When a Series is not a Series?

Something is strange about the DIY Network "Building Off the Grid" shows.

Not really an issue with Channels DVR as far as I know, but it's a pain to record what I think of as episodes in a Series.

I would think it's a series called "Building Off the Grid", but each individual one (which I think of as a series episode) is considered a special, has it's own SeriesId and tmsId and there's no EpisodeTitle, the series and episode names are in the Title name, i.e. "Building Off the Grid: Hawaiian Hideaway".

If you search for "Building Off the Grid" you see each individual one as a special.

If you set a series pass for one of them it will record all upcoming instances of that Title name, probably because Channels DVR thinks that's the Series name?

As an example, try setting a series pass for the upcoming "Building Off the Grid: Hawaiian Hideaway"-SeriesID:16210205, or any other one. It will record every instance that comes up.

You can create an advanced pass in the WebUI for Title contains Building off the Grid, and Tag is New. (You may want to also set a channel number, so you don't reruns that may be marked as New on another/secondary channel.) This ought to work as a catchall for all of them.

(One thing I miss from Tvheadend that Channels has yet to implement are the plethora of options for creating recording rules.)

Thanks, good thought for a workaround, but my current situation works, just have to cancel each individual show "series pass" after it records, then look for new ones.

Problem is my DYI channel from Comcast is only SD (Standard Def), so I set the recording channel to Discovery-HD and they don't show as NEW when they re-air on Discovery-HD.

Guess this is an edge case and not sure if Channels DVR can do anything about it.

I could try setting a Title contains and limiting the channel to Discovery-HD, but I would still have to manually delete all the duplicate recordings, hmmm...

Still have a TiVo (used for streaming/recording cable DRM content), so will look into how that handles the issue this weekend, even though it uses RiVo (Rovi/TiVo) guide data which may be totally different than the Gracenote guide data that TiVo used before Rovi bought them.

RiVo (RoVi/TiVo) treats "Building Off the Grid" as a series, somewhat, and has a season 1 and episode numbers for some of the shows, others are not categorized. Still seems to be an edge case.

Oh well, guess it's up to the guide providers or the networks as to how they want to present it.
We just consume it...