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[wla2000]

I had been using JRiver Media Center 21 for quite a while, and upgraded to JRiver Media Center 22.  Just about all of my recordings start late, about 15 minutes into the program.  I have the default early and late value (3 minutes) selected, and normally that works, but it hasn't been for the last couple days.  The time on my PC is pretty darn accurate - it's the same as that on my T-Mobile cell phone, which has time set to it by the T-Mobile network and therefore I suspect is pretty close to the actual time.   What do I do?

[JimH]

Is it possible that the schedule data is wrong?

[wla2000]

It's certainly possible that the schedule data is wrong.  How can I tell that?  In this case the schedule data would have to be wrong for at least two programs that started recording late (the NBC Evening news the last couple days and NBC's Meet the Press the morning).

[RoderickGI]

I've certainly seen times when the EPG data for one or more channels have been out by a certain amount of time, such as the fifteen minutes in your case. It is usually in increments of fifteen minutes actually. Usually these errors get corrected by the provider pretty quickly. Sometimes a change in data format cause the problem, and that change has to be accounted for.

But let's not go into which EPG source you are using etc., as I think it will be fixed before we work through the process. 

How can I tell that?

Create a new View and limit it to the "Television Guide" database in the "Set rules for file display". How you display within that is up to you, but it should be easy to see if program start times [Date Recorded] are accurate or not, using the search function in the view, and referring to the channel's online guide.

Also note that EPG data in such a view will still show data going back three days, so if this happen in the last three days, you should be able to see if the start time was wrong for the actual programs that started late. I'm pretty sure that new EPG data collections don't overwrite those older, past program records, so that should be a good test.

[wla2000]

I see where to add a new view (View->Add View->Add Library View), but I'm not sure what to do after that.  I tried "Empty View", then in "Set rules for file display..." I don't know what to select - I looked at the drop-down under rules and at the "Add Stock Rule" button.  Thanks!

[RoderickGI]

Okay. I would direct you to search the Wiki, but actually most of the stuff on creating and editing Views in there is a bit out of date. Some good information can be found in the forum, if you have the patience to search.

You nearly got there. Briefly, as I have spent lots of time already today writing up stuff here:
Yes, (View->Add View->Add Library View)
Select Empty View, name it down the bottom, and set its location to (Root) so that it doesn't inherit settings from higher levels.
Click OK on that dialogue.
In the top left of the new dialogue window that opens, View As File List
Select "Set rules for file display..."
Leave the top Rules blank, set the "Modify Results" to "Limit database to" and ""Television Guide". Click OK on that dialogue.
Uncheck "Use parent scheme rules for file display".
Click OK on that dialogue.
Right click on the header and add the Column "Date Recorded". Note you can exit adding columns at any time by just clicking outside the list of column names. I think you will find that the list is sorted by this date by default. You may want to add other columns to make the data more readable, like [Series], [Season], [Episode], etc. Try adding an Expression column (up the top of the column name list, and putting the expression "TVInfo(ProgramChannelNumber)" in it to see the Channel #. Also add the Expression column "Channel" with he expression "=TVInfo(Channel)". The last two should help make the Guide data easier to read. See http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Miscellaneous_Functions#TVInfo for a bunch of other TV information that you can display.

In the search box in the top right corner, enter the name of the program that had a recording start late. i.e. "Meet the press"

You should then see a list of all instances of the program "Meet the press" in the EPG data, sorted by the start date and time of the program. Check if the times were wrong.

[wla2000]

Thanks for the detailed directions.  You have to admit the process, while simple enough, is not intuitive.

I followed your directions, and added the "date recorded" and expression columns (the expression giving the channel number).  The date recorded showed 10:30 am for Meet the Press and 6:30 pm for NBC Nightly News.  Those are the correct times that those programs are presented on the local NBC channel.  I would have expected the times to be off, since the recording didn't start on time.

To avoid missing the evening news today, I set the recording to start 15 minutes early.  And today it started recording at 6:15 PM, so it started when I told it to. 

I guess I'll schedule all my recordings 15 minutes early just to be on the safe side.  That's not a satisfactory solution so if you have any better ideas, please let me know!

Thanks.

[RoderickGI]

I'm afraid I don't have any better ideas, other than to add the padding and then keep an eye on it. With padding added, MC will still start to play when the program was due to start anyway if you have ticked the checkbox "Tools>Options>Television>Recording>Bookmark recordings at program start time instead of recording start time". If you set that, you shouldn't have to skip forward or backward to find the start of the program. If you do, the program didn't start at the scheduled time. Note that bookmark will be moved once you first play the program, either to the current playback position, or it will be deleted and the recording will play from the start.

If MC started recording at the correct time after you added padding, and only had a problem on the two cases you listed, it is possible that MC or the PC had some trouble waking up to record. I have seen something like that where background PC processes, particularly Windows updates, delayed scheduled activity for some time. I can't say I've seen it with recordings, but certainly with EPG collection, scheduled backups, and other background process, which scheduled recordings are. Those issues are sometimes only fixed with a reboot of the PC, and then they don't return unless the cause returns. I find Windows 10 updates to be a particular pain in the way they interrupt processes.

One solution others have used is to just schedule a reboot of the PC every night in the early hours, using the Windows Task Scheduler. I haven't bothered with that yet, but it would certainly fix some issues caused by running the PC for long periods without a reboot, of which there are many.