What is the best way to schedule 4 shows in a row that are back to back in time? Use the program guide or set up a manual schedule?

For example, tonight I set Myth to record all the shows from 7-9pm on Fox and it only got the first one. The other 3 failed to record.
I used the program guide to schedule each show.

7:00-7:30 ch 9-2
7:30-8:00 ch 9-1 (hoping to see Malcom in HDTV)
8:00-8:30 ch 9-2
8:30-9:00 ch 9-2

Was the switching of channels at 7:30 the problem?

Since most of the Sunday night lineup is in SD I chose ch 9-2 to get a full screen recording rather than the SD postage stamp on 9-1.

Should I have used the manual recording function and scheduled a block from 7-9pm on ch 9-2?

Eric

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KnoppMyth R5.5, Asus A8N-VM CSM (nvidia 6150 onboard video), AMD Athlon 64 dual-core 4200+, two 1GB sticks DDR 400, HD-3000 HDTV card, PVR-150 card, Iguanaworks RS-232 IR receiver/transmitter, Pioneer DVR-110 DVD burner

When you say they failed to record, what did the guide, or the "upcoming recordings" screens say?
Often the guide will say "not recording", or the upcoming page will list a conflict.

The other thing to check (though it rarely reveals any scheduling problems) is the backend log.
e.g. it will reveal running out of space, or accidentally leaving it watching LiveTV at the same time.

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| Nigel Pearson, nigel.pearson.au@gmail.com
| "Things you own end up owning you" - Tyler, Fight Club

Well, after the time period was over, I went to watch the shows and all 4 were shown in the recorded programs window. Only the 7:00pm show had a thumnail picture of the content. Then other 3 programs had a black thumnail picture and the message said the file could not be found. I used Samba and looked into the \myth\pretty directory and saw the 3 missing shows and their filesize was 0 . The 7:00pm show was there and had a size around 1GB - reasonable size.

I have the recording preferences set to record 1 minute early. Would this cause an overlap/conflict?
How does Mythtv deal with overlap? Does it choose 1 show over the other based on the importance rank you assign? All the shows were set to the same level of importance.

If this overlap was the cause, I would guess that I can't start recordings early - not even by 1 second - if they are back to back.



The hard drive is not full - 30GB left. Live TV was not running.

Eric

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KnoppMyth R5.5, Asus A8N-VM CSM (nvidia 6150 onboard video), AMD Athlon 64 dual-core 4200+, two 1GB sticks DDR 400, HD-3000 HDTV card, PVR-150 card, Iguanaworks RS-232 IR receiver/transmitter, Pioneer DVR-110 DVD burner

I have seen a problem similiar to this happen when using the Motorola DCT-6200 via firewire. Myth thinks it has recorded the show, but the file is 0-length. I see you are using the HD3000 card. I think I read somewhere that the 0-length file problem can happen with the HD-3000 if you aren't getting a strong signal. Perhaps this is the issue?

Marc

Hi. I appreciate the suggestion.

The DTV signal is strong - 95% on most DTV channels. I have a rooftop VHF-UHF tv antenna that is only 15 miles from the tv transmitters.

My hunch is that I made an error in my scheduling settings, etc.

Eric

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KnoppMyth R5.5, Asus A8N-VM CSM (nvidia 6150 onboard video), AMD Athlon 64 dual-core 4200+, two 1GB sticks DDR 400, HD-3000 HDTV card, PVR-150 card, Iguanaworks RS-232 IR receiver/transmitter, Pioneer DVR-110 DVD burner

If you have overlap set (usually in my case recording past the end of a recording) this can cause the second not to be recorded. But in your example I would have expected that to result in the 1st and 3rd shows being recorded.

Its clear that Myth thinks it has recorded all the shows because they are all showing up as recorded, even though nothing is there. So I would look for problems in logs indicating why blank recordings were generated. In the backend logs you should see messages like started recording XYZ, stopped recording XYS, started recording ABC etc, with a timestamp. That will confirm if the backend thinks it has recorded them all. If it encountered errors they may be there or in some of the other logs, check and see for something that looks wrong around the times of those recordings.

At a guess, you may have a channel switching/tuning problem where Myth thinks it has tuned in to a channel but records nothing. Can you switch to and fro between all these channels OK in live tv?

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HP VL400 (PIII 866), Skystar2 2.6D, PVR350, Nvidia FX5200, 384MB, 200GB, KnoppMyth R5.5

Over the weekend I learned that there is a bug with the apt-get procedure that has been known about and talked about since August 2005 - but never fixed.
(The sources.list file sends apt-get off to get files from the unstable file folders on the various servers. Thus using apt-get can blow up your whole install and require a complete reload to fix.)
I had used apt-get to install the Firefox web browser when I set up my machine a month ago. Now, I wonder if this and my other unknown problems have been caused by the unfixed apt-get bug all along???

To test my hunch, I have unplugged hard drive1 put a new hard drive into the box to do a clean install from scratch. I have not used apt-get for anything. So far, my channel changing problems seem to be gone.

Next, I'll try to schedule back to back recordings and see if this 0 byte recording problem was also apt-get corruption.

Eric

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KnoppMyth R5.5, Asus A8N-VM CSM (nvidia 6150 onboard video), AMD Athlon 64 dual-core 4200+, two 1GB sticks DDR 400, HD-3000 HDTV card, PVR-150 card, Iguanaworks RS-232 IR receiver/transmitter, Pioneer DVR-110 DVD burner

After experimenting with a from-scratch system reload, I think the scheduing bugs I was detailing above were caused by the apt-get bug.

I reinstalled the R5B7 cd same as before but did NOT use apt-get for anything this time.

As before, I set the degault recording settings to start 30 seconds early and finish 30 seconds late. After setting 4 shows in a row back to back, all recorded fine.

So, BEWARE using apt-get in KnoppMyth. The sources.list file embedded in the KnoppMyth install cd sends you to unstable file sources that will blow up your installation and require reinstall to fix!

Good luck!
Eric

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KnoppMyth R5.5, Asus A8N-VM CSM (nvidia 6150 onboard video), AMD Athlon 64 dual-core 4200+, two 1GB sticks DDR 400, HD-3000 HDTV card, PVR-150 card, Iguanaworks RS-232 IR receiver/transmitter, Pioneer DVR-110 DVD burner