# Only one tuner used for back-to-back overlapping recordings



## PedjaR (Jan 4, 2010)

I have a wishlist that records NFL games with one hour padding. Around 5pm EST one of the 4:25 games did not have an entry in My Shows; I thought something was wrong. Then I noticed that the earlier game was recording the beginning of that game due to the padding; the other three tuners were tuned to something else. I waited until 5:25 (which is when the padding expired on earlier game) and, much to my delight, the second game appeared in My Shows, and it has recorded from the beginning. The padded game also had the first chunk of the second game, i.e. the overlapped part recorded twice but using one tuner only. This has never happened to me on Premiere. If this is what always happens (I will do some more checking later) I could be very liberal with adding padding on shows and not run out of tuners.
Is this a known enhancement on Roamios?


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## cherry ghost (Sep 13, 2005)

If it did do that, it's new behavior and something Margret didn't mention in the release notes.


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## kbmb (Jun 22, 2004)

Are you on 20.3.8?

Far as I know, Tivo was testing behavior like this, however, I believe in one of the previous updates it was disabled because it wasn't working correctly.

Maybe they re-enabled it in 20.3.8?

-Kevin


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## PedjaR (Jan 4, 2010)

kbmb said:


> Are you on 20.3.8?
> 
> Far as I know, Tivo was testing behavior like this, however, I believe in one of the previous updates it was disabled because it wasn't working correctly.
> 
> ...


Yes, I've got 20.3.8.


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## astrohip (Jan 7, 2003)

While the single tuner algorithm is clearly better, they need to work on the supporting programming. It makes it appear the second recording is not working, and as you said, there is no way to get to it. Unless one wants to speed thru the first recording.

Great idea, incredibly poor implementation.


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## PedjaR (Jan 4, 2010)

astrohip said:


> While the single tuner algorithm is clearly better, they need to work on the supporting programming. It makes it appear the second recording is not working, and as you said, there is no way to get to it. Unless one wants to speed thru the first recording.
> 
> Great idea, incredibly poor implementation.


Once the first recording is done, you can get to the second one, and watch it from the beginning without involving the first one, so it's not that bad (I'd take out "incredibly" from your comment  ). Here it looked strange because the padding was huge, but if it were small padding of a few minutes just to avoid cutting off the end of the show (as opposed to protecting against the game going to overtime), I would not have even noticed. But I agree it would be much nicer if I could at least see that the second recording was in progress, even if not able to get to it. The To Do list was interesting - it showed as "Will Record" something that has started half an hour ago, and it did not have a red circle indicating it was being recorded. So, there's noticeable room for improvement, but it is still a nice addition. I would have liked this _a lot_ when I had only a 2-tuner Premiere. I wonder if this addition (or an earlier, buggier version of it) was the reason for the "modifying the end time of an upcoming recording results in duplicate recordings" bug.
I'm surprised that it was not mentioned by Margret as one of the goodies added, as some people were asking for this for quite a while, indicating that one of the satelite DVRs had it. Maybe it is because it needs more work.


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## astrohip (Jan 7, 2003)

I'll stick with _incredibly _poor for now. Too many gotchas...

* Can't get directly to second recording during overlap
* To-Do List doesn't show it is recording (very dangerous for those of us that watch it closely on busy nights, due to V53 non-recording glitch)
* Now Playing doesn't show it
* In the case of large pads (AKA CBS Sunday night, or any show on FX), it's a real PITA to get to 2nd show.

Great idea... needs work.


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

DARN!!!! Getting more tuners for overlap protection was a major reason I got a Roamio.. (I have said FOR YEARS that I would PAY a one time fee beyond my lifetime subscriptions for (1) free space indicator(*), and (2) this feature people are talking about.)

Though the speed of the Roamio is good (I still wouldn't say it's LIGHTNING fast like some seem to say -- and there are some weird visual tearing issues when going between screens), and not needing a separate Stream is good..

(*) The one they have now is "good enough" but still VERY far off. I think it estimates poorly. I can be at lets say 90% right near the end of a recording, and when it stops, the free space jumps down to 86% or something even though I didn't delete anything. Yes, I know it has to be an estimate at some level, they seem to think.. (I just want a "Gas gauge")


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

This kind of existed when the Roamio was released, but it was buggy so they took it away in the first update. Looks like it's back. :up:

Now we just need an option for all shows to auto pad by 1 minute on either end, as long as there is no conflict, and one of my longest requested features will have been fulfilled.

Next is user profiles.


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## Sixto (Sep 16, 2005)

Dan203 said:


> This kind of existed when the Roamio was released, but it was buggy so they took it away in the first update. Looks like it's back. :up:
> 
> Now we just need an option for all shows to auto pad by 1 minute on either end, as long as there is no conflict, and one of my longest requested features will have been fulfilled.
> 
> Next is user profiles.


Same here, just tested it, it seems to work.


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## lpwcomp (May 6, 2002)

In addition to the previously reported issues, I've got one or two others. At least some of the time, Ive seen a "glitch" in the second recording at the point where the overlap ends.

The other problem that is possibly caused by the implementation is the previously reported elsewhere problem of getting two entries in the to do list when you change the padding of an overlapping recording.


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## keithg1964 (Feb 2, 2006)

Is this for only the Roamio, or is it for the Premieres also?


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## lpwcomp (May 6, 2002)

keithg1964 said:


> Is this for only the Roamio, or is it for the Premieres also?


I saw it on one of my Premieres. I didn't even *have *a Roamio until Wednesday.


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## tomhorsley (Jul 22, 2010)

I'll stick with "incredibly poor" as well, since I always seem to be left with glitches in the 2nd recording at the end of the overlap time. I don't suppose there is a mysterious backdoor key sequence to disable this and just use two tuners? With all the useful things TiVo could be working on, I can't believe they'd waste time on this now that they have 6 tuners. Someone needs to prioritize better at TiVo.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

I had a recording the other night that was missing the beginning where it overlapped with the previous show. Like the copy routine failed. (I have clipping turned off, so there is no way that caused the problem) They really should work out the bugs with this feature before unleashing it on us.


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## MHunter1 (Oct 11, 2007)

Dan203 said:


> They really should work out the bugs with this feature before unleashing it on us.


Is this why the To Do list on my XL4 occasionally shows five overlapping programs?


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## kbmb (Jun 22, 2004)

Dan203 said:


> I had a recording the other night that was missing the beginning where it overlapped with the previous show. Like the copy routine failed. (I have clipping turned off, so there is no way that caused the problem) They really should work out the bugs with this feature before unleashing it on us.


It was taken out.....because we all tested and it didn't work for a while. I'm guessing maybe it snuck back in in one of those quick builds they released.

Or at least I want to hope they would be smart enough with all the reports .....and I know they know, I emailed Margret about it and she acknowledged.

-Kevin


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

MHunter1 said:


> Is this why the To Do list on my XL4 occasionally shows five overlapping programs?


I don't think so. That looks like a scheduling bug. We're talking about minor overlaps caused by padding of back to back recordings on the same channel. That is actually 5 different shows, on 5 different networks, all scheduled for the same time slot.


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

lpwcomp said:


> In addition to the previously reported issues, I've got one or two others. At least some of the time, Ive seen a "glitch" in the second recording at the point where the overlap ends.


I mentioned this in another thread yesterday, but I swear people were talking about it a few weeks ago.. yet I can't find that reference.

Have you reported it to Tivo directly?


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## kbmb (Jun 22, 2004)

mattack said:


> I mentioned this in another thread yesterday, but I swear people were talking about it a few weeks ago.. yet I can't find that reference.
> 
> Have you reported it to Tivo directly?


Here's the old thread on it:
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=508756

And yes....Tivo is well aware of it. Way back with that initial thread I emailed Margret at Tivo and made them aware.

Margret even mentions around 12/20 that it will be resolved in the next update. What we don't know is will they just turn the buggy feature off again? Or really fix it?

-Kevin


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## lpwcomp (May 6, 2002)

I think that when it was first reported in September, the feature was only on the Roamio models. Then the feature was disabled. Then the latest release re-implemented it and added it to the Premieres but the problems were still there.

The good news is that the "glitch" is minor and it doesn't seem to prevent transfers to the computer. Still annoying though.


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## Rodney (Jan 26, 2002)

Dan203 said:


> I had a recording the other night that was missing the beginning where it overlapped with the previous show. Like the copy routine failed. (I have clipping turned off, so there is no way that caused the problem) They really should work out the bugs with this feature before unleashing it on us.


I have the same issues. the second recording is blank for the overlap period, then starts from that point to the end.

I think the idea of using the same tuner is a fine one, but the implementation definitely needs work.

-Rodney


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## lpwcomp (May 6, 2002)

Rodney said:


> I have the same issues. the second recording is blank for the overlap period, then starts from that point to the end.
> 
> I think the idea of using the same tuner is a fine one, but the implementation definitely needs work.
> 
> -Rodney


The problems we seeing are exactly why I did not want TiVo doing something like this until they fixed their deeply flawed s/w development process.

The way this feature is working smacks of a "quick & dirty" solution.


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## kbmb (Jun 22, 2004)

I'm still getting the glitching on back to back recordings.....about 1 minute in and it's driving us nuts.

Tivo really needs to turn this off until it's proven ready in beta.

-Kevin


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## L David Matheny (Jan 29, 2011)

kbmb said:


> I'm still getting the glitching on back to back recordings.....about 1 minute in and it's driving us nuts.
> 
> Tivo really needs to turn this off until it's proven ready in beta.
> 
> -Kevin


TiVo's programmers probably need to move the overlap block duplication code to a lower priority background task where it won't cause glitches in the main recording task. Or maybe they could just allocate more video buffer space to the recording tasks. Has anyone ever determined that the Roamio has more RAM than the Premiere?


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## keithg1964 (Feb 2, 2006)

I had the NFL game scheduled to record an hour long, then I had 60 Minutes to also record an hour long. It recorded the game fine with the hour extra, but totally ignored 60 minutes show. Most of 60 Minutes was in the hour padding. In the history it says did not record because it was not in the guide. I tried it prior with a short overlap, but I guess the length of the padding caused the issue. The two recordings were scheduled back-to-back. Yes I know that I could have modified one to prevent the overlap, but was interested to test the new feature.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

I've seen that issue reported by someone else. I think astrohip reported that behavior in the Premiere forum. Obviously this code isn't working right with large pads that overlap entire shows.


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## lpwcomp (May 6, 2002)

keithg1964 said:


> I had the NFL game scheduled to record an hour long, then I had 60 Minutes to also record an hour long. It recorded the game fine with the hour extra, but totally ignored 60 minutes show. Most of 60 Minutes was in the hour padding. In the history it says did not record because it was not in the guide. I tried it prior with a short overlap, but I guess the length of the padding caused the issue. The two recordings were scheduled back-to-back.


I had the same issue with the animated FOX stuff on Sunday. My SPs have padding in them ( 1 minute leading and 30 minutes trailing for "The Simpsons" and "Family Guy" and 1 min leading, 1 hour trailing for "American Dad". It did not record "American Dad" at all ("No Longer in Guide")



keithg1964 said:


> Yes I know that I could have modified one to prevent the overlap, but was interested to test the new feature.


Probably wouldn't have helped. Since FOX had the early game, I reduced the trailing padding. All it did was create two blank entries in the ToDo list and leave the existing padding in place.


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## lpwcomp (May 6, 2002)

I have started a thread on the tivo.com forum for scheduler problems. (I spelled scheduler wrong over there. )


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## astrohip (Jan 7, 2003)

Dan203 said:


> I've seen that issue reported by someone else. I think astrohip reported that behavior in the Premiere forum. Obviously this code isn't working right with large pads that overlap entire shows.


Good memory! I've discovered any time a padding completely overlaps the next show on the same channel, that next show does not get recorded. The only reason I'm not ballistic is it's recorded as part of the overlap, so I can just FF to find it.

But still... fix this!


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## Direwolf14 (May 25, 2008)

astrohip said:


> Good memory! I've discovered any time a padding completely overlaps the next show on the same channel, that next show does not get recorded. The only reason I'm not ballistic is it's recorded as part of the overlap, so I can just FF to find it.
> 
> But still... fix this!


Unfortunately, sometimes the next show will not record even with a small overlap (no longer in guide message). This issue was fixed for a short time and then re-introduced in 20.3.8, which is the most annoying part. Here is one of the original threads from October discussing the issue:

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=509715


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

astrohip said:


> Good memory! I've discovered any time a padding completely overlaps the next show on the same channel, that next show does not get recorded. The only reason I'm not ballistic is it's recorded as part of the overlap, so I can just FF to find it.
> 
> But still... fix this!


So you told Tivo about this, RIIIIGHT?


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## lpwcomp (May 6, 2002)

astrohip said:


> Good memory! I've discovered any time a padding completely overlaps the next show on the same channel, that next show does not get recorded. The only reason I'm not ballistic is it's recorded as part of the overlap, so I can just FF to find it.
> 
> But still... fix this!


If the padding contains the entire second show, then most likely the padding wasn't necessary. This is rarely the case.


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## akaussie (Aug 18, 2010)

I emailed Margret about this issue yesterday. Her and I had emailed about the issue back in early October when it first showed up. I'll share if there's anything newsworthy.


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## kturcotte (Dec 9, 2002)

Wish they'd get this implemented, and correctly! Directv has had this feature for years. Extremely useful on Sunday nights! I record all shows on Fox's Animation Domination, and because of football, tell each show to record an extra 3 hours. On Directv's DVRs, all 5 shows can be recording at the same time and it's only using 1 tuner, leaving the other 4 free for other shows.


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## sbiller (May 10, 2002)

> - turned off the troublesome "overlapping recordings" behavior


http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=516208


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