Missed Favorite Recordings with V9 and HD-PVR

[Telecore]

I've recently switched over to running V9 for my main SageTV server setup with 2 HD-PVRs (+ Ceton PCIe6). The past two nights I have observed a very strange problem: despite the fact that there are no tuner conflicts, SageTV has missed recording favorites (on FX) two nights in a row if I watch an older recording made on the HD-PVR during the time the favorite is supposed to record. Has anyone else noticed this?

Not only is that a problem, but SageTV fails to re-schedule the recording for the later airing of the show (on the same night). The shows in this case are The Americans and Archer and FX shows two airings of each show and two airings of the previous week's show on Wednesday and Thursday nights, respectively. The fact that I have two HD-PVRs that can be in use simultaneously makes this even more strange because while I am watching the recorded file, neither is in use recording the show that it is supposed to be recording.

I would expect first of all that (1) there is no conflict, therefore the show should record and (2) if it didn't record, it should record at the next showing

I am running 9.0.4.232 on a Windows 10 System, with the latest Java. I don't think that this ever happened with V7. Anyone else seeing this same problem or can anyone provide any insight?

[stuckless]

I can't say that I've had the same issue I have missed recordings because an HDPVR has failed, but SageTV does eventually record it. I'm running 2 HDPVRs on Linux with SageTV v9 with about 20 Favorites. I had 2 missed recordings this week due to an HDPVR power supply issue, but, sagetv recorded them later.

[Tiki]

Are you sure it's a version 9 problem and not a guide data problem? I'm still on version 7, but I noticed that The Americans has not recorded yet this week, even though it's been on several times. In my case it's because none of those airings was marked as HD, but there is one episode coming up that is marked as HD, so Sage is preferring that one. Of course all the airings were on the same HD channel, so I'm sure they were all HD - just the guide data was wrong/incomplete.

This behavior of preferring shows marked as HD sounds like a good idea, but I wish it could be turned off. It has caused me to miss recordings on occasion. I've encountered situations like this before where the guide data says a show will be aired 5 times, but only the 5th airing is HD, so it schedules that one. Then later,the guide data changes and they don't actually show that 5th airing at all, so Sage records nothing (and it missed 4 other opportunities where it could have recorded).

As an added bonus, this is usually a silent failure- Sage doesn't consider this an error or a conflict. So if you aren't paying attention, you may not notice you missed an episode until much later ( I tend to record whole seasons and then go back to binge watch them months later). At least if I know I've missed an episode right away, there's a good chance I can still get it through on demand or the web for free, but there is only a limited number of episodes that they tend to offer that way.

[Telecore]

Thanks for the responses.

I went back and checked the HD icons on all previous recordings of The Americans this season and noticed about 1/2 of them were HD and 1/2 of them were not, however, all were previously recorded successfully until Wed. night. It's interesting though, that the guide data is inconsistent in this manner. I did not see any type of option to record HD only but I will keep looking.

Edit: I just checked all 4 of the HD-PVR favorites that I record. Game of Thrones and Life Below Zero have never missed an episode. All past episodes are marked HD. The Americans and Archer have a mix of past HD and non-HD episodes and both missed recording the last 2 nights only. Perhaps the HD issue is causing a problem - but it is not a consistent problem.

As far as the power supply/unit failure goes - there may be an issue here. I recently got new power supplies as I had one (which was a recommended D-Link replacement) go bad. I now have new 3A supplies which I hope to be reliable. I have noticed, however, that occasionally when I watch live TV off of the HD-PVR and then stop the video, sometimes the HD-PVR continues recording and cannot be turned off. To address this, I plugged them both into a remotely controllable on/off switched outlet on my home automation system. Maybe this is an indication of a problem. I am using long USB cables as well (10 ft), so perhaps I should shorten them. The vast majority of the time, the HD-PVRs have been reliable, though.

[omega]

Originally Posted by Tiki

Are you sure it's a version 9 problem and not a guide data problem? I'm still on version 7, but I noticed that The Americans has not recorded yet this week, even though it's been on several times. In my case it's because none of those airings was marked as HD, but there is one episode coming up that is marked as HD, so Sage is preferring that one. Of course all the airings were on the same HD channel, so I'm sure they were all HD - just the guide data was wrong/incomplete.

This behavior of preferring shows marked as HD sounds like a good idea, but I wish it could be turned off. It has caused me to miss recordings on occasion. I've encountered situations like this before where the guide data says a show will be aired 5 times, but only the 5th airing is HD, so it schedules that one. Then later,the guide data changes and they don't actually show that 5th airing at all, so Sage records nothing (and it missed 4 other opportunities where it could have recorded).

As an added bonus, this is usually a silent failure- Sage doesn't consider this an error or a conflict. So if you aren't paying attention, you may not notice you missed an episode until much later ( I tend to record whole seasons and then go back to binge watch them months later). At least if I know I've missed an episode right away, there's a good chance I can still get it through on demand or the web for free, but there is only a limited number of episodes that they tend to offer that way.

I'm pretty sure you can disable that feature. Setting the following property (in sage.properties) to false should make it consider "SD" and "HD" airings equally.

prefer_hdtv_recordings_over_sdtv=true

As I recall that feature was important back in the transitional period when people often had a mix of SD and HD channels. Now that most things are HD it's probably less useful than it used to be.

[Telecore]

I checked and my property was set to "prefer_hdtv_recordings_over_sdtv=true", so I have changed it to false and I will see if this fixes things - thanks!

[Tiki]

Originally Posted by omega

I'm pretty sure you can disable that feature. Setting the following property (in sage.properties) to false should make it consider "SD" and "HD" airings equally.

prefer_hdtv_recordings_over_sdtv=true

As I recall that feature was important back in the transitional period when people often had a mix of SD and HD channels. Now that most things are HD it's probably less useful than it used to be.

Thanks for the tip.

I suspect most people really do prefer to record in HD if there is a choice. If you can disable all the SD channels from your lineup, this should work. However, if you are like me, you probably still have a fair number of SD-only channels that you may not want to disable.

Here is an example where I think setting this parameter to false could cause problems:

Until recently, I lived in an area that got two CBS stations from different cities (Detroit and Lansing. The Detroit CBS was available in SD and HD, Lansing was SD only. I disabled the SD feed from Detroit but kept the SD feed from Lansing because the two cities don't always show the same programs - for example they sometimes show different football games on Sundays. For whatever reason, Sage seemed to prefer that Lansing CBS feed (probably because it had a lower channel number - I tried remapping it to a higher number, but made no difference).

[UgaData]

Interesting, I will now need to double check that Archer was recorded this week. As well as the properties file.

I have noticed at times, in the past, the first showing of a program isn't the one scheduled to be recorded. Typically, I have always gotten the recording (or so I thought, hmm ..... )

[UgaData]

Sure enough, I also missed recording Archer last evening. FWIW- I am on SageTV v7, so it is not a V9 issue more a "prefer HD" issue. Neither showing had the "HD" set on it.

I do see the missed episode is set to be recorded next week.

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by UgaData

Sure enough, I also missed recording Archer last evening. FWIW- I am on SageTV v7, so it is not a V9 issue more a "prefer HD" issue. Neither showing had the "HD" set on it.

I do see the missed episode is set to be recorded next week.

I think it might be nice to have the option for SageTV to evaluate if the channel is more than 70% marked HD content, that it's just assumed to be 100% HD. I know some programming is actually in SD, but I have yet to see a noticeable issue with it being recorded in HD.

[Tiki]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

I think it might be nice to have the option for SageTV to evaluate if the channel is more than 70% marked HD content, that it's just assumed to be 100% HD. I know some programming is actually in SD, but I have yet to see a noticeable issue with it being recorded in HD.

I have never seen an HD channel air SD content when an HD version was available.

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by Tiki

I have never seen an HD channel air SD content when an HD version was available.

That's not quite what I meant. I have seen several times when a show was actually in HD on the HD channel, but the guide said it wasn't.

[Monedeath]

Originally Posted by Tiki

Thanks for the tip.

I suspect most people really do prefer to record in HD if there is a choice. If you can disable all the SD channels from your lineup, this should work. However, if you are like me, you probably still have a fair number of SD-only channels that you may not want to disable.

Here is an example where I think setting this parameter to false could cause problems:

Until recently, I lived in an area that got two CBS stations from different cities (Detroit and Lansing. The Detroit CBS was available in SD and HD, Lansing was SD only. I disabled the SD feed from Detroit but kept the SD feed from Lansing because the two cities don't always show the same programs - for example they sometimes show different football games on Sundays. For whatever reason, Sage seemed to prefer that Lansing CBS feed (probably because it had a lower channel number - I tried remapping it to a higher number, but made no difference).

As noted by others, I've never seen a channel offering HD content provide their content in SD when a HD version is available, even if the guide claims otherwise. (Some programs are only available in SD, for reasons that should be pretty self-evident)

And with that in mind, you can also tweak the settings for specific favorite recordings to restrict the scheduler to only record airings on particular channels. So you can have a SD feed for CBS, and a HD feed for CBS as well(such as in your example), and still make sure that Sage only records certain programs on the HD version of the CBS affiliate without setting the flag to only record HD versions when available(as per program guide, which can be wrong, and often is with the HD flag not showing on HD content).

[nyplayer]

Isn't this due to incorrect marked EPG listings or no HD marker in EPG... Sage TV relies on the EPG and It does not really know which channels are HD .... unless the EPG has the indicator.... so you are really at the mercy of the EPG unless you designate channels to record on.

[Monedeath]

Originally Posted by nyplayer

Isn't this due to incorrect marked EPG listings or no HD marker in EPG... Sage TV relies on the EPG and It does not really know which channels are HD .... unless the EPG has the indicator.... so you are really at the mercy of the EPG unless you designate channels to record on.

That has normally been my experience. As they say "Garbage in, Garbage out" the EPG service providers either are being provided bad information, or have made invalid assumptions about certain (local) content providers.

That in turn gets passed along to SageTV in the form of incomplete/incorrect EPG data. Which then causes the SageTV scheduler to fail to perform as advertised, because the tools it was using to do so were defective.

Almost need to generate a FAQ for EPG related issues and put a disclaimer out there. "Yes it will do this, no it is not the fault of SageTV. The blame lies with the EPG data source."

It probably wouldn't hurt to remind some people that as the problem lies with the EPG data. This will happen with any version of SageTV a person should try to use.

[nyplayer]

So true I was checking my EPG data for HD markers and found out that I only have EPG data until this evening. Most channels say no Data.... so I sure am glad I checked.

[UgaData]

Certainly in my case, it is due to the absence of the HD flag provided in the EPG (and maybe that the HD flag is present on a later instance of the same show). I have noticed this before but when I have it was usually resolved by the second instance of the show being flagged correctly (so instead of being recorded at 9 or 10 PM it is recorded at 12 PM or 1 AM).

I have changed the "prefer_hdtv_recordings_over_sdtv=" setting in the properties file. In cases where there is both an SD and HD version of a channel, I remove the SD channel from the EPG.