I hadn't realised that Coronation Street was being shown last night, probably moved for the football tonight.

So, I had set up to record on the HDR :-

Eastenders : 1930-2000
Coronation Street : 2000-2030
South Pacific : 2000-2100

Obviously there was no clash when these were set up on Series Links, and there still would not have been a clash, but Eastenders was overrunning slightly, and finished at 2001.

We were watching a recording of Emmerdale at this time.

So, Eastenders was still recording, Coronation Street started, and then South Pacific started, and that was when I got the Clash message. I'm presuming they started in that order as SP was the first prog in the Clash Message, showing it was clashing with the other two current recordings.

It was like the rabbit in the headlights, I wasn't sure which to cancel at first, but knew SWMBO wouldn't like it if she missed one of her soaps. By this time, the Clash Message had gone off, and I assumed SP was cancelled by default.

I pressed the info button to check, and it showed me 101 & 103 with the moving recording icons in the top left of screen, which confirmed SP on 108 wasn't recording. I pressed info again about 20/30 secs later, and it showed only 103 (Corry) recording, so Eastenders had finished its overrun.

When we had finished watching the recording of Emmerdale, about 10 mins later, I noticed 103 & 108 were now recording.

Looking at South Pacific in the Media List, it has recorded from 2001-2101 but only listed as 59 mins. When I press OK to play it, I get the "Recording has Failed. Conflict with Higher Priority Recording". It does, of course play; it starts with an overhead shot of the ocean and the narrator saying "South Pacific is a vast ocean wilderness", so I'm not sure how much real content has been missed, but presume at least some of the intro is missing. It plays right through to the BBC HD Ident at the end.

I've never seen this before, and wouldn't have imagined that the HDR could have recovered the timer in this way - I'm not complaining, by the way

Rgds.


Les.

Les

apart from the standard intro all you lost was a few seconds of a tracking shot across the water before the words

Graham

Thanks Graham, that's great then.

I wonder how much of this type of overlap it can handle/how long it keeps trying before actually cancelling?

Quite hard to set up the test in advance as you can't know which progs will overrun. (If you could, you'd probably have lots of Lottery money by now )

Rgds.


Les.

Its good that it does recover but it gives you no time to decide what to do, its only a few seconds and by the time youve read whats going on and decided, the clash menu turns off.

Agreed that it is too quick.

But, I wonder how far ahead it can detect the clash, to give you thinking time to do something about it, before it is faced with trying to record 3 programmes at once?

Rgds.

Les.

Yes, it always 'recovers' like this.

It's the only sensible thing to do.

I'm amazed you've never noticed it before because it's something that happens very frequently when you record two programmes that end at time t and one that starts at time t or one programme that ends at time t and two that start at time t (or one that is recording across time t and one each starting and ending at time t).
Since the TV companies are actually worse than the railways at timekeeping there is often a short conflict.

I can pretty well guarantee I'll have that happen tonight wehn I record The Apprentice (21:00-22:00), The Apprentice You're Fired (22:00-22:30) and a film at 21:00.

Yes, I've seen that "relatively frequently".

It manifests itself with an extremely brief Clash Message, that disappears almost as soon as it is on screen.

Then the recordings go ahead OK, as the "clash" was for a second or so, and you can check the recordings are going ahead with the Info button.

But here, the Clash message was on for the longest I've ever seen it (still too quick for my slow brain though), and as I explained, Corry & Easty were still recording for at least 20 secs with no SP recording, then only Corry was recording, when I next checked, and then SP must have started anytime up to 1 min later. It is this that I have never seen.

Rgds.


Les.

Here's one I don't understand. Last week Martin Clunes Island was set to record in HD. It appears to have over-run giving a clash with something else (? Auf Wiedersehen, Pet) which was due to start as ITV HD finished. As my HDR was only recording 2 channels why did I get the clash? This has happened before when recording ITV HD but unless the SD and HD are both allocated as individual channels I'm at a loss. In the above example the second recording failed.

Hopefully I may have better luck this week as I'm not recording the footie. I'm working in Spain this week and my bar tab could be high if Man Utd win ....... I will have to buy a lot of beers for my Spanish colleagues

There is a post somewhere in one of the many threads were the poster had set up 3 series links. The first few epsiodes of each series were fine but then came a day when all 3 clashed. The poster discovered that if you don't bring it out of standby and manually deal with the clash then the HDR remains in standby and misses all 3 recordings.

I've had a search around and can't find it but I'm sure it was only posted within the past couple of weeks.

I'm not sure about this one for a couple of reasons.

1. Martin Clunes : Islands of Britain has been terminating early by 1 to 1.5 mins on each programme, thanks to yet another horlicks by ITV. So I don't think it can have overrun.

2. The only Auf Wiedersehen, Pet progs I can find were on ITV4, and don't appear to be on a Sunday when Islands were on? I could be mistaken, as historic schedules (especially repeats) are hard to find.

One explanation could be if the following programme was on ITV SD. Because it's a Red Button Service, not a channel, you can't view or record ITV HD & ITV1 SD at the same time.

If one tuner was still on ITV HD, and ITV sent the start signal for the next programme in SD early, it is possible that it failed because of that?

Other than that, I'm at a loss.

Rgds.



Les.

I think this may be the thread you are referring to ? Specifically, posts #91, #92, & #96.

It's an interesting case, but I think that there is a problem in using this as a reference, in that there are too many variables :-

1. C4 & Five are not noted for 100% consistency on SL or AR.

2. The 2-part 1066 prog hadn't updated the schedule (see 1. above), and had to be put back in manually.

3. The box was brought out of Standby to do 2., and then put back into Standby, so was not in Standby for the whole process.

So, I think it's inconclusive to say that the failed recordings are as a direct & sole result of clash detection in Standby failing.


Edit : In fact, the more I read post #91, if the OP already had the 2 SL progs on for 9:00 on Day 2, when he tried to schedule 1066 on Day 1, the HDR would have recognised the clash on Day 2 if 1066 had been properly SL'd by Ch4, and told him. This reinforces my suspicions that it was not SL'd properly.

Rgds.


Les.
Last edited by savvy : 28-05-2009 at 11:37

Just to re-clarify my original posts.

CSI and The Incredible Human Journey were existing series links. 1066 was added on the day it was scheduled to be broadcast, I was given the option to series link so I did!

I had not checked the schedule the following day after the first part of 1066 had recorded, but I was just on my way out at around 8:50pm and happened to notice the PVR had not come out of standby. I brought the PVR out of standby, checked the schedule to find that the 1066 timer had not been updated from the night before. I'm assuming this is because it clashed with the other two scheduled recordings. Both CSI and The Incredible Human Journey were showing the correct dates, having been updated after the previous week's recordings.

There was no notification of any programme clashes. I waited a few minutes and as it looked like none of the scheduled programmes were going to record removed CSI from the list. Re-scheduled 1066 and put the box into standby. Noticed that the front panel light remained on and that the 'rec' icon displayed. Both 1066 and The Incredible Human Journey recorded.

There was no clash when the programmes were scheduled. It appears the PVR only checks for clashes when you first schedule a recording. Maybe it could/should have 'looked' further down the schedule chain and noticed a clash the following day, but it obviously doesn't.

Caoimhghin, many thanks for posting and clarifying the steps.

I don't think we'll ever know the true reason here, we can only surmise, as we cannot find out the CRID details retrospectively.

I'll have one more go at theorising, if you don't mind, along my original thoughts.

1066 may have come up as a Series Link as it had a Series CRID, but either it may have had no Prog CRID, or the second day's might have erroneously been given the same Prog CRID, causing the box to see it as a repeat, and not record it, hence your Timer didn't move on.

I think the problem was with 1066 SL, and not with a CSI/Incredible journey/1066 "clash".

You brought the box out of standby at approx 8:50; what made you think that CSI/Incredible journey would not have started recording at 9:00 (forgetting missing 1066 for a moment) if you had left it alone ? You must have been before the 9:00 start to delete CSI & reschedule 1066, then put it in standby, to catch the starts.

I'm sorry to go on, but my reason for fingering 1066 SL as a problem, not the clash detection, is that I have had plenty of Clash warnings when trying to schedule various SL's with conflicts further down the road within the 8-day EPG. I have often got the message "One or more of your recordings conflicts with .............. Would you like to schedule an alternative........ etc", or something like this, I can't remember the exact wording.

Plus, there are plenty of examples on this forum where the broadcasters have totally screwed up the CRID data, causing all sorts of missed recordings, duplicates, orphaned timers, etc. I scheduled a prog for my wife a couple of weeks ago (can't remember what it was now), and it came up as a Series Link, and my wife commented that it was a one-off programme. I accepted the SL, it recorded, and then the Timer stuck in the past the next day !!

Also, I would have thought we'd have seen much more posting on "Lack of Clash Detection at scheduling time", in this forum.

I hope I interpreted your steps & timings correctly; if so, I would surmise from this, that if you had left it in Standby, it would have recorded CSI/Incredible journey, and missed 1066 (validly) for the reasons given above.

I hope my reasoning makes sense.

EDIT : BTW, I agree with you that it would be nice for the box to continually scan for clashes as progs move in the schedule for whatever reason, that were not present at scheduling the Timers, and record the AI if present.

Rgds.


Les.
Last edited by savvy : 28-05-2009 at 16:43

The PVR religiously (if you can say that about an inanimate object) comes out of 'full standby' 15 minutes before a scheduled recording to check for changes in the start times. It remains in this state until the recordings start. In my experience it has never wavered from this. Seeing as the time was 10 minutes before the scheduled start time it seemed there was a problem.

I actually checked the entry for 1066 and it had both a Series CRID and Prog CRID. I do this instinctively now when scheduling recordings having been 'bitten' before by missing metadata. Whether both parts had the same Series CRID I cannot say though, if the Series CRIDs were different then, I agree, this would also explain why the entry was not updated. But, then again, how could it update? It would have clashed with the other two entries. If there was only a Series CRID, i.e. no Prog CRID, the box will still come out of standby but not record it.

I accept I cannot be 100% sure now, what with the fog of time and being in a hurry, but this was the assumption I came to at the time when weighing up the possibilities.

I agree, the only conclusion is that it is inconclusive - if only we had a time machine!!

I still think that if the box generally had a problem identifying 3 clashing programs at setup, within the 8 days of EPG, then we would have seen furore in these forums, so there is something we are missing here.

But, we will never know.

Thanks for highlighting it, and a useful little debate.

Rgds.

Les.

More annoying is when you setup the programs to record and it later decides there is a clash (when there isn't) and does something odd. I remember the following way back in December when I set up three rceordings all on different channels as follows:-

10:30 to 11:00
11:00 to 11:30
10:00 to 11:05 (or 11:10 - can't remember)

No clashes were reported however as I have 2 minutes pre-padding and 5 minutes post padding I was expecting the following:-

10:28 to 11:00
11:00 to 11:35
9:58 to 11:10 (or 11:15)

What I actually got was:-

10:28 to 11:05
10:58 to 11:35
9:58 to 10:58

So basically it cut off the end of a recording in favour of keeping the padding on two recordings. Weird behaviour and not what it should do in my opinion.

Richard,

I don't use AutoPadding, I prefer On-Time instead, so I have no first-hand experience of your situation.

However, from the HDR Manual :-

So, Autopadding turns Accurate Recording off, and will add your padding minutes to the EPG times, not the AR signals. Also, I understand that padding is trimmed only on consecutive programmes on the same channel. So trimming at your 11:00 finish/start would not happen on different channels.

Therefore, I would expect exactly what you got.

The "odd" behaviour is cutting off the end of the recording that commenced at 10:58, in favour of the recording starting at 10:58. Intuitively, I think, you would want to see the end of an hour long programme, rather than the start of a new programme. But, again, I have seen this odd (to me) logic reported as "working as designed". I guess it depends on your point of view.

I'm sure someone who does use Autopadding, like yourself, will come along soon and verify, or not, the situation, but that is my reading of it.

Rgds.

Les.

Some news.

Another poster, who saw this thread, has informed me that there was a problem with the 1066 Series Link.

They had also tried to set 1066 as a Series Link, but eventually had to set them up as two separate timers. They both did have Series CRIDs, but the first one looked like a truncated CRID, only 5 digits, and the second one was a normal length for CH4, but obviously different to the first one.

This is the reason for your 1066 SL Timer not moving on, and why the HDR did not flag the 3 programme clash to you; it had not even recognised, when you were originally setting it, that there was any 1066 programme to record on the 2nd day, so there was no clash to deal with.

Mystery solved.

Rgds.


Les.

The bit I've highlighted above seems to infer that they were unable to set up a Series link when scheduling the first episode. I had no problem setting up a Series link. I may, of course, have misunderstood you here as English is not my first language.

1066 must have been a red herring then, however this still does not explain why my other two scheduled Series didn't automatically record. I guess in my hurry to leave home that night, I jumped to a hasty conclusion, which is a cardinal sin in my old profession.

It should have at least warned me that I was going to miss the end. As it happens that program was repeated on a +1 channel so after realising it had cut the end off I managed to record the last 15 or so minutes on the +1 channel.

Ideally the HDR should be clever enough to search for a repeat of the program and schedule it to record without bothering the user when it detects a clash. I suppose though that in this case technically there wasn't a clash however it should be clever enough to detect that a problem had occurred and act on it.

On a similar vein if a recording was missed due to a power cut (lets say) it would be nice if the HDR would automatically search for a repeat recording of any missed programs and automatically schedule them to record.

Humax - must try harder (or am I just being too picky)

I also recorded this.

Whilst I could set a Series Timer, I noted the following Days episode did not have a rec icon, checked the Crid Data, and from what I recall it was as stated above - had to set individual timers.

Hi Caoimhghin,

By the way, your written English is immaculate.

The key word that you should have drawn inference from in the sentence you highlighted is "eventually".

Recreated steps :-

Select 1066 from EPG.
Offered Series Link, and select that option.
Check next day's episode in EPG at the same time to be sure.
Not appearing in EPG to record next day's episode - Why?
Investigate.
Day 1 has spurious Series CRID, so nothing will be linked to this "false" Series, even though it is flagged as a Series by the presence of a Series CRID.
Day 2 has a valid Series CRID, but not linked to the first episode, and nothing subsequent linked to it either.
Start again, and set the 2 episodes as individual timers, just to be sure.

Does that help?

I think I've done what I was trying to help with, which was find the reason the HDR "apparently" failed to detect a 3 programme clash, which I just could not believe was happening.

As for your box appearing not to come out of Standby to record the 2 timers that were existing, that's a whole different ballgame. Again, their are numerous variables that could have contributed to that, and I could go on to list as many as I could think of, but the multiple combinations are probably too many to list/discuss. Anyway, too much time has passed now, and it would be even more difficult to isolate exactly what happened, than the "3 prog clash", so would be pointless.

Rgds.


Les.

Hello Les,

Right, I misconstrued the timing of eventually, it could be used to imply 1 minute or even years later! First time anyone called anything I do immaculate.

The post immediately above yours also confirmed what you had posted!

I must remember to be more diligent with my investigational skills in the future. I've obviously forgotten my Computer Science skills that were so hard to acquire all those years ago!

Once again, thank you for sticking with this!

Yes, I'm from a Software Engineering background (not down in the detail anymore), but still have a fairly enquiring and analytical mind, and just hate "unexplained" occurrences.

But, I do know what it's like when you find a problem and you are going out the door in 10mins; all the old discipline goes out the door before you do

Glad to be of help.

Rgds.


Les.