Recordings being deleted?

[jgagliano1363]

Hi All,

I've finally managed to solve (most) of my hardward issues and now am moving on to the software ones. I am very confused on WMC's logic as to when to delete something... I'm coming from BeyondTV where if I have a program, call it "Show 1", and I set the series to record new and repeats, but only keep 3 episodes, if there are 3 already, it will delete the oldest one and then record a new one and life was good.

In WMC, I have it setup pretty much the same way, but for some reason, there is PLEANTY of space left on the drive, yet it wants to delete programs being recorded today, and the best part is that those programs that it wants to delete aren't the oldest! The only thing I can think of (and its pretty stupid) is that WMC looks ahead (way ahead) and sees a the potential HDTV hours that it needs for future recordings and preemptivly deletes them to make space for the future. That doesn't even make sense to me when the drive is 3/4 empty! I have already checked the drive recorder storage to verifiy it is using the whole drive.

I've attached some pictures here as well.

Thanks for the help!

Jack

[blueiedgod]

How much of that drive is allocated to "Recorded TV"?

[jgagliano1363]

How much of that drive is allocated to "Recorded TV"?

All of the drive. 100%.

[jgagliano1363]

Here are pics of the scheduled recordings and of the drive settings in WMC.

I do realize that the scheduled recordings is 219 hours and according to WMC my drive can handle 95 hours, but that shouldn't be a reason why it is preemptively deleting recordings, and not even deleting the oldest first. Also, just because it is 219 hours of schecduled doesn't take into account that some of that might be deleted or watched in-between said future recordings.

Jack

[blueiedgod]

Change the setting from "Keep 3 until space needed" to "Until I delete" or "Until I watch"

Also, I have never used the "Keep 3..." so can't say for sure, but it is possible that even though newer recordings are fresher (to you), WMC may be looking at the original air date, and deeming them being older.

[barnabas1969]

In my experience, Media Center deletes the oldest recording (recorded date, not first aired date). But, it only does so when disk space is needed for new recordings.

So, if I set a series to keep the last 7 recordings... and there is plenty of disk space available... it will keep more than 7. But... if disk space is nearly full... it will delete the oldest recordings to make space for new ones (even for a different series or single recording).

I suspect that there is something wrong with the OP's settings for disk space which is allocated to recorded TV.

[dmagerl]

I think this is just another WMC eccentricity we have to learn to live with.

I have all my recordings set to "retain until I delete". One day I actually began running out of disk space. I was expecting a message like "I cant record that series because you're out of disk space". Instead it marked about a half dozen recordings for imminent deletion. What was surprising was that I had to free up a sizable portion of the disc by moving recordings off the disc before it stopped marking recordings for deletion. It's like it got stuck in that mode.

[jgagliano1363]

I spent about an hour changing all mine (103 series recordings) to "keep until I delete" mode. what a pain! I was looking for a database editing tool so maybe i could mark them all at once, but no luck there, meh.

You know, i was talking to the TWC cable card tech a couple weeks ago when i was trying to get everything going and i was so frustrated, i said, you know, i'm willing to bet that TWC wants to make this the hardest thing possible and the least stable so you have no choice but to go back to TWC and rent their boxes... he was like, "ummm........." yup thats what i thought. i was doing some research and found out that cablelabs did a deal with MS for cablecards and they are the ONLY one licensed to use cablecards... i think its pretty crappy and not to meantion monopolistic. cablelabs counters that remark with "anyone can get licensed if they pay enough" type of mantra, meh again! i can't see MythTV shelling out hundreds of thousands of dollars for a license and all that garbage...

sorry for my rant, just really can't stand media center, but in the end it is still $50-$70/m cheaper than doing a whole home dvr with either TWC or with Dish or DirecTV. just gonna suck it up and deal with the issues.

[blueiedgod]

I spent about an hour changing all mine (103 series recordings) to "keep until I delete" mode. what a pain! I was looking for a database editing tool so maybe i could mark them all at once, but no luck there, meh.

You know, i was talking to the TWC cable card tech a couple weeks ago when i was trying to get everything going and i was so frustrated, i said, you know, i'm willing to bet that TWC wants to make this the hardest thing possible and the least stable so you have no choice but to go back to TWC and rent their boxes... he was like, "ummm........." yup thats what i thought. i was doing some research and found out that cablelabs did a deal with MS for cablecards and they are the ONLY one licensed to use cablecards... i think its pretty crappy and not to meantion monopolistic. cablelabs counters that remark with "anyone can get licensed if they pay enough" type of mantra, meh again! i can't see MythTV shelling out hundreds of thousands of dollars for a license and all that garbage...

sorry for my rant, just really can't stand media center, but in the end it is still $50-$70/m cheaper than doing a whole home dvr with either TWC or with Dish or DirecTV. just gonna suck it up and deal with the issues.

I would like to read about the "deal between Microsoft and CableLabs" giving them exclusive use of the CableCARDs.

All of the Cabe Box/DVR manufacturer's must be breaking this agreement, since they all have a CableCARD stuck in the back of the device.

[jgagliano1363]

blueiedgod, please allow me to clairify my previous post...

I was referring to the PC platform in regards to the cablecards/cablelabs. also, specifically with DRM controlled channels marked as copy once. if you are lucky enough to live in an area where your provider marks the channels as copy freely your choices for recording digital cable open up, such as mythtv. IF you are like me, and have TWC, they mark ALL channels with the exception of local channels as copy once, which means (as far as i know), my only choice for the PC platform is WMC.

I do apologize for not being more clear in my original post. I was under the assumption that since this was a forum based on PC platforms that would have been implied.

By all means, if you do know of another TV software solution that will allow me to record digital DRM controlled channels marked as copy once, please let me know. I am getting through my issues with WMC, but it is/was painful.

BTW: Here is what i was reading with WMC/Microsoft and CableLabs:
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?ti ... pid1302917

cheers.

Jack

[webminster]

There's no exclusive deal. The article basically says it's about money. At least with respect to DRM - you have to have a DRM system capable of passing the CableLabs certification as far as protected content is concerned. Microsoft ponied up the money and resources to make PlayReady and get it accepted. Few if any others (especially FOSS projects like XBMC, Sage, etc.) could ever afford that, or afford the licensing of PR, or implement it and manage the closed part of the DRM and the open part of the software.

Remember that CableCard != DRM as well. You can do CC without DRM on any system/channel marked copy-freely. It's where the copy-once flags come in that the recorder is required to apply DRM or other accepted mechanism to protect the recording from getting copied.

[jgagliano1363]

that is exactly what i was thinking but failed to convey originally. i did petition TWC in my local market to remove the copy flags, but i think they secretly lol'ed at me.

[webminster]

Assume you already know, but make sure you set your recording defaults to whatever retention policy you want by default, e.g. "keep until I delete", so you don't have to do it in future for every new scheduled recording.

[Space]

If you have all your existing recordings set so as they can not be automatically deleted (such as using "Keep until I delete"), WMC will warn you when there will not be enough disk space to record future scheduled recordings in the "view scheduled list".

Any show that will not be able to be recorded will have a little "!" yellow triangle with the message "There will not be enough disk space to record this show". However, it will only do this for shows that are scheduled to record within 48 hours of the current time. Anything scheduled to record at a later date will not have the indicator, even though they also will not record (unless you take some action to free up some space).

I wish there was a way to increase this 48 hour limit so that I could be notified sooner of the impending problem.

Does anyone know if it is possible to increase this?