Hi all

I have an infuriating issue with the series link for Channel 5's Gadget Show on the Humax Foxsat.

I cannot record the Gadget Show on Mondays, so opt to record it on the Saturday repeat. This, one would assume, is an easy thing to do. I select the Saturday repeat, select series link, hey presto - done. But it is not... Upon recording the Saturday repeat, the PVR should select the Saturday repeat of Gadget, but it opts to choose the Monday premier - which then buggers up the other Monday recordings (and I get a howling at due to beginning/end of soaps being missed).

My understanding is that this data is sent from Channel 5 - or Five, as I shall continue to refer to them until the problem is sorted - to instruct my PVR to record series links correctly. Channel 5, however, are reporting that there is no issue with series link on Freesat - and suggest I update the PVR. Very helpful, since Humax have not been as frequent with updates as I would have liked. In Humax's defence, I don't think this is the issue.

Freesat were not much better themselves, they simply told me what a Series Link is. Gee, great.

Any one else get this problem?

Five are far and away the worst of the main broadcasters when it comes to series / epsiode ids and accurate recording info. Your best bet is to set up a weekly repeat recording with padding.

Usually the Monday and Saturday showings are linked as the same series which means those of use who want to record the monday showing only get the repeat weve already seen and theres no way to cancel it without cancelling the following monday too.

This has NEVER been the case with the series links for the Gadget Show on Sky - it seems surprising if it is true for Freesat!

Yes, it is true - also applies to Emergency Bikers - I just schedule it as a (once) weekly recording.

Ive also got an unwanted recording for how do they do it on saturday right now.

I thought the way it should work is that if the series CRID matches the programme CRID the next Programme to be scheduled is one with a different Programme CRID (which the broadcaster can also get wrong).

Correct . The repeat showing should either have the same series crid and prog crid as the first showing or carry a totally different series crid.

As I said they get it correct for the Sky EPG - the Monday Gadget Show links to the following Monday while the Saturday repeat similarly links to the next Saturday showing!

Both Monday and Saturday showings use the same series CRID and program CRID.


On sky they must have them set up as a different series. Out of interest what happens if you have a clash on Monday night - will it schedule the Saturday repeat (as it does on Freesat).


The only time I have ever had the gadget show record the Saturday moning repeat is when I have cancelled the series link after it has recorded the Monday showing. If you then set next Monday showing before the Saturday repeat has been on then it will schedule the Saturday morning showing as it will see this as a brand new episode in the current series. After it has recorded the Saturday repeat it then continues recording the Monday night showings (unless there is a clash obviously).

Interestingly on Freeview they use the same SERIES CRID and PROG CRID for Monday and Saturdays episode on Channel 5 and also the Tuesday epsiode on Fiver (so a Monday night clash should attempt to schedule the Tuesday night showing on Fiver - might experiment later).

In that case it's the same as on Freesat. The first two Monday shows recorded OK on my Foxsat-hdr and the schedule has updated to next Monday's edition. No repeats have been recorded. Just realised what's going on after reading the OP's post again. He scheduled the first recording on a Saturday, after recording the box looks for the next occurrence of the same series with a different prog crid so it schedules the first one it finds on the Monday. To avoid this 5 would have to use a different series crid for the Monday and Saturday showings.

Work around set the next Saturday repeat, edit the reservation to make it a manual weekly repeating recording adding a couple of minutes padding at start and end.

It should but 5 often get it wrong, schedule next weeks how do they do it and you should see this weeks repeat pop up to be recorded tomorrow.

This is the correct behaviour. Series linking next weeks episode the HDR will note that a different episode of the same series is on in the mean time (i.e. tomorrow) and schedule that to record as well. The HDR does not know that tomorrows is a repeat episode that you have already seen. However, after recording next weeks new epsiode it should schedule the next new episode and not next weeks repeat.

Its not correct behaviour as Ive had it on series record for weeks and 5 often records the same program twice.

Maybe if you set up a series link after Mondays program but Id have thought they should have different IDs anyway.

Mine doesn't. Series linked the gadget show for its Monday showing ever since I have had the foxsat (launch month) and never got the Saturday repeat (only with user intervention i.e. deleting the series link and re-instating it which made the HDR think I had not seen the epiosde shown on the Saturday).

Interestingly I also have it series linked on the freeview HDR-FOX T2 and I have noted that I have had one occurrence where a Saturday repeat was recorded (and I could not work out why although it seemed to think that there was a loss of signal while recording the Monday showing so it may have been clever enough to schedule the repeat as a backup).

If you switch on CRID viewing you should be able to check yourself. You will see that the series CRID is the same for the whole series (both Monday and Saturday) and that the program CRID is the same for both Monday and Saturday (but different each week) so your HDR is doing something very strange if it is recording both showings

Does the Monday showing record successfully i.e. no clashes or higher prioritiy recordings chopping the start/end off?

Gadget show is ok this week, it was how do they do it that was showing the saturday recording.

Of course there is no way to cancel a single part of the series recording without cancelling the whole series.

Something else that needs to be fixed in the update.

The freesat/freeview+ system is not designed to allow this so no amount of updates will give this capability. It works with a pair of codes, these don't tell the box anything about which episode it is or how many there are in total, which ones you have already recorded or when the last episode in the series has been transmitted. They simply group all episodes which the broadcaster decides form part of the series using a series code and seperate individual ones by giving each seperate episode (including repeats) a individual programme code.