Advanced SEARCH/AUTORECORD Help & Discussion

dm999 said:

Is there documentation on the CCHAN keyword? I'm new to the HR2x (just had 2 HR10's upgraded), and trying to get more familiar with it's searching functions.

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I meant to post this sooner, but we're away on vacation with limited connectivity. This is a summary of the keyword search power tricks provided by the DirecTV programmers:

Simple Grammar:

[{AANY/AALL} <tokens>] [{NNOT} <tokens>] [TTITLE/NNAME] [{CCHANS} <number> [<number>]]

Edited by Steve:

(AANY/AALL) keywords (NNOT keywords) (TTITLE/NNAME/CCAT/AABOUT) (CCHANS ## (##))

Note: At least one keyword is mandatory. Everything else is optional.

BOOLEAN LOGIC:

"AALL" => (this is the AND boolean operation) all the following words must be contained within the program (title, about, name, episode, category) in any order
"AANY" => (this is the OR boolean operation) at least one of the following words must be contained within the program (title, about, name, episode, category)
"NNOT" => (this is the NOT boolean operation) exclude any programs that contain any of the following words in that search string

The AANY and AALL keywords should appear as the first word in the search string in order to set the search mode.
The NNOT keyword may appear anywhere and all words following the NNOT keyword are considered words to exclude.

SCOPE FILTERS:

TTITLE => Limits the search to only the Title field of the Programs
NNAME => Limits the search to only the Name field (e.g. Actors, Director) of the Program
AABOUT => Limits the search to the Info/description text of programs
CCAT => Limits the search to programs in the specified category
CCHANS => Limits the search to only the specified channel range (example CCHANS 500 510, or CCHANS 500 for a single channel)

Some sample queries are:

AALL racing car NNOT nascar => finds all shows containing "car" and "racing" (any order/position), but excludes the show if "nascar" appears
AALL hanks tom NNOT vinci => finds all tom hanks movies/shows but excludes the movie if the word "vinci" appears (e.g. da vinci code)
AALL hanks tom NNAME => finds all tom hanks programs where he is an actor[, writer, or director]
AALL hdtv football => finds all high definition football programs (note you can include category labels in the search and "HDTV" is same as "High-Def")
AANY usc ucla NNOT football => finds all usc and ucla events/shows, but excludes football events
oakland raiders NNOT miami => finds exact match for "oakland raiders" but excludes show if "miami" appears (e.g. excludes games with Miami Dolphins)
AANY lakers clippers CCHANS 700 730 => finds all games with the Lakers or Clippers on only channels 700 through 730
AANY lakers clippers CCHANS 710 => finds all games with the Lakers or Clippers on only channel 710

Sorry for hijacking the thread, but I really appreciate all the responses...

Steve: The only real reason for the AALL on the two and a half men was to save on typing

Both searches are showing results, however NONE of the matching shows are in the ToDo list. I'm trying to keep an eye on it now, since an episode of According to Jim should be starting in about 25 mins, but I'm worried that none of them are there.

Looking at the AALL TWO HALF MEN CCHAN 1 99 in Prioritizer, it shows 28 Matching Programs, but none of them have an "R" icon next to them in the Prioritizer list, nor are they in the ToDo list. The Autorecord options are:

Both / 10 Programs / Disk Full / On-time / On-time

There are 4 shows in the list for tonight (7.30/9.00/11.00), but again, none with recording icons, and none in the ToDo list. I set the searches up yesterday afternoon.

Any other info I can provide to help 'diagnose' the searches, let me know.

One other question, is there any way to edit the keywords used in a search already in the Prioritizer, or must I just delete/recreate it?

Thanks again for all the help!!!

dm999 said:

Well, the 7.30 showing did not record. Anyone have any thoughts? I guess I'll try recreating the Autorecord and see what happens.

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You should just be able to go to the Prioritizer and press SELECT on your ARSL - it will run the search from the Priortizer and show all matching programs. See how many have the (R))) "recording" icon and look at the count of First Run. Then check your SL settings for whether it records First Run only, Repeat only, or Both.

The real issue is what Steve said earlier: The Scheduler just doesn't update the To Do List in anything approaching real-time or even a somewhat timely fashion. DIRECTV needs to address this for auto-record searches to really be successful. If you check your To Do List tonight and 12 hours later, you may start to see more shows being added by the Scheduler, but I've noticed that when there are multiple matches for a single ARSL, the scheduler only adds the first one or two matches to the To Do List, and doesn't add subsequent matches until the earlier matches are recorded or canceled.

I guess you can only do a channel range not multiple individual channels? For example I'd like to set up an autorecord for Pittsburgh Penguins games for the upcoming season. I want it to search only on the following channels:

FSN Pittsburgh
VS
NHL Network
NBC

That would get every game, but if I put in a range that includes those channels I will get other RSN's which could get the other team's channel and then record duplicates.


Edit:

Duh one each for each channel. It just hit me. The games will only be on one of the cannels at any one time. I'm an idiot. Once FSN Pittsburgh goes 24/7 HD in August that will make four autorecords work perfect. No more manually recording each game. Nice!

I don't have any interesting searches THAT WORK. It seems that in the current NR, all the special "category" keywords like HD/HDTV, VOD, PPV, MOVIE, SCI-FI and so on are flaky at best. Either they return no matches or partial matches ... and in extreme cases they totally screw up the results.

HDTV CCHAN 501 & Movies
-- Seemed to work, but returned only partial results

MOVIE NNOT VOD & Hi-Def
-- The first item returned was a VOD movie

SCI-FI CCHAN 501 & Hi-Def
-- Seemed to work, but returned only partial results
-- Found only Turistas, probably because its description includes "Sci-Fi"
-- Missed Invasion, whose description says "Science Fiction"

AALL HDTV NNOT VOD PPV & Content Advisories, SC
-- Did not work at all; included VOD stuff
AALL HDTV NNOT VOD NNOT PPV & Content Advisories, SC
-- Seemed to work but I suspect returned partial results

Syzygy said:

Also, I discovered (while browsing for clues on searching) that HD may now be a synonym for HDTV (when it isn't broken). When did that happen?

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I believe over 6 months ago, maybe longer. A lot of that is all guide data related stuff so if a network doesn't properly identify a show as "Sci-Fi" then obviously a search isn't going to find it.

I have several complicated sports autorecords that work great. For example:

AALL Red Wings Live NNOT Post CHAN 636

This records all Red Wings games *and* pre-game shows but not the post game shows on channel 636. Guide data provided by FSN Detroit has "live" for the pre-game, game, and post game but only the first showing. Thus it won't record the repeats later in the night.

This actually works better then a Tivo wishlist since it would pick up Red Wings on various other channels as well and might record 3 hours of blank nothing from another sports channel I don't get since it would record on the lowest channel number. With the DVR+ I can specify a channel number or even a range (although we still need the ability to just list out individual channels instead of just a range).