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[greynolds]

I thought there was already a topic that discussed this, but wasn't able to find it...

As I mentioned in another topic, I'm considering switching over to JRiver for TV due to some issues I'm having with Windows Media Center dropping tuners.  But the TV functionality in JRiver seems to be lacking in a number of ways by comparison.  So my hope is that we can build up a list of features we would like to see.  Here's mine...

1) Make all the TV functionality usable in BOTH TheaterView and standard view.  This includes all settings related to recordings, the ability to see the list of recording rules, the list of upcoming recordings, etc.  There shouldn't be a need to switch back and forth between the views for any of this functionality.  I'm finding that to setup a subscription to a TV series I am best off searching for it in the Theaterview guide using the Search feature, telling it to subscribe, and then switching over to standard view to adjust my recording options as needed.  That's a PITA.

- Update: Yaobing has done some of this is the latest builds of MC 19, but most of this still applies.

2) The Search function in Theaterview seems to be REALLY slow.  When I start typing in keywords, nothing happens for a while to the point where I start wondering if the PC has locked up.  This should be much faster.

- Update: While working through this, a bug was identified that when channels are hidden, their guide data remains.  The workaround is to unhide them, clear the guide, hide them again, then update the guide.  JRiver is looking into fixing this.  They're also looking into improving the search performance.

3) Add a capability to record shows based on fields in the guide data such as an actor's name.  Take a close look at the Windows Media Center "Add a Recording" functionality above the Recorded TV list to see all the capabilities WMC offers.  I'd like to see equivalent functionality in JRiver.  Right now, I'm not sure it's possible to setup a subscription that will do something like record all the Bruins hockey games during the season without recording a bunch of duplicate games and/or old games.  In Windows Media Center, a keyword search for "boston bruins at" combined with setting the options to record new episodes only, etc. makes this pretty easy to do.

4) Add the ability to apply some default tags to all TV recordings rather than forcing the user to edit each one to setup those tags.

- Yaobing has partially addressed this in the latest builds of MC 19.  Again, there's still room for improvement here.

5) The guide in the standard view doesn't seem to show programs that don't start on an exact hour or half hour boundary.  I was looking for a show that started at 9:05 in the standard view and noticed that the channel wasn't even shown in the list.  I was able to find it in Theaterview by searching for the name of the show.  Again, take a close look at the guide in Windows Media Center.

- Update, this one was my bad in not being familiar enough with the guide format used in Standard View.

IMO, Windows Media Center does almost everything right when it comes to capabilities for setting up recordings, using a 10 foot user interface for everything, presenting the list of recorded shows, etc.  The one problem with it that I've been running into lately is dropping my network tuners, which results in missed recordings, which obviously isn't acceptable .

[JimH]

The slow search you're seeing isn't at all normal.  I don't know what it might be.

[greynolds]

The slow search you're seeing isn't at all normal.  I don't know what it might be.

Thanks Jim.  This is a rather fast PC with 16GB of RAM and everything else in JRiver seems to perform well.  Not sure if it's a factor, but this is with guide data for a full cable TV lineup using CableCard tuners, so that's a LOT more data than someone using over the air tuners would have.  In the grand scheme of things, this is probably the least important item on my list.  I'd really love to see you guys really spend some time combing through the features and user interface Windows Media Center has and coming up with something similar.  JRiver is outstanding for audio and most other video uses, but the TV functionality really still leaves a lot to be desired, to be honest.  I hope you'll give this some serious consideration in version 20 (I purchased my upgrade license this week).

A few things I forgot to include in the list above:

1) PlayReady or equivalent support to deal with DRM.  I know that's been discussed here before and has some pretty hefty costs associated with it, but there are a lot of people out there who won't be able to use CableCard tuners with JRiver at all without that support.  With my provider, Verizon FIOS, only premium channels such as HBO are an issue and I don't have any of those on my account.  Have you guys discussed this item with Ceton and/or Silicondust to see if they would be willing to share some of that cost?  It would clearly benefit them as it would make their products more usable with something other than Windows Media Center.

2) Extend JRemote to include full TV support (unless I've missed it there) so that the user can access the guide, schedule recordings, etc. remotely.  Ceton has an app that interfaces with Windows Media Center and it's really nice because you can setup recordings, make sure that recordings happened, look through the guide, etc. remotely when away on a trip, at work, etc.

[Yaobing]

1) Make all the TV functionality usable in BOTH TheaterView and standard view.  This includes all settings related to recordings, the ability to see the list of recording rules, the list of upcoming recordings, etc.  There shouldn't be a need to switch back and forth between the views for any of this functionality.  I'm finding that to setup a subscription to a TV series I am best off searching for it in the Theaterview guide using the Search feature, telling it to subscribe, and then switching over to standard view to adjust my recording options as needed.  That's a PITA.

Many things you mentioned are already available in Theater view.  The ability to see all recording rules is not.  You do not need to go back to standard view to adjust recording options.  You can set them when you set recording in Theater view.  In order to do it, you need to turn on the option  "Allow setting some details when scheduling recording in Theater View".  If you need to modify a recording that has already been scheduled previously, you still need to go back to Standard view.

[greynolds]

Many things you mentioned are already available in Theater view.   The ability to see all recording rules is not.  You do not need to go back to standard view to adjust recording options.  You can set them when you set recording in Theater view.  In order to do it, you need to turn on the option  "Allow setting some details when scheduling recording in Theater View".  If you need to modify a recording that has already been scheduled previously, you still need to go back to Standard view.

I'm running JRiver 19.0.114 and don't see that setting in the TV or Theater View options.  Where can I find that option?  Do I need to install a newer version of JRiver 19 to get it?

[RoderickGI]

I'm running JRiver 19.0.114 and don't see that setting in the TV or Theater View options.  Where can I find that option?  Do I need to install a newer version of JRiver 19 to get it?

I agree with you that TV functionality needs a lot more work. I think many people have made that clear.

But it would be a good idea to upgrade to the latest version before making a list, and keep upgrading. This may fix the slow search and is unlikely to do any harm. Yaobing is adding stuff all the time.

[greynolds]

But it would be a good idea to upgrade to the latest version before making a list, and keep upgrading. This may fix the slow search and is unlikely to do any harm. Yaobing is adding stuff all the time.

I just installed the latest version.  I have auto updates turned off because I tend to take the don't fix it if it isn't broken approach and don't want to be disrupted by an automatic update when I want to start using it at any given time.  So I end up installing updates when I see that a new feature sounds good to me, something isn't working properly that's resolved by an update, etc.

Installing the update gave me the new option for "Allow setting some details when scheduling recording in Theater View", which is definitely a welcome addition and a step in the right direction, but doesn't affect my list.

The update didn't fix the slow search issue, unfortunately.

[RoderickGI]

I do manual updates for the same reason, but do them fairly regularly because there are new features and fixes that make it worth while.

Which search are you using that is slow? The one under Gadgets -> Search, or Video -> YouTube -> Search, or somewhere else?

If I am using a keyboard to type in the search query I find it is a little laggy, but not much, and the results populate quickly with either of the above.

If I am using the remote control and the little on-screen keypad in MC then entering the search query is quite slow and cumbersome, but the characters appear in the search field with only minor delay, and the results populate quickly.

Is there anywhere else on the PC where characters typed appear slow or delayed? If so, check your video driver for settings regarding text drawing, particularly the quality of text. I have seen text smoothing features slow down text drawing time quite a lot in the past. Unfortunately I can't remember where those settings were, or even if they were third party add-ons.

[astromo]

4) Add the ability to apply some default tags to all TV recordings rather than forcing the user to edit each one to setup those tags.

Already done back at the start of July for MC19 build 149, item 2:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=90148.0

[greynolds]

Already done back at the start of July for MC19 build 149, item 2:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=90148.0

Nice!  I missed that when I looked through things after installing the latest version last night.  I would suggest moving that into the TV Options at some point so the user can easily go in and see what they have configured for those settings (and change them there).  Since you can go in and change the settings for each recording rule, there's currently no reliable way to go and see what your configured defaults are other than to create a new recording rule and look at it, which is kludgy.  But nice nonetheless that they've added this.

[greynolds]

Which search are you using that is slow? The one under Gadgets -> Search, or Video -> YouTube -> Search, or somewhere else?

If I am using a keyboard to type in the search query I find it is a little laggy, but not much, and the results populate quickly with either of the above.

If I am using the remote control and the little on-screen keypad in MC then entering the search query is quite slow and cumbersome, but the characters appear in the search field with only minor delay, and the results populate quickly.

Is there anywhere else on the PC where characters typed appear slow or delayed? If so, check your video driver for settings regarding text drawing, particularly the quality of text. I have seen text smoothing features slow down text drawing time quite a lot in the past. Unfortunately I can't remember where those settings were, or even if they were third party add-ons.

The issue is with the Guide search in Theater View.  I've moved my views around in Theater View to better suit my needs, but the Guide view is setup as:

Rules:
    Custom: [TVTime]=>#TVGuideStartDate

Modify Results:
    Limit database to: Television Guide

Under guide, there's a sub view named Search that is setup as:

Options: Show search at file level

The rules for file display have no rules and nothing under modify results.

I believe the above is how it was initially setup when I installed JRiver other than moving it to a TV group instead of the Video group.  It works, it's just painfully slow to do the searches.  I suspect that if you don't have a full CableCard channel listing and only OTA channels in the guide the search would be significantly faster.

It's definitely not a video driver rendering issue or anything like that.  As I said above in previous posts, this is a really fast PC and it doesn't have any other performance issues.

If the JRiver team wants to work with me to figure out why it's so slow, feel free to contact me and let me know what you would like me to try or if you would like more details on the hardware configuration.  My goal here isn't to simply criticize the program, but to try to point out where I see things that could be improved in the hopes that at least some of them will be addressed at some point.  I'd love to get to the point where I felt I could toss Windows Media Center aside and not give it a second thought and also encourage my brother to do the same, but I just don't feel like it's there yet.  I don't believe it would take a ton of work to at least get close enough.

[JimH]

If you have a custom guide, that might explain it.

[greynolds]

If you have a custom guide, that might explain it.

What do you mean by a custom guide?  The only thing I did was move the view around in Theater View, I didn't change how the view is defined.  If there's an easy way to save a backup copy of my current Theater View configuration, reset back to defaults, and then later restore my current setup, I'd be willing to try going back to the default Theater View config.  But I've put a LOT of time into reordering things in there and adding a bunch of views in.  I definitely don't want to go through all of that again if I don't need to.

Update:

I just switched to a scaled down library and setup the TV guide on it with my cable TV listings.  I confirmed that switching libraries keeps the Theater View settings with the library, so I Reset the Theater View settings for this scaled down library.  I then went into Theater View and navigated to the Guide -> Search view.  Searching is just as slow as in my normal library.  For my cable TV listings, I believe the guide has something like 500+ channels (the channel numbers go up to just below 2000, but there are gaps in the numbers).  I'm sure I could remove a bunch of channels as some of the channels in the list are premium channels I don't actually have, some are on demand channels that won't work with a CableCard tuner, etc.  Doing that would probably reduce the channel count significantly.  I'll take a stab at that and see how the performance is.

[RoderickGI]

For my cable TV listings, I believe the guide has something like 500+ channels (the channel numbers go up to just below 2000, but there are gaps in the numbers).  I'm sure I could remove a bunch of channels as some of the channels in the list are premium channels I don't actually have, some are on demand channels that won't work with a CableCard tuner, etc.  Doing that would probably reduce the channel count significantly.  I'll take a stab at that and see how the performance is.

I think you have hit on the problem. Search in the Guide is very quick for me, but I only have 34 channels.

I would recommend hiding the channels, rather than deleting them (hopefully you haven't already deleted them). Otherwise if you ever rescan they will come back. You should probably eliminate them from your Guide data feed as well, if you can. I think MC ignores data for hidden channels anyway though. [Citation needed, but I'm not looking!]

I prefer to use the "Options/Television/Advanced/Edit Channel List" dialogue to do this, but you can also do it under "Options/Television/General/Hidden Channels" drop down list.

[greynolds]

I think you have hit on the problem. Search in the Guide is very quick for me, but I only have 34 channels.

I would recommend hiding the channels, rather than deleting them (hopefully you haven't already deleted them). Otherwise if you ever rescan they will come back. You should probably eliminate them from your Guide data feed as well, if you can. I think MC ignores data for hidden channels anyway though. [Citation needed, but I'm not looking!]

I prefer to use the "Options/Television/Advanced/Edit Channel List" dialogue to do this, but you can also do it under "Options/Television/General/Hidden Channels" drop down list.

Yeah, the plan is to hide them to remove them from the guide list.  I haven't gotten around to do that yet though.  I'll report back once that's done.

In the meantime, I appear to have identified the issue that was causing my Windows Media Center PC to lose the Ceton tuners frequently.  The power controller I was using that allowed me to reboot the Ceton tuners remotely appears to be malfunctioning and cycling power when it wants to (randomly) rather than only when I tell it to.  I moved the power cables for the tuners over to a regular power strip yesterday afternoon and things have been working properly since then.  I'm still interested in exploring the TV functionality in JRiver more, but it's certainly a lot less urgent now .

[greynolds]

I just marked a bunch of channels (840 and up, as well as some other lower channels that are things like community access channels) as hidden using the "Options/Television/Advanced/Edit Channel List" dialog.  Doing this probably removed around half of the channels from the list.  The hidden channels no longer show up in the guide in standard view, but still show up in the guide in Theater View and in the Theater View guide Search feature.  I restarted JRiver and also forced a guide update without any change.  What am I doing wrong here?

[Matt]

I just marked a bunch of channels (840 and up, as well as some other lower channels that are things like community access channels) as hidden using the "Options/Television/Advanced/Edit Channel List" dialog.  Doing this probably removed around half of the channels from the list.  The hidden channels no longer show up in the guide in standard view, but still show up in the guide in Theater View and in the Theater View guide Search feature.  I restarted JRiver and also forced a guide update without any change.  What am I doing wrong here?

Use:
Options > Television > Hidden channels

For me, channels hidden that way don't appear in the Theater View guide.

[RoderickGI]

I think you will need to clear the guide to remove the data about the hidden channels, and then run a normal "Load Program Guide".

"Clear Program Guide" is the bottom option under Options/Television/General/Load Program Guide.

Matt, using either method of hiding the channels seems to do the same thing. I can hide a channel using Options > Television > Hidden channels, and it will immediately show up in Options > Television > Advanced > Edit Channel List, and visa versa. If there is something different happening under the covers with respect to the Theatreview Guide, perhaps that needs to be looked at. I suspect clearing the guide will address this latest issue.

[greynolds]

I checked Options -> Television -> Hidden Channels and all channels I set as hidden using RoderickGI's method are indicated as hidden in that list.  I also cleared and reloaded the guide.  All channels still show up in my Theater View guide, unfortunately.  The nice thing about RoderickGI's method is that you can select a bunch of channels and then click the Hide button to hide them.  That's pretty handy when you need to hide a few hundred channels .  Any other ideas?

And a big welcome back to you Matt!  I'm glad to see you've come so far after your injury.

[Yaobing]

I checked Options -> Television -> Hidden Channels and all channels I set as hidden using RoderickGI's method are indicated as hidden in that list.  I also cleared and reloaded the guide.  All channels still show up in my Theater View guide, unfortunately.  The nice thing about RoderickGI's method is that you can select a bunch of channels and then click the Hide button to hide them.  That's pretty handy when you need to hide a few hundred channels .  Any other ideas?

And a big welcome back to you Matt!  I'm glad to see you've come so far after your injury.

When you reloaded the guide, in the last step of the wizard did you see hidden channels listed?  They should not.

[greynolds]

When you reloaded the guide, in the last step of the wizard did you see hidden channels listed?  They should not.

I just cleared and reloaded the guide again.  The channel list was in the 2nd to last step, but no, the hidden channels were not listed there.  The Theater View guide still shows all the hidden channels and includes program data for them.  Is there any sort of rule that needs to be added to the Theater View guide view to tell it to exclude hidden channels, or should that just happen by default?

[RoderickGI]

Clear the Guide data again, and then go back into the Theatreview Guide. Is there ANY data in there? It should be completely empty.

However, there were some changes in this area when the channel sorting functionality was added. I'm pretty sure that I hid channels after implementing the channel sorting, but could those changes have forced the hidden channels to remain in the data Yaobing?

[greynolds]

Clear the Guide data again, and then go back into the Theatreview Guide. Is there ANY data in there? It should be completely empty.

However, there were some changes in this area when the channel sorting functionality was added. I'm pretty sure that I hid channels after implementing the channel sorting, but could those changes have forced the hidden channels to remain in the data Yaobing?

Well, I wouldn't have expected what I found after running this test...  After clearing the Guide data again, the Theater View guide still contained data, but ONLY for the hidden channels.  So I went back and did the following:

1) I went back to "Options/Television/Advanced/Edit Channel List", selected all channels and clicked Unhide.
2) I then Cleared the guide data.
3) I went back to Theater View and confirmed that the guide is now completely empty.
4) I went back to "Options/Television/Advanced/Edit Channel List" again, selected the channels I want to hide and clicked Hide.
5) I loaded the guide data again.

Now the Theater View guide only has data for the channels that aren't marked as hidden.  I believe this is a bug as clearing the guide data should nuke all data in the guide.  The user shouldn't have to go back and un-hide recently hidden channels, clear the guide, mark them as hidden again, etc. to get them to disappear from the guide.

Search performance is now a bit better, but still painfully slow.  If I get some free time today, I'll remove a bunch more channels to get my channel count down to 50 or so and see how that affects the search performance.

[Yaobing]

It does look like a bug.  Thanks for a nice detective work.  I will look into it.

[greynolds]

I just ran a test with 50 or so channels in my guide and the search performance was excellent.  I then switched back to the full list with the premium / duplicate channels hidden (so probably around 400-500 channels - perhaps a count of the channels that aren't hidden could be displayed somewhere as a future feature?) and the search performance is poor again.  So the search performance is clearly linked to how many channels are in the guide.  This PC should have far more than enough performance to cope with a large amount of data in the guide:

Asus P6 X58-E WS motherboard
Core i7 950 LGA 1366 CPU
12 GB RAM
AMD HD 6670 Video Card
The OS drive is a high performance SSD

The hardware config of my Windows Media Center PC is similar and the guide / search performance in Windows Media Center is excellent.

[Yaobing]

I did some testing today.

With Comcast cable service I am getting, I have channels 1 - 963, with some missing channels here and there.  That means several hundreds of channels.  The speed of search is directly related to the number of channels.  I tried hiding channels above 100.  The result is quite fast.  Then I tried hiding only those above 200, 300, 400, etc.  With each increase of the number of channels, the time required to produce the search result is just proportionally increased.

Also, if you use a remote control to select letters from the keypad, it does not appear to be so slow, because it takes time for you to select each letter.  The non-responsiveness only becomes prominent if you type a search word using a keyboard.  Considering that many people do not use a keyboard when in Theater view, this does not seem to be too big an issue.

[greynolds]

I did some testing today.

With Comcast cable service I am getting, I have channels 1 - 963, with some missing channels here and there.  That means several hundreds of channels.  The speed of search is directly related to the number of channels.  I tried hiding channels above 100.  The result is quite fast.  Then I tried hiding only those above 200, 300, 400, etc.  With each increase of the number of channels, the time required to produce the search result is just proportionally increased.

Also, if you use a remote control to select letters from the keypad, it does not appear to be so slow, because it takes time for you to select each letter.  The non-responsiveness only becomes prominent if you type a search word using a keyboard.  Considering that many people do not use a keyboard when in Theater view, this does not seem to be too big an issue.

Coming from using Windows Media Center where the search is fast with the full channel set, the difference in performance is striking.  Like I said in one of my replies, this isn't the highest priority item on my list, but there's clearly a lot of room for improvement.  Depending on what you guys are using as your "database" (in quotes because I have no idea how you guys store this data) for the guide data, this could be pretty difficult to improve, unfortunately.

[RoderickGI]

Progress! Plus a bug identified!

Pity the search function is still slow compared to WMC, but as you say, that may be hard to fix depending on the storage format.

Still, you now have an understanding of the issue, and Yaobing is on the job fixing the bug. A pretty successful thread so far I would think. Maybe a little code optimisation could see some improvement to speed?

[JimH]

Yaobing can probably find a way to speed it up now that he's seen the problem.  Thanks for bringing it up.

[greynolds]

Yaobing can probably find a way to speed it up now that he's seen the problem.  Thanks for bringing it up.

And thanks for listening.  Reducing the channel count did at least help improve the performance a bit.

[RoderickGI]

5) The guide in the standard view doesn't seem to show programs that don't start on an exact hour or half hour boundary.  I was looking for a show that started at 9:05 in the standard view and noticed that the channel wasn't even shown in the list.  I was able to find it in Theaterview by searching for the name of the show.  Again, take a close look at the guide in Windows Media Center.

So that was number 2) sorted out, or at least in progress. What about this number 5). Do you still see that?

I have 34 channels. 4 are hidden, and 4 have no Guide data. The hidden channels don't appear in Standard or Theatre Views, while the channels with no Guide data appear in Standard View but not Theatre View. No channels which can be found in the Theatre View Guide are missing from Standard View listing. Do you still have channels missing from the Standard View listing?

I also get start times all over the place, not just at hour and half hour boundaries. Currently I am looking at 10:12, 10:23, 11:11, 11:21. 11:22, 11:23 etc. Are you still seeing this issue?

[greynolds]

So that was number 2) sorted out, or at least in progress. What about this number 5). Do you still see that?

I have 34 channels. 4 are hidden, and 4 have no Guide data. The hidden channels don't appear in Standard or Theatre Views, while the channels with no Guide data appear in Standard View but not Theatre View. No channels which can be found in the Theatre View Guide are missing from Standard View listing. Do you still have channels missing from the Standard View listing?

I also get start times all over the place, not just at hour and half hour boundaries. Currently I am looking at 10:12, 10:23, 11:11, 11:21. 11:22, 11:23 etc. Are you still seeing this issue?

After looking at that guide more, I think it's just that the format of the guide is funky compared to how most programs present the guide (which are typically more like the Theater View guide).