Bug in advanced scheduling

Channels DVR Server Troubleshooting
#1

(Windows, Latest Beta) When I look at DVR-> Schedule, I see the following:

The People's Court
Season 25, Episode 45
"Dessert Disaster."
2:00 PM
1 hr 1 min

However, this should NOT be scheduled because, under:
Schedule -> The The People's Court -> Advanced

I have: "Time EXCLUDES 2:00 PM"

Is this a bug, or am I misunderstanding what "Time EXCLUDES 2:00 PM"
is supposed to do?

#2

If you pause the past does it go away

If you resume the pass does it come back

#3

Pause makes it go away.
Resume brings it back.

#4

What kind of padding do you have? Does it start at 2:01 or 1:59 perhaps?

You can try "Time EXCLUDES 2PM" which will match 2:XXPM

#5

Padding: "None" before, 30 seconds after.

Bug solved!

"Time EXCLUDES 2:00PM" excludes the show.
"Time EXCLUDES 2:00 PM" Does not exclude and gives no error message.

3 Likes
#6

I think this is because in Go (the language the DVR is written in), if AM/PM are used to specify a time, it must immediately follow the time without a space. (You can also use 24-hour time with h appended; in your case 2:00PM == 14h.)

See also: Time.Format

#7

I was chief software developer with a product used by a highly diverse group of users. What made our product so much better than all the others was the way we responded to situations like this.

No matter how much you try to anticipate what stupid things users could type in to produce unwanted results, they continue to do things that make sense to them, but you never could have anticipated when you wrote the code.

When you get a report like this, you can explain to the person how they should be entering data to get the desired result. That person will likely not make this mistake again.However, there are still thousands of other users out there, some of whom will make the same exact mistake.

Our solution was to do one of two things.

  1. Reformat the data to accomplish what they obviously wanted to accomplish.
  2. Give a meaningful error message and force them to enter it correctly.

Over time, this method produces a better product, reduces support time, and improves the user experience.

#8

I wasn't saying "You're doing it wrong; do it this way"; I was trying to offer an explanation for why the expected behavior did not work. And for all I know, I am incorrect in my assumption, because I am not the author of the software.