Intermittent spurious conflicts in Scheduled Recordings

[IT Troll]

I have a quad DVB-T2 tuner (single card). Recently I have started to see conflict warnings appearing in Scheduled Recordings for previously scheduled recordings. These appear when there is more than one recording scheduled for the same time. However these are spurious as there are enough tuners to service the recordings. The card is still detected in Windows and sources for the channels show all four tuners.

The bizarre thing is that once a program starts to record (or if I watch Live TV) then all the conflicts suddenly clear. It is like Media Center has temporarily forgotten it actually has 4 tuners available, or it thinks the tuners are still in use.

I thought it might be a problem with the scheduling so I cleared out all my Scheduled Recording and deleted all my Series Recordings and started over. But I have still seen in once since doing that.

Has anyone else seen this or can suggest something else I can try? My HTPC is always on so this is not a resume from sleep/hibernation issue.

[CyberSimian]

Recently I have started to see conflict warnings appearing in Scheduled Recordings for previously scheduled recordings. These appear when there is more than one recording scheduled for the same time. However these are spurious as there are enough tuners to service the recordings.

I used Vista WMC for five years, and found that its recording-conflict logic seemed to be incorrect. Actually, I am not sure that I can remember the details now, but it was something like this:

Vista has an official limit of two tuners, but by modifying the registry it is possible to get Vista to use more than two tuners (I had eight). But when the recording-conflict logic was triggered, WMC acted as though it still had a limit of two tuners (so I guess that the recording-conflict code had a hard-coded value of two, whereas the allocating-tuners code used the value from the registry).

However, I found that the recording-conflict logic was rarely triggered, and I think that this was because I always added explicit padding to programme start and end times, in order to force WMC to use separate tuners. If you don't do this, WMC uses the same tuner for two consecutive programmes, and omits the post-padding from the first programme, and omits the pre-padding from the second programme. It is the difference between the global setting "add padding when possible", and the programme-specific setting "add padding always" (those aren't the exact words!). Having to add explicit padding each time a programme is scheduled is certainly cumbersome, and I am glad that I don't have to do that with MediaPortal.

-- from CyberSimian in the UK

[IT Troll]

Windows 7 and Windows 8 officially support 4 tuners and for the most part work fine. I do use the "when possible" soft padding so I will double check what is happening when recording consecutive programmes.

MediaPortal is on my short list for potential replacements. It is one of the few fully integrated PVR options and it also records the full mux rather than just one channel. However I still hear people saying Media Center offers the best experience for TV for that all important WAF. What guide data source do you use for the UK?

[CyberSimian]

MediaPortal is on my short list for potential replacements. It is one of the few fully integrated PVR options and it also records the full mux rather than just one channel. However I still hear people saying Media Center offers the best experience for TV for that all important WAF. What guide data source do you use for the UK?

Each media center program will have things that you like, and things that you don't like. The only way to determine if an alternative MC will be suitable for you is to try it for several weeks, using it as you would normally. You really need to have a spare Windows PC with tuners, so that you can set it up to use the alternative MC without interrupting your current use of WMC.

For me, the major advantages of MediaPortal are:

(1) MediaPortal uses one tuner per MUX, whereas WMC uses one tuner per channel.
(2) MediaPortal retains the padding for consecutive programmes (if there are enough tuners), whereas WMC discards the padding (even when there are enough tuners).
(3) MediaPortal can receive the broadcast EPG for both the SD channels and the HD channels, whereas WMC7 can receive the broadcast EPG only for the SD channels.

The major disadvantage is:

(1) MediaPortal does not do series recording. Instead MediaPortal does 7 different varieties of repeated recording. This mostly gives the desired outcome, but sometimes at the expense of recording repeats of programmes already recorded.

Although MediaPortal can receive the broadcast EPG, it can also use other EPG sources, such as the Microsoft internet EPG, the Radio Times internet EPG, or the Atlas internet EPG. However, these alternative EPGs require more setup. Also, although these other EPGs may contain more information (e.g. the Microsoft EPG contains a flag indicating that a programme is a repeat), MediaPortal does not use that additional information.

-- from CyberSimian in the UK

[IT Troll]

Thanks for the reply. I would have to explore the other EPG sources as I don't think 7-days would pass WAF.

I didn't realise it doesn't do series recordings. That's going to be a hard sell. So does it just use various time-based repeating schedules then? I guess it can't then pickup missed recordings at alternative times on alternative channels?

I believe there is one other major advantage; I think MediaPortal can decode the HE-AAC surround sound on Freeview HD. Do you make use of that?

[CyberSimian]

I didn't realise it doesn't do series recordings. That's going to be a hard sell. So does it just use various time-based repeating schedules then? I guess it can't then pickup missed recordings at alternative times on alternative channels?

MediaPortal provides the following variations of repeated recording:

(1) Once
(2) Every time on this channel
(3) Every time on all channels
(4) Every week at this time on this channel
(5) Every day at this time on this channel
(6) Weekdays at this time on this channel
(7) Weekends at this time on this channel
(8) Every week on this day on this channel

Methods (2), (3), and (8) do not fix the time of day, so the programme can be broadcast at different times from week to week and still be recorded. I use (8) most. Because MediaPortal does not currently support the concept of "programmes in a series", if a recording is missed (e.g. due to a power failure), MediaPortal does not look for a later broadcast of that episode.

You may know that in the UK the broadcast EPG contains unique series ids and programme ids that are used by commercial DVRs to perform series recording that is (in theory) bullet-proof (e.g. my "Humax HDR Fox T2"). A new version of MediaPortal's "TV Server" is under development at the moment, and the plan is to use these series ids and programme ids to support true series recording. However, there is only one developer working on it, and it may take some time before anything usable becomes available.

The absence of true series recording was perhaps the most-important deficiency for me (although absence of a "this is a repeat broadcast" flag comes a close second). Nevertheless, on balance I decided that MediaPortal provided a better fit for my requirements than WMC did. This is why you need to try MediaPortal for several weeks, in order to ascertain the pros and cons that are important to you.

I think MediaPortal can decode the HE-AAC surround sound on Freeview HD. Do you make use of that?

I use simple stereo output through a hi-fi amplifier and full-range loudspeakers. But MediaPortal does support multi-channel output. (I had to adjust the settings to cause MediaPortal to perform a mix-down from 5-channel to 2-channel, in order to obtain audible dialogue on my stereo system when watching the few programmes that are broadcast with 5-channel sound.)

-- from CyberSimian in the UK

[IT Troll]

Many thanks for that most helpful reply. I think I will have to get a test system setup. I did set one up before but without a tuner I couldn't really fully test.

[IT Troll]

OK back to my original problem, I can see what is happening now. Everyday Windows runs mcupdate_scheduled tasks and it seems that sometimes during this process Windows decides it can only record one channel at a time. It then runs through my scheduled recording (which were previously added without issue) and either moves recordings to alternate showings or marks them as a conflict. All four tuners are still available and I can add more simultaneous recordings without creating conflicts.

I think I will have a poke around in the registry settings for the tuners, but failing that I guess I will have to reset my TV config and start over.

[IT Troll]

So I am still being plagued by this problem even though I performed a full TV database delete and config reset.

However I think I have made some progress. The problem definitely hits after the mcupdate_scheduled task runs. I have now discovered that if I run the PvrScheduleTask task it immediately fixes up all the spurious conflicts. This task simply runs mcupdate -PvrSchedule. So I have created my own task which runs this command 30 minutes after the daily update.

Hopefully this will do the trick. I am not sure why I am suddenly getting this intermittent problem. But I wouldn't be surprised if it is some bad data in the MS EPG which is in someway disrupting the normal process.

[IT Troll]

Just to feedback that running this schedule task has fixed my problem. I now run it twice per day, one after the main guide download/update and then once again later in the day after the opportunistic OTA scan/update runs.