Scheduled recordings and guide

[misterp]

Hi all,

Hopefully this is the right section, but Mods please feel free to move to the EPG if you think its more appropriate there.

My VMC has been pretty good all round, but there was one question Ive been meaning to ask with regards to scheduled programs and the guide.

The scenario is that you set up the guide, everything works, so you set up a few series recordings (i.e House/NCIS etc) all works fine and the guide, without any user intervention picks up the re-occurance of each show.

Now, guide messes up, so you re-setup the guide (as before using the same epg service)
Scheduled recordings are still listed in the 'series' list, but no upcoming showings.
So, go to the guide, find 'House' or 'NCIS' (exactly the same as before, spelling etc), check that is has no red dot/double red dot next to it and hit record. VMC reports "already part of a series recording, do you want to add it now?", you hit yes, the red dot appears and all is OK....until you realise none of the scheduled showings have the double red dot next to them, but all bring up the same pop-up??
If left, they dont record.

Is there anyway of backing up/restoring so that all the scheduled recordings come back, and are scheduled to record if the guide messes up?
I know there is the recording.xml file(?) but what does this do?
its almost as though the guide/ehrec service needs to be refreshed from the scheduled recordings?

Anyone provide any clues as to whats the way to ensure your scheduled recordings come back after a rebuild/re-setup of the guide?

Cheers

[logifuse]

One of the EPG experts (someone like Impact) will give you the specifics on how it works, but I think what happens when you rerun the guide setup (& rescan), the channels you end up with have deep down different technical identities to the previous versions, so even though the channel that the scheduled recording is meant to use is there, the guide or scheduling engine doesn't see it as the same channel.

The easiest way around it is to change the series settings to record from any channel, but then that means you might get the SD version instead of the HD version.

Doing series recordings via keyword will work too, but again you might get SD instead of HD.

I think that exporting & re-importing recording.xml will result in the same problems.

I don't know a way around it.

Justin

[misterp]

Thanks for the reply Justin,

Makes 100% sense what you say.

I remember realising some while ago that alot of VMC/MCE is centred around the guide, so Id guess it would be something like you say.

Luckily I havent had to re-scan for a while, so everythings been stable, but recently NCIS has returned and 'No.1' has asked questions about why its not recording.
I'll set them up again, and blame Microsoft!

Cheers

[justlynden]

When you rescan, the channels get new internal ids, and since these are used as the service id in the Recordings.xml file (some of) your scheduled recordings get stuffed up.

There is a way around it by editing the C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\eHome\EPG\prefs\prefs.xml file prior to creating the recordings in the first place, but it is more hassle than it is worth because you have to re-fix the Prefs.xml file after doing the rescan and remapping guide channels anyway.

The easiest way is to delete all your series recordings and recreate them from scratch, which also has the added advantage of cleaning out the old series that aren't of use any more.

[DDH]

This information on how to edit in the specific IDs may also help. Instead of any channel (hence getting HD and SD versions at differnt schedule times)