Cannot Record: Too many programs were found

[artm]

So, I had to tinker with my recording searches and now it's messed up. I had the following search working fine:

generic keyword: real madrid
category: sports/soccer
frequency: record anytime
show type: new
channels: any channel (or even just 192)
keep up to: as many as possible
keep: until space needed
stop: on time

I then noticed that the next showing was not on the record schedule. So, I went in to edit this search and now I get an error message:

--------------------------------
Cannot Record

Too many programs were found with the keyword REAL MADRID, so none of these programs will be recorded.
The record settings for REAL MADRID are too broad, or the keyword is too generic
Try changing the record settings or the keyword so that fewer programs are found.
--------------------------------


There are not too may instances of this search, no more so than similar searches. In the past I've been able to get around this somehow bit not now.

Any help appreciated.

[garyan2]

The problem with generic keyword recordings is in your case, it will not only find programs with "real madrid" in them, it will also find any program with "real" and any program with "madrid" in them. I don't know what the threshold may be to be considered "too many", but this may be a reason for it.

You would think limiting it to sports/soccer categories and new only would have limited the number found, but here we are. How many days do you pull into your guide?

[Space]

You can put phrases in double quotes and it will only find that phrase, so use:

"real madrid"

instead of:

real madrid

And it will only match shows where the words are together. I THINK this works in "custom recordings", but it may only work with the regular search function. A quick test seems to indicate that it does work in a "custom recording", but WMC can be flaky, so who knows...


I did some testing a while back and there are actually a few other searches you can do that I don't think are documented anywhere (at least I never saw them).

Some of the things I found is that by default, when you specify a word to search, it is actually looking for any show that has a word that STARTS with that word. So if you look for "friends" it will also find ones that contain the word "friendship" but not "nofriends". "ends" will not match "friends" because the match has to be at the start of the word.

If you want to make an exact search, for example a title search for a show named "friends" you put an "=" in front of it like this:
=friends

It will only find the show titled "friends". Not any other show that may have "friends" in it's title.

The same can be done with phrases, just use double quotes, like in this "title" search:

="big brother" -Matches shows that are titled "big brother" only
"big brother" -Matches shows that have "big brother" in their title, like "big brother" and "big brother after dark", but not "big bad brother".

I believe the "=" trick only works in the regular search, not in a custom recording, so it is of limited usefulness.

[artm]

Problem is real madrid is not in the title of the show normally but in the description, hence the need for generic keyword searching.

I tried restrictions like:
only HD
only one channel
only live
category only sports/soccer

Still no good. Funny thing, tried real madrid soccer and it works, showing matches for one channel 192 (bein) but not showing results for the show Real Madrid TV - I do want the former, don't care about the latter.

I'll try the other search format restricitons and see what happens. I could have sworn I tried it in quotes without success. Again, as I noted, the search was acepted and working until it stopped.

[Space]

Quotes work for me with keyword custom recordings, it's just the "=" trick that doesn't work there. So a "real madrid soccer" (with quotes) keyword custom recording should work. But like I said, WMC can be flaky.

Even if it does work, that doesn't mean that there really are too many shows that match "real madrid soccer". I don't know how many shows WMC considers "too many".

[artm]

Flaky is right! I tried with quotes last week and no go. I tried it just now and it works.

I also did a guide search to see how many results would show for each of these record searches without quotes:

Barcelona showed 15
Real Madrid showed 7

Now these are shows not episodes. I didn't have the urge to count actual episodes.

At any rate, I'm good for the time being.