Series not recording issue

[Kestrel88]

I have an issue with series not recording that I believe is ultimately due to changes with the zap TV guide. I have a daily show set to record that now is listed as "live" vice "new", and now it only records the one episode per week unless I go in to manually record each one. Has anyone else experienced this or have good workarounds?


On an unrelated issue to save a second post, my WMC seems to be running a bit sluggish since having to roll back my Win 8 install from that KB update that broke WMC. I haven't done any windows updates since then. How easy is it currently to do an uninstall and reinstall of just WMC?

[Space]

What do you mean by the "zap TV guide"? Are you scraping zap2it.com to get listings?

In order for an episode to be recorded, it has to look like a different episode than every episode that Series has recorded in the past (in other words, it has to have a unique "episode ID"). Each different episode should be assigned an unique "episode ID", if not, and they all get the same ID, WMC will think they are the same episode and will only record it once and never again. It may be helpful to post what show you are talking about and what lineup you are using (and what data source, if it's not Schedules Direct) so the guide data can be looked at.

As for WMC being sluggish, that could be caused by the WMC database growing. Garbage cleanup that occurs every 5 days should fix that (assuming you have this enabled in EPG123) but I found that the database still tends to grow in size over time and eventually requires using the "Rebuild database" button in WMC to start with a fresh database. Note that this retains all your settings and Series. One thing it does not retain is the list of episodes that were already recorded, so you may get repeated recordings.

[IT Troll]

The other thing to watch out for is if the episodes are erroneously marked as repeats in the guide (and you have selected to only record new).

[Kestrel88]

I mean I believe that zap and epi123 use the same original guide source info, and my series issue starting after noticing the change in the zap guide showing 'live' instead of 'new' for some shows. Even modifying the WMC setting for new & rerun results in only one recording made per schedule time window.

[Space]

Both zap2it and Schedules Direct use Gracenote data, but not all info is available from zap2it.

Are future episodes that aren't scheduled to record marked with a "i" in a circle and indicate that another airing of that episode will record?

[Kestrel88]

Yes, one episode will record and all others point to that one.

I can't say for sure when this started as the show went on a summer break, but I was still getting daily recordings in the spring.

[garyan2]

You are probably correct with the change from New to Live. It makes it very difficult for EPG123 to determine that a program with a generic ID should be flagged as generic. Gracenote has changed their methods on Program IDs for Live events a few times. I have some code in place that takes care of your situation, but only for sports talk shows (think before a sporting event)... they also have a generic Program ID but Live.

What program/series are you trying to record and I can take a look at all the flags/settings Gracenote provides to see what I can do. Once I successfully identify it as generic, then series recordings will work again.

EDIT: Sorry, it has been a while since I took a look at this part of the code. Changing from New to Live shouldn't have anything to do with your issue, but there is certainly something in the program that is defeating my code to determine if it is generic or not. If you could let me know what the series is, I can take a look to see how. In the mean time, you know you can change your series recording request to record all "Live" showings and make it work for you.

[Kestrel88]

Found the live setting, but that info doesn't seem to be passed onto or working in WMC (first time I've tried that setting though).