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[greynolds]

Since I've been running into issues with Windows Media Center losing it's mind and forgetting that my Ceton InfiniTV 6 ETH tuners exist much more frequently than I would like (each time this happens, the PC has to be rebooted), I'm considering switching over to use JRiver for TV duties.  But there are some deficiencies here too that make that decision somewhat difficult.

Generally speaking, I setup to record TV series and I usually want to record only new episodes.  But there are cases where a TV show might have 2 back to back new episodes on the same day.  A specific example is Defiance, which has 2 new episodes next Thursday at 8PM and 9PM.  The 8PM episode repeats at 11:05PM on the same night.  The only way I can see to have JRiver record both of the new episodes is also scheduling to record the 11:05PM repeat of the first new episode that night, so I'll have 3 recordings instead of the 2 that I should get (unless it's smart enough to skip recording the 3rd one after the 1st one has recorded).  My settings for this show are:

Channel: SCFI
When: All showings
Do not record programs that have been recorded in the past is checked
Do not record reruns is checked

So should I expect the 3rd one to record or should JRiver be smart enough to skip?

[Yaobing]

It should do what you want.  Note that the option works only if each episode has a unique subtitle.

[greynolds]

It should do what you want.  Note that the option works only if each episode has a unique subtitle.

Good and yes I understand that the option requires a unique subtitle in order to work properly.  Features like these can only be as good as the guide data they have to work with .

[RoderickGI]

So should I expect the 3rd one to record or should JRiver be smart enough to skip?

Not only should it do what you want, if you have enough tuners it should do it very nicely. That is, it should record the first episode with its padding before and after the show, and separately record the second episode with its padding before and after the show.

I was used to using a Topfield PVR with separate PC based program scheduling software (TEDS Suite) before changing to a four tuner HTPC and JRiver MC. When there were two programs I wanted to record that were back to back, TEDS would combine them into one recording, and tell the Topfield to put padding before and after the combined recordings, and also combine the names of the programs, truncated, so you could see there were two in the recording. What a pain that was, but it was the best I could do with the two tuners Topfield.

The way MC handles back to back programs is one part of the MC TV functionality that I really love.

[greynolds]

Not only should it do what you want, if you have enough tuners it should do it very nicely. That is, it should record the first episode with its padding before and after the show, and separately record the second episode with its padding before and after the show.

The way MC handles back to back programs is one part of the MC TV functionality that I really love.

Not to take away from MC, but that's how padding should work and there should be a clear definition of what happens when there aren't enough tuners to perform the requested padding.  One option would be that the first recording or the one with the highest priority gets the requested padding and the other recording gets truncated accordingly.  Another option would be that no padding occurs so the first recording ends at the scheduled time and the 2nd recording starts at the scheduled time.  But the important thing is for there to be a clear understanding of what to expect, so you can make an informed decision as to whether you should add more tuners or not.

Padding was actually one of the (minor) annoyances with Windows Media Center at first.  With Windows Media Center, padding doesn't work as one would expect on back to back recordings on the same channel UNLESS you tell it to add 10 (or more) minutes of padding at the end of the show AND don't select the "when possible" options.  If you select fewer than 10 minutes of padding, or choose any "when possible" options, it will (IIRC) stop the first recording on time and start the next recording on time so that it can use the same tuner for both without writing to 2 files at the same time.  It's either that or it starts the 2nd recording late and pads the first one.  But something along those lines.  The really weird thing was that back to back recordings on different channels DID handle padding as expected even when using the "when possible" options, so some shows recorded with the expected padding and some didn't.  When I first started using Windows Media Center, that "feature" drove me up the wall until I figured out what the trick was .  Once I figured out what was going on, I just setup all my recordings to end 10 minutes late (and not the "when possible" option).  I usually setup shows that are often on after sports to go an hour over just to be safe (I've had been cases where even that isn't enough).

I should definitely have enough tuners.  I've got 2 Ceton InfiniTV 6 ETH's and 2 SiliconDust HD HomeRuns, which gives me 12 CableCard and 4 OTA tuners.  Even sharing them across 3 PC's now, it should be a pretty rare event to not have enough tuners.

[RoderickGI]

I agree that is how it should work. The TEDS Suite application compromised by merging recordings so that no part of either show was separated from the rest of the show, but lost information in the naming, and you had to scan to find the start of the second program. The two tuner Topfield didn't handle it well even when there were only two programs being recorded. MC is the first application I have used that has done it anywhere near as well.

I used WMC for a while, to evaluate it and understand its capabilities. I had the same learning curve you did regarding padding. Of course when the back to back recordings were on different channels it did what was expected, and that makes sense. Understanding the availability of tuners is the key to understanding what padding will be applied, and sometimes that means also understanding if one or more of the channels are on the same MUX as other channels being recorded.

BTW, when I have Time Shift turned on (always) plus two or more recordings, I have no issues with writing multiple files to disk, even when the source channel is same for all of them. You should do a little research into how MC handles time shifting. It adds some value that other systems don't.

[greynolds]

I agree that is how it should work. The TEDS Suite application compromised by merging recordings so that no part of either show was separated from the rest of the show, but lost information in the naming, and you had to scan to find the start of the second program. The two tuner Topfield didn't handle it well even when there were only two programs being recorded. MC is the first application I have used that has done it anywhere near as well.

I used WMC for a while, to evaluate it and understand its capabilities. I had the same learning curve you did regarding padding. Of course when the back to back recordings were on different channels it did what was expected, and that makes sense. Understanding the availability of tuners is the key to understanding what padding will be applied, and sometimes that means also understanding if one or more of the channels are on the same MUX as other channels being recorded.

BTW, when I have Time Shift turned on (always) plus two or more recordings, I have no issues with writing multiple files to disk, even when the source channel is same for all of them. You should do a little research into how MC handles time shifting. It adds some value that other systems don't.

The thing with WMC is that I always had plenty of tuners available.  I always make sure I have enough tuners to handle any potential recording situation that may come up, factoring in the extra tuners that may be required to handle padding.  So even with 12 tuners and only 2 recordings active, WMC still didn't do what was intuitively the right thing with back to back recordings on the same channel.  Once I figured out the workaround to force WMC to do what ought to be the obvious way to do it, I was actually very happy with WMC until it started dropping the tuners lately.

If BeyondTV was still being actively developed and/or had the same level of support for the Ceton CableCard tuners that JRiver has, I would probably go back to using it for TV duties as it's recording functionality is excellent.  But they've abandoned development of their consumer product as of a few years ago.

As long as JRiver handles the back to back recording case well (regardless of what channel the shows are on), which is easy enough to confirm by scheduling some test recordings, it's all good.  But the focus for this thread was on that extra show that shows up in the schedule, and it's nice to know that it will be removed after the first instance of that episode records.

Thanks!