guide Settings ther is an option to enable timer conflict avoidance.

Yahoo Mail decided it was spam. It had decided a bunch of other stuff that I'd normally get was spam, too.

I'm seeing the Enable Timer Conflict Avoidance setting in Guide Settings, but I would have been seeing that in beta, anyway.

Anyway, the email does mention the "don't record repeats of [recently] recorded repeats" feature:

And better still we'll also stop additional recordings of repeats of repeats when one has already been recorded, save time deleting recordings you don’t need and save precious space on your PVR.

So I will say what I know of how it's intended to work.

IceTV now keeps track of the last month (4 weeks?) of your recording history and won't re-record a repeat showing of an episode in a First Runs & Repeats series recording if that episode has already been recorded within that last month. It's most effective against re-repeats of shows marked as repeats that are re-shown later in the week.

So if the repeated repeats of 8 out of 10 Cats Does Countdown are more than a month apart, they should get recorded.

It was only partially successful for me in stopping re-recordings of repeated repeats in the current run of the remastered X-Files, where IceTV has the series marked as a repeat, and where SBS has often been showing the previously aired season of the remastered episodes in parallel with the showing of the unshown episodes of the remastered series.

For that purpose I asked during beta testing whether the recording history could be held for more than a month, but I didn't see any reply to the suggestion. If my suggestion was taken up, the "repeated repeats" feature may work over a history of more than a month.

I don't know whether disabling Enable Timer Conflict Avoidance will also disable the "repeats of repeats" feature. IMO, if there is to be user control over the conflict avoidance and the "no repeated repeats" feature, they should be controllable separately.

Discussion of this feature is probably going to be more productive over on the IceTV forum, where other IceTV users and IceTV staff can see it.

[tb123]

IceTV now keeps track of the last month (4 weeks?) of your recording history and won't re-record a repeat showing of an episode in a First Runs & Repeats series recording if that episode has already been recorded within that last month. It's most effective against re-repeats of shows marked as repeats that are re-shown later in the week.

So if the repeated repeats of 8 out of 10 Cats Does Countdown are more than a month apart, they should get recorded.

It was only partially successful for me in stopping re-recordings of repeated repeats in the current run of the remastered X-Files, where IceTV has the series marked as a repeat, and where SBS has often been showing the previously aired season of the remastered episodes in parallel with the showing of the unshown episodes of the remastered series.

For that purpose I asked during beta testing whether the recording history could be held for more than a month, but I didn't see any reply to the suggestion. If my suggestion was taken up, the "repeated repeats" feature may work over a history of more than a month.

I don't know whether disabling Enable Timer Conflict Avoidance will also disable the "repeats of repeats" feature. IMO, if there is to be user control over the conflict avoidance and the "no repeated repeats" feature, they should be controllable separately.

Discussion of this feature is probably going to be more productive over on the IceTV forum, where other IceTV users and IceTV staff can see it.

Yes, there was an email about this late last week.

A very nice gentleman (I can’t recall his name, sorry) from IceTV called me today to have a chat about this to see what my usage was like.
At the time of our phone-call the repeat recording history was set at 5 months although he said he was going to change that to 4 weeks after our call. They had previously discussed a possible tick box option to override this feature on a per recording basis however didn’t want to over complicate the options for people so decided against it, similarly a drop down option of “first runs only, first runs and 1 repeat, first runs and all repeats etc” .

There is an option as discussed above to disable this feature entirely (along with the Timer Collision Avoidance) which I did not know about so that is an option, however with the repeat window being only 4 weeks now (unconfirmed but assumed) it might work out ok. I originally thought it was for eternity rather than the 5 month window so it still would have picked up annual repeats etc.

[MrQuade]

A very nice gentleman (I can’t recall his name, sorry) from IceTV called me today to have a chat about this to see what my usage was like.
At the time of our phone-call the repeat recording history was set at 5 months although he said he was going to change that to 4 weeks after our call. They had previously discussed a possible tick box option to override this feature on a per recording basis however didn’t want to over complicate the options for people so decided against it, similarly a drop down option of “first runs only, first runs and 1 repeat, first runs and all repeats etc” .

Timer Collision Avoidance and repeat recording are two different features. The repeat recording feature has been an IceTV feature since forever (more or less).

It sounds like this Timer Collision Avoidance is the new feature, and that should not be something that would cause you to no be able to record repeats unless the feature is terribly bugged.

[tb123]

Timer Collision Avoidance and repeat recording are two different features. The repeat recording feature has been an IceTV feature since forever (more or less).

It sounds like this Timer Collision Avoidance is the new feature, and that should not be something that would cause you to no be able to record repeats unless the feature is terribly bugged.

Yes, two different features, both new, but controlled by the one tick box under guide settings unfortunately.

The new part of the repeat recording feature is it now won’t record repeated repeats. So you get the first run, 1 x repeat and then nothing more during the window they have set (was 5 months, is possibly 4 weeks now).
I did make a mistake in my OP with the description of the issue, I said it won’t record previously recorded programs, what I meant was, it won’t record ongoing repeats of that program.

For me, with a T4 as our main unit TCA isn’t really an issue. We do also have a DP-Lite, however the kids rarely use that these days so although there are some conflicts, it’s not a major issue for us.

In the main, even not recording repeated repeats is a good thing, but there are some shows that I do want to record regardless - I’m happy to delete as needed in those cases. Sounds like a handful of people have contacted support with similar concerns/issues.

[prl]

I did make a mistake in my OP with the description of the issue, I said it won’t record previously recorded programs, what I meant was, it won’t record ongoing repeats of that program.

It won't record recent (where "recent" seems to be "within the last month") repeats of repeats that you've already recorded. I'm not sure what you mean by "ongoing repeats" of a program. It's certainly recording all the episodes of the current season 7 of X-Files for me. They're all marked as repeats.

[tb123]

It won't record recent (where "recent" seems to be "within the last month") repeats of repeats that you've already recorded. I'm not sure what you mean by "ongoing repeats" of a program. It's certainly recording all the episodes of the current season 7 of X-Files for me. They're all marked as repeats.

I meant what you described - recent repeats.
If Season 1, Episode 3 airs for the first time on say Monday, then is repeated each night for the whole week, then you will only record it on the Monday (first run) Tuesday ( 1 x repeat) then nothing for the rest of the week. Under the old way it would record every repeat of S01,E03 every night it was on.

[prl]

It won't record recent (where "recent" seems to be "within the last month") repeats of repeats that you've already recorded. I'm not sure what you mean by "ongoing repeats" of a program. It's certainly recording all the episodes of the current season 7 of X-Files for me. They're all marked as repeats.

I meant what you described - recent repeats.
If Season 1, Episode 3 airs for the first time on say Monday, then is repeated each night for the whole week, then you will only record it on the Monday (first run) Tuesday ( 1 x repeat) then nothing for the rest of the week. Under the old way it would record every repeat of S01,E03 every night it was on.

OK, that's cleared that up, but do you want those repeated repeats recorded? I can't think of a good reason why you would.

[tb123]

OK, that's cleared that up, but do you want those repeated repeats recorded? I can't think of a good reason why you would.

yes, not always, but there are occasions, like 8 out 0f 10 cats for example, that if the episodes are repeated periodically I'll happily watch them again, always good for a laugh, and easy enough to delete ones I don't want to watch.

On the other hand, we were recording "JAG" a while ago where this feature would have been very useful as that was showing repeats and repeated repeats every morning and night so it was hard to tell what was new and what wasn't which was quite annoying

I'm learning how this feature works as I go, but last night when I first came across it, it had deleted all upcoming recordings of 'Cats (I don't know what the repeat cycle actually is). We usually watch 1 per night and it seemed like a permanent change rather than something that was only enforced for 5 months (or 4 weeks), which I didn't know at the time.

[prl]

As I suggested earlier, the best place to ask about implementation details is probably on the IceTV forum.

[prl]

I'm learning how this feature works as I go, but last night when I first came across it, it had deleted all upcoming recordings of 'Cats (I don't know what the repeat cycle actually is). We usually watch 1 per night and it seemed like a permanent change rather than something that was only enforced for 5 months (or 4 weeks), which I didn't know at the time.

What happened has been clarified in the beta area discussion. During development of the "repeated repeats" feature, up to 5 months of history was saved for use by the feature. That has now been wound back to one month.

If this discussion had been on the IceTV forum, you could probably have had that answer direct from the IceTV CTO

This topic is all about IceTV and pretty much nothing about Beyonwiz.

[tb123]

tbh Peter, I forgot IceTV even had a forum (I haven’t visited that site in over 5 years) thought here WAS the place to discuss IceTV related things on my Beyonwiz.

As it turned out, the IceTV CTO (presumably) telephoned me instead and we had a nice 20 minute chat

[prl]

tbh Peter, I forgot IceTV even had a forum (I haven’t visited that site in over 5 years) thought here WAS the place to discuss IceTV related things on my Beyonwiz.

As it turned out, the IceTV CTO (presumably) telephoned me instead and we had a nice 20 minute chat

The lines can be hard to draw sometimes, but the feature is a purely IceTV server side feature that involves no changes on the Beyonwiz, though that's not something that's immediately obvious. It's also a feature common to all devices that use the "new" IceTV server API, not just Beyonwizes.

If it was Daniel Hall who called you, and it probably was, then yes, he's the IceTV CTO.

I'm also trying to get the currently active discussion in the IceTV beta area about the new features moved to the public area - the discussion started with someone asking which features had been released, but it's now a general discussion about how they work from a user perspective.

[tb123]

If it was Daniel Hall who called you, and it probably was, then yes, he's the IceTV CTO.

I'm also trying to get the currently active discussion in the IceTV beta area about the new features moved to the public area - the discussion started with someone asking which features had been released, but it's now a general discussion about how they work from a user perspective.

I didn’t catch his name, I was in the car at the time, by the time I realised it wasn’t actually a scam call I missed his name.

I had a look at the IceTV forum earlier and couldn’t see the Beta forum at all?

[prl]

I had a look at the IceTV forum earlier and couldn’t see the Beta forum at all?

Just as you can't see the alpha testers' areas on this forum. If you can't see them, it means you're not a member

The fact that the overwhelming majority of IceTV forum members couldn't see today's beta forum discussion of the new features is the reason why I asked in that forum to move the discussion into the public space.

[IanL-S]

Like Peter, I found the "skipping" of recordings that had previoulsy been recorded (within the relavant time period) to be less than 100% reliable. I got the impression that series recordings that had been in place for many years were less likely to work. Also, it was significantly less reliable for ABC network, but this now seems to have been fixed.

I did testing on some programs that are repeated multiple times, and it was not 100% relaible (did JAG, Diagnosis Murder, NCIS, The Big Bang Theory and Bones). But again became more reliable as time went on.

The repeat recording feature works with PVRs using older API (but only for the last 7 days (at least that was the case at the start of beta testing), but the recording collission does not (if I recall correctly). Edit: cannot find any confirmation that collision prevention does not work with older PCRs - Only time I had it was with a V2.

You can see recordings that will not be made if you mark the program as a favourite.

Ian

[prl]

The repeat recording feature works with PVRs using older API ... , but the recording collission does not (if I recall correctly). Edit: cannot find any confirmation that collision prevention does not work with older PCRs - Only time I had it was with a V2.

I can't think of any reason in principle that recording collision avoidance can't work on the old API - the server should still get notified when a timer can't be set on the PVR, which is really the only information used by the new API, but I don't know whether it actually works with the old API.

At the risk of being really tedious, I don't think that this is the right forum to ask in.