Just beginning to introduce the Channels DVR setup to the family and not off to a good start. I'm recording a lot of stuff to build up a library of episodes on a variety of shows. The first show we went to watch episode of was Big City Green, from Disney via TVE on YTTV. Two of the four episodes we pulled up were completely different shows. How would I go about diagnosing this. I'll try to find time to go through and test recordings on different channels to see if its just this channel or show, or if its bigger. Diagnostic steps would be appreciated.
Most likely the guide data is wrong, but a couple basic things to check.
Channels DVR relies on your DVR computer clock. Is it set to the right time zone and correct time.
Check the channel the bad recordings came from in the guide and see if the guide is accurate.
The clock on the computer has the right time and the right time zone. Quick scan of the guide data seems to match what YTTV is showing for Disney for today.
I have the pass set to record and keep all episodes. I expect I can just delete the bad episodes and it will replace them eventually, right?
Is this a common problem? I wouldn't have expected this on a channel like Disney which the guide should be pretty stable and widely used for.
You would have to set the pass to Re-record deleted episodes, otherwise it won't record the same episode again.
OK, that is good to know.
Since Big City Greens airs on 4 different TVE Disney channels, you'll want to determine which channel the bad recordings came from.
You can determine which channel a program was recorded from by viewing it in the DVR web UI under recordings
or examining the DVR log entry
2020/07/08 18:00:00.011820 [DVR] Starting job 1594256400-314 Sea Monsters on ch=[756]
2020/07/08 18:00:00.581335 [TNR] Opened connection to 1323AADB/0 for ch756 SCIHD
2020/07/08 18:00:00.581734 [DVR] Recording for job 1594256400-314 from 1323AADB ch756 into "TV/Sea Monsters/Sea Monsters S02E12 US Coast Guard Superships 2020-07-08-1800.mpg" for 2h0m29.988002624s
OK, it is the Disney channel that had the bad recordings. But digging a little deeper, I'm not sure its the wrong show. In one case there was the end of another show that went about 6 minutes and then BCG started, although I have no idea if its the right episode. All of the ones I checked eventually showed some BCG. This channel is unfortunately one that has weird timings... shows starting at 11:15, 5:30, 3:40, etc. Maybe its just that the channel is mucked up. YTTV recordings don't seem to have this issue with the start times being off I don't think. Maybe I just picked the wrong show to introduce Channels to the family with.
TVE shows start anywhere from 30-60 seconds late and end 30-60 seconds late.
I always end pad my TVE recording for 3 minutes (until the devs add 2 minutes).
OK, good to know. In this case the recording is starting early on these.
What I meant is if the guide says the show starts at Noon, it actually starts somewhere between 12:00:30 PM and 12:01:00 PM.
ok, gotcha. So I should set the TVE recordings to start 2 minutes late. These are just later than that.
My DVR Mac Mini is about 30 seconds behind my WIndows PC, and in sync with my iPhone. So they are all close. I don't think that's my problem here, but will look into time.is
Just checked it and my Mac Mini is 0.3 seconds behind time.is!
Looks like you picked the wrong channel to show off Channels DVR!
You had me curious, so I set a test recording for the Big City Greens episode at 3:40pm on channel 6121 DISNEYP and added 15 minutes end padding.
I also set a manual recording for it on my cable TiVo from 3:40-4:20pm.
Both actually started almost 12 minutes late and ended 10 minutes late.
So instead of running from 3:40-4:05pm, BCG went from 3:51-4:15pm.
Interesting. I did check the YTTV Guide data vs. Channels DVR for the upcoming schedule and they are the same times, so seems like BCG is just not running according to their schedule. I did pick a bad one to use! Thanks for the investigative work.
Kids programming has so many commercials. Sponge Bob consistently has 6-7 minutes of commercials before the 30 minute show starts on every episode. We've always recorded it as normal but just FF to 6 minutes in to start. That is pretty ridiculous.
Just to circle back on this, I can confirm that the recordings native in YTTV were just as "off" as the ones in Channels DVR. Another show running for 5 minutes after recording started before the real show started, and then cut off before the end. Disney and YTTV must just be out of sync somehow.