[DarinC]

Right before the Olympic opening ceremonies, I set it up to record, but for some reason did a series recording instead of a single one (I think I had a reason at the time, who knows). But it appears to consider the entire Olympics as one series as opposed to the opening ceremonies as a single show, so it's been recording other Olympic stuff. That's ok. So the other day there was a specific Olympic event I wanted to record. In the guide, there was a red circle, but instead of the R, it was like a pie cut into four pieces. I clicked the info button, and it said all episodes were set to record. In hindsight, I guess the four pieces represent an X, because it didn't record (I'm sure those symbols are on a page in a manual I didn't read somewhere). So last night, same thing: I wanted to record an event, in the guide it had the red circle with an X, so I selected that showing, but after being burned the 1st time, I knew not to trust the "all episodes are set to record, so I chose the "record this showing" option thinking I was forcing that recording. As I expected, it told me the recording conflicted with a couple of other series links I had. So I reviewed my options, and told it which one I wanted to discard so it could record the Olympics. Come to find out, it didn't record that one either. When I look in the history, it simply says "cancelled".

So what am I missing here? When I told it to drop another recording so it could record the Olympics, I thought I was good. I think I even got a confirmation. Should you not be able to explicitly say "record this and cancel this" in a single step, or do you have to take a separate step of going to the prioritizer and putting your new selection at the top?

 

[t_h]

I think I figured it out and explained it in another thread. The directv dvr doesnt enumerate keyword autorecords until a day or so before the showing. If you tell it to record something, it looks for conflicts it knows about and warns on those. But later when it works its autorecords into the schedule, it seems to run over recordings you put in that may have been conflict free.

Last minute guide data changes also seems to be able to cause this to happen.

The red circle with the X in it means that showing will not record.

IMO, this makes the recording process somewhat haphazard and unreliable, unless you check your to-do list several times per day and manually resolve conflicts that arise due to autorecords being scheduled and shifting guide data.

Tivo records single item recording requests as a priority over wishlists and guide data changes. They're priority #1 all the time. Seems the directv dvr considers them much lower on the priority list.

It should record single instance user requested recordings first, then go down the prioritizer list. It also ought to enumerate the to-do list fully out through the 10-14 days of available guide data at least once a day, rather than populating as it goes. I'm on the fence about last minute guide data changes. There are benefits to it if the guide data change is correct and the change is handled properly on the fly. Seems to open a huge can of worms for screwy data to cause a program to not record properly.

But...this real time setup is what makes the directv snappy when you make recording changes and why tivo gives you the three minute "please wait". I'd rather wait and get it right, but thats me.

 

[DarinC]

Hmmm, well I don't THINK that I have any keyword autorecords set up. I set the recording up only an hour before it was supposed to start, so since it was directed to cancel other recordings so it could do this one, I THOUGHT that was it. I'll have to pay more attention in the future. Obviously I also need to see if I can figure out what it recorded in lieu of the Olympics. Thanks for the info.

 

[Lee L]

Part of the issue we have seen with the Olympics is that each showing runs for so long. It can overlap at 11:30 at night, but it will not record any of that showing, even if nothing else is recording from 8:00 until 11:30. So, you have to think about what might be on at another time. We just made sure our Olympics SL was number 1 since pretty much everything else we record right now comes on multiple times.