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A reason for missed recordings?


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Old 11-04-2009, 13:10
sedum55
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I had previously set up my HDR to record Wainwright's Coast to Coast on BBC HD last Thursday, start time 20:30. At about 20:20, I noticed that the box had not switched on. This usually happens 15 minutes prior to recording start time to track any changes in programme run time.
So I switched it on and found that the BBC HD channel in the EPG had no entries. All the surrounding channels data was OK. Then the BBC HD data suddenly appeared, showing my programme with the 'To be recorded' icon.
Somehow, the box had lost the EPG data for the BBC HD channel, and I assume if I had not been there to turn it on, would have missed the recording. As it happened, the recording started ok.
Is this a bug that causes recordings to be missed?
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Old 11-04-2009, 13:26
grahamlthompson
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I had previously set up my HDR to record Wainwright's Coast to Coast on BBC HD last Thursday, start time 20:30. At about 20:20, I noticed that the box had not switched on. This usually happens 15 minutes prior to recording start time to track any changes in programme run time.
So I switched it on and found that the BBC HD channel in the EPG had no entries. All the surrounding channels data was OK. Then the BBC HD data suddenly appeared, showing my programme with the 'To be recorded' icon.
Somehow, the box had lost the EPG data for the BBC HD channel, and I assume if I had not been there to turn it on, would have missed the recording. As it happened, the recording started ok.
Is this a bug that causes recordings to be missed?
My guess is that the stb had not finished downloading the latest epg when you looked. Had you left it a little longer it likely would have been there.
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Old 11-04-2009, 17:36
awo1949
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My guess is that the stb had not finished downloading the latest epg when you looked. Had you left it a little longer it likely would have been there.
The OP's report is a little odd. The HDR normally cachess the EPG (to disk?) and it is only programmes towards the end of the 7-8 days that are missing prior to the EPG loading, although earlier ones will not update until the EPG is loaded. Having said that, I did notice an oddity yesterday. I pressed the guide button while it was recording and it, as normal, brought up the cached EPG rather than loading the up-to-date one. There were a lot of blanks in the EPG scattered all over the place, including the present day.
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Old 11-04-2009, 17:47
grahamlthompson
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The OP's report is a little odd. The HDR normally cachess the EPG (to disk?) and it is only programmes towards the end of the 7-8 days that are missing prior to the EPG loading, although earlier ones will not update until the EPG is loaded. Having said that, I did notice an oddity yesterday. I pressed the guide button while it was recording and it, as normal, brought up the cached EPG rather than loading the up-to-date one. There were a lot of blanks in the EPG scattered all over the place, including the present day.
I imagine the first thing the stb does in waking up to record will be to tune to the epg data channel, in doing so it likely dumps the stored epg and refreshes it with the latest data.
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Old 11-04-2009, 18:03
awo1949
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I imagine the first thing the stb does in waking up to record will be to tune to the epg data channel, in doing so it likely dumps the stored epg and refreshes it with the latest data.
I'm pretty sure you are right, but it doesn't explain blanks in the EPG while it's recording. I can't think of any explanation for that, and I normally have a pretty furtive (if not always accurate ) imagination.
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Old 12-04-2009, 09:48
grahamlthompson
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I'm pretty sure you are right, but it doesn't explain blanks in the EPG while it's recording. I can't think of any explanation for that, and I normally have a pretty furtive (if not always accurate ) imagination.
Could it be that once it's found the data relevant to the programme it's going to record it simply stops downloading the epg data ?
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Old 12-04-2009, 11:41
awo1949
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Could it be that once it's found the data relevant to the programme it's going to record it simply stops downloading the epg data ?
That sounds plausible, but it would suggest that the EPG data is transmitted in a rather strange order. The blanks I had were scattered seemingly randomly throughout the 7 days (the 8th day was all blank) and across channels.

An idea that I've toyed with is that there was a reception problem while it was reading the EPG and some programme data was corrupt and thus discarded. But that doesn't seem at all likely as my reception is near perfect. It takes snow on the LNB/dish or extremely heavy rain to cause a problem, and there's been nothing like that recently.
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Old 12-04-2009, 12:03
germanycalling
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I wonder if the padding setting would also influence this? Came close to a missed recording last week, not through padding as I use auto, but through an over-run. The scenario if I remember correctly was Appentice BBC1; Your Fired BBC2 and Auf Wiedersehen, Pet ITV 4. Apprentice was a bit late which gave a clash with the other two. Fortunately I was watching at the time so I stopped the BBC1 and got the other two.
Now those folks who have the padding on could have hit problems here. Of course there are several work arounds here. There is always the late repeat(s) and the +1 channels, which have saved my bacon more that once!
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