Geez! Get a life!

As I said there is a mechanism etc.... Are you really telling me that ITV (for example) can't shift the time when the now/next data changes by plus or minus 30 seconds? And why would the advert break need to be recorded twice? The beginning part of the ad break would be recorded once and the end part of the same ad break would be recorded once.

As for the second part you quoted, I think you'll see the relevance when there's only the BBC - paid for by the license fee - and subscription channels and maybe a couple of public service channels showing 'I Love Lucy' and 'Bilko' 24 hours a day.

I just picked Sky as they seem to be one of the few broadcasters that are actually making enough money to buy other channels at the moment.

What are other people seeing for Thursdays episode of Coronation Street in the EPG? On ours it isn't flagged but both Friday episodesare flagged.

On my 9200 all this weeks episodes are flagged and the two next Monday (26th). Last nights episodes recorded correctly and Thursdays episode is now shown in the Recording Schedule.

It may be relevant that following the successful recording of last Fridays (16th) second episode all trace of the Corrie Series Record setting had been lost (no entries in the Recording Schedule and no flags in the Guide). I left it alone until Sunday and then reset the Series Record which produced the correct result above. I'm thinking that maybe ITV have sorted the problem but it requires the existing Series Record setting to be deleted and restored in order to clear incorrect data and collect the now correct data?

Colin

What do you mean 'split'? Series link doesn't 'split' anything on any platform

Edit:Ah, I see. You mean start/stop times being a bit out. Yeah, that happens sometimes but I've been running my box with zero padding before/after for a couple of years now (a workaround for another bug) and rarely miss anything.

But my comments were concerning series link. I stand by my comments that you can rely on Sky to record what you want. Possibly some channels might cause you to miss a minute or two off the start/end but that's all. Once something has been put in the planner it (and anything else in the series) will be recorded if there's a tuner available.

I think it's because Sky's system is old and crude. It doesn't look for any signal or status change. Just looks at the EPG and when the time rolls up it starts recording. Totally dumb and possibly ideally suited to broadcasters

Mind you - there have been cases of Sky boxes recording indefinitely after a signal fault so there might possibly be a controlling signal.

I dunno but it's the only PVR I've found that can be relied on almost totally. The Humax HDR is a very close second place though - if it hadn't been for ITV it would be at least as good.

Well, I've had a 9200T and a Sky+ box running in parallel for the last couple of years. I've tended to split the recording of freeview channels between the 2 (to conserve disk space). In my experience the Sky box has been vastly more reliable wrt to series links (& general recording reliability). So much so, my family now refer to the 9200T as the 'crappy' box

For example, recently I've been trying to bias more of the recordings over to the Humax as I've been thinking about upgrading the Sky box. So, while we were on holiday last week I setup series links for Mistresses & The Deep. Neither recorded (and neither did Californication I had linked the week before). So, it managed to p**s off my wife, son & me respectively in one swoop

I seldom rant about these things but IMHO (and for whatever technical/political/financial reasons) to say the 9200Ts recording reliably is inferior to Sky's is the understatement of the century.

There. That feels better

Hi


There is also a bug on the 9200T that makes it suddenly forget a series and the scheduled series setting just disappears from the list!

Happens at random, is okay for a while then just when you are trusting it capture all episodes you suddenly find one week the episode is missing and there is no sign of it in the scheduled list.

Regards

Phil

Well just to put the other side of the coin my 9200 just simply works. I record everything I want using AR/SL and my selected programmes are there in the play list when I want to watch them. The only hiccup recently was a couple of weeks ago when apparently the BBC changed the series link for Family Guy so I can't blame the Hummy for that, excellent machine.

Pretty much Snap!.
My hummy only ever seems to have recording issues when it's the broadcaster messing things up.(the short notice schedule changes that atfect the EPG is a different issue)
What some don't seem to realise is that SKY look after their own EPG and spend alot of money on trying to make their machines work as expected on a 24/7 basis which is payed by subscriptions.
The likes of Humax only get revenue from the sale of each device so it's no wonder SKY's is vastly superior even though I'm sure it has it's own amount problems too.

Hi


Our Humax just works as well, but then again we've enabled padding and so disabled series link.

Regards

Phil

Sky still rely on the broadcasters to send EPG data and updates to their 'adaptation equipment' (unless Sky are handling the playout for them).

However, my 9200T pretty much just works for me too and I use SL - accepting that very occasionally the broadcasters will cods things.

I haven't noticed a dropped SL schedule for some time now... (no doubt it will now happen again)... but I do check my schedule every now and then.

The Deep and Mistresses have both recorded OK where I am.

I don't think the blame can be placed on the broadcasters all the time or even most of the time. I Run a Vestel PVR as a back-up for my Humax 9200 and generally when I get a recording failure I don't get a failure on both units at the same time. When it does very rarely occur that there is a failure on the same recording on both units there is usually some discussion of the event on these forums which indicates that on these occasions the broadcaster is at fault. Random failures occur on both units but the majority occur on the Humax.

Colin

I've been generally happy with my 9200T and have had Andrew Marr's Sunday Morning programme and the one following it on SL since they started with no problems.
Except for the last 2 weeks when neither of them has recorded at all. Very annoying indeed.

I had Heartbeat on series link but it failed to record yesterday.

Looking in the Recording Menu it was still on last weeks date.

When is it supposed to update to the next in the series ?

Not sure whether this is an ITV or Humax issue but series link isn't that reliable anymore.

Yeah, ironic isn't it! Series Link is the one function that you hope is reliable so you can set it and forget it. What a pity it isn't. (Whether it's the broadcaster or the PVR).

It should update to the next in the series immediately after recording the current episode providing the next episode appears in the EPG.

I record the weekday old Heartbeat episodes using Series-Link and the Sunday morning old episodes are ignored so they must be on a different Series-Link. The new series on Sunday evening is on another Series-Link so there are three Heartbeat Series-Links going at the moment. My 9200 recorded last night's episode fully using Series-Link.

It should update immediately but occasionally it doesn't do so until several hours later even though the indicted program was recorded successfully. Rarely (happened about 10 times in 2 years for me) the programme fails to record but the next episode is OK. Even more rarely (twice in 2 years) the Series Record setting has been lost completely.
Hearbeat recorded OK for us last night OK, so it appears that Kremmens' failure was a PVR fault.

Colin

I have quite a few setup but it only seems to be odd one or two that fail to update ready for next week.

Must remember to keep an eye in the menu and check whether they are end of series or not.

The daughter setup Robot Wars on series link and I now have a list as long as your arm of them, and still growing. Hope she finds time to watch and delete them

For Corrie fans you may wish to check your EPG for tonight as it's not flagged up to record.

Same here for tonight's Corrie and also the 2nd Emmerdale. Both were showing on the recording schedule but not on the epg. How can this happen? Is it the machine or the broadcasters?

Not checked the EPG flag but it was definitely in the schedule when I checked late last night. I'm out tonight so I can't check before the event.

PeterF,
Almost certainly the machine will flag the EPG so it looks like a machine fault.

Thanks for that. However the same problem occurred on both my 9200 and 9150 machines. Is it a coincidence that there is football on this evening which is interfering with the epg problems which are still there even after the last ota update.

Both machines presumably are running v23 software, my guess is the same fault is in both versions.

Bump bump bump.

I think the software update caused the problem.

Yes I think it did. This is the same scenario which occurred during the World Cup when the schedule was changed with only a few days notice. In this weeks case it is caused by the UAFA football match being re-scheduled from Wednesday to Thursday. The Humax fails to correctly update the EPG even though the changes are made days before the programmes are due to be broadcast. Even though this occurred during the World Cup, on those occasions the Humax PVRs appeared to respond to the EITp/f data at the start of the programmes and update the EPG at that time recording the programmes correctly. The scenario is a bit different this time in that for the WC the re-scheduling only involved the move of programmes within the same evening so may respond differently.

The issue was discussed previously in the thread here.

My Vestel PVR shows the re-scheduled programmes correctly.

Colin