Series Link on Combo Box's

athlone573

Hi
I have a branded freesat box on which series link works very well, even when episodes are irregularly spaced.

I am vaguely thinking of getting a combo box such as the zgemma. How well does series link work - on UK and on Irish channels?

I'm thinking of e.g. Normal People or Smother where you had the main episodes on one day and a set of repeats on another day, is it smart enough to link just one set together?

Presumably there is some magic to build/download an EPG and I don't need to know the technical details but how well does it work in practice?

Atlantic Dawn

It doesn't work in the same way, basically if offers repeat recording of the same channel, same time slot and you can choose it to be weekly, daily, mon-fri. If the broadcast times adjust by say 5 mins early or late you will miss out on that proportion of the recording, it doesn't auto-update.

athlone573

Thanks

That's not great now is it. I may stick with the Freesat and RTE player. Are all the images and plugins like that? (I know there are hundreds of pages of threads about them but unfortunately I haven't the patience!)

Atlantic Dawn

athlone573 wrote: »

Thanks

That's not great now is it. I may stick with the Freesat and RTE player. Are all the images and plugins like that? (I know there are hundreds of pages of threads about them but unfortunately I haven't the patience!)

That's with the openATV setup but I think unless you have official Saorview or Freesat that's all will be offered.

Gerry Wicklow

@athlone573
Series linking on combo boxes is known as autotimers and are based on keyword searches. Used correctly they are very very powerful tools. The basic quickie default setting will try to match the exact same name, on the same channel, on the same day, around the same time. However, you can tweak the settings into any combination you like to widen the parameters. Part of the problem for recording failures is that the listings don't always have the exact same name. E.G. I recently almost missed an RTÉ show because it was listed as "Iarnród Edna"
With a bit of forethought you can create powerful timers. One example I often use is "Great British Bake Off". If you disable the day and exact match setting, you can then record the main show AND the "Extra Bits" show using the same autotimer. If you are a gluten for more you could also disable the channel setting and then get all the old repeats on the lesser channels too. You can also vary the time range, specify certain bouquets only etc etc the range of choices is huge and easily set with a simple tick box in most cases.

Johnboy1951

athlone573 wrote: »

Thanks

That's not great now is it. I may stick with the Freesat and RTE player. Are all the images and plugins like that? (I know there are hundreds of pages of threads about them but unfortunately I haven't the patience!)

IMO if you do not have the patience to read the information in the relevant threads then you are much better off sticking with a Freesat setup as any alternative will require learning and patience to set it up properly.

Gerry Wicklow

Atlantic Dawn wrote: »

It doesn't work in the same way, basically if offers repeat recording of the same channel, same time slot and you can choose it to be weekly, daily, mon-fri. If the broadcast times adjust by say 5 mins early or late you will miss out on that proportion of the recording, it doesn't auto-update.

I have an autotimer set to record the lunchtime news on RTÉ1 every Sunday for the farming weather. It is seldom on at the same time each week and the length also varies. It is easy to set it for these conditions.
I tried to upload a screenshot but boards is broken again.

sligojoek

Gerry Wicklow wrote: »

I have an autotimer set to record the lunchtime news on RTÉ1 every Sunday for the farming weather. It is seldom on at the same time each week and the length also varies. It is easy to set it for these conditions.
I tried to upload a screenshot but boards is broken again.

Having trouble with my EPG. I tried to describe it and upload screenshots. I thought the problem was with me.

I'll leave it till tomorrow

andy1249

Atlantic Dawn wrote: »

It doesn't work in the same way, basically if offers repeat recording of the same channel, same time slot and you can choose it to be weekly, daily, mon-fri. If the broadcast times adjust by say 5 mins early or late you will miss out on that proportion of the recording, it doesn't auto-update.

Freesat boxes ( I had the 1000s for years ) use the CRID system.
This is as prone to misses and faults as the autotimer system on linux boxes.

CRID relies on the broadcaster to keep the identifiers up to date , if they don't , then you get nonsense recordings ,partial recordings or in the event of over runs ( extra time in football final for example ) completely wrong recordings.

So CRID has its faults as well , I found that only the HD channels are properly maintained , whereas plus 1 channels and SD channels are very poorly maintained and recordings are often faulty from these channels.

With Autotimer , at least its me thats in charge , and I can correct it if its wrong , there is still the chance of event overruns being missed and causing trouble , but thats the same with both systems.

Ive been on a Tiviar running openvix for about 5 years and much prefer autotimer , it rarely misses once its setup properly , and the only time it has missed is because of one off event EPG disruptors like emergency covid briefings etc.
Autotimer will always record what the EPG says , and with these events , the EPG is rarely updated in advance. ( CRID system is the same )

Atlantic Dawn

I will have to give the Autotimer a try, have never used it.

Gerry Wicklow

There are two ways of setting autotimers.
1. The simplest is by pressing a coloured button in the EPG while you have the desired program highlighted. (button colour varies between images). This will bring up a set of default values which suit most users. You simply click OK and you're done. Personally I always disable "Exact Match" in case of EPG typos.



2. Using WEBIF you have far more control. I mentioned earlier a simple one I use to record RTÉ news but only lunchtime on Sunday. The exact start time and duration varies quite a lot but this has always worked for me. Rather than typing in everything, use the above method to create the autotimer and then refine it in WEBIF.

lgs 4

Zgemma H7S EPG recording software (series link) loves telling me when programs clash. It disables the clashing program. The benefit I found the series link works on RTE Radio 1 programs. Which, did not work on the Saorview approved box. (Walker)

Gerry Wicklow

lgs 4 wrote: »

Zgemma H7S EPG recording software (series link) loves telling me when programs clash. It disables the clashing program. The benefit I found the series link works on RTE Radio 1 programs. Which, did not work on the Saorview approved box. (Walker)

Clashes should only arise if you are trying to record 3 or 4 things at once or one of your tuners is not configured correctly.

athlone573

lgs 4 wrote: »

Zgemma H7S EPG recording software (series link) loves telling me when programs clash. It disables the clashing program. The benefit I found the series link works on RTE Radio 1 programs. Which, did not work on the Saorview approved box. (Walker)

That's great! What image or plugin (bouquet?) is that?

lgs 4

Gerry Wicklow wrote: »

Clashes should only arise if you are trying to record 3 or 4 things at once or one of your tuners is not configured correctly.

It happens when I have forgotten what recordings I have already set up.:)

lgs 4

athlone573 wrote: »

That's great! What image or plugin (bouquet?) is that?

The timer has no name . Here is the image to look for in the plugins

Gerry Wicklow

athlone573 wrote: »

That's great! What image or plugin (bouquet?) is that?

AFAIK its built into all enigma images these days. In olden times it could be downloaded simply as "autotimer"

NewClareman

athlone573 wrote: »

I am vaguely thinking of getting a combo box such as the zgemma. How well does series link work - on UK and on Irish channels?

Surprisingly well, actually. It does auto adjust, depending on how it is configured. How frequently it adjusts depends on the configuration, it can range from hourly to weekly. Autotimer searches for the programme name, within a configurable time window, typically 3 hours. Say I set an Autotimer for 'Newsnight', which is shown on the EPG at 10:30. If the window is configured for three hours, It will search the EPG every night to look for Newsnight between 9:00 and 00:00. If the programme time has changed, it adjusts accordingly.

When you set an Autotimer from the EPG it can be configured that it just uses defaults and works the same way as series link. I have used this approach for a while and it rarely causes an issue. Having to confirm defaults, as shown earlier was a PITA, and failed the 'Wifey Test'. One niggle is that, if you use it this way,it never stops - I.e it will continue searching for Newsnight, every time it runs, until the timer is deleted manually.

NewClareman

Gerry Wicklow wrote: »

AFAIK its built into all enigma images these days. In olden times it could be downloaded simply as "autotimer"

It's not built in to ATV, it has to be downloaded.

Gerry Wicklow

NewClareman wrote: »

It's not built in to ATV, it has to be downloaded.

Ah righto. But it's a simple install from the plugins menu anyway.

Puggy

I recently got a ZGemma H7s with the latest Openvix image. Only learning how to use it, but AutoTimers works as well as series link did on Sky box. It’s not perfect, tried to record reruns of Motherland on BBC2. They were broadcast back to back over a few nights nights from about 23:30 till 01:30 . So it didn’t record them all. Other than that, everything else has worked fine.

Like someone else mentioned, plenty of things are now built into Openvix, for example collections, where recordings are sorted into folders. I spent ages looking for a plugin to do this, but it’s already in Openvix latest image.

NewClareman

Gerry Wicklow wrote: »

AFAIK its built into all enigma images these days. In olden times it could be downloaded simply as "autotimer"

NewClareman wrote: »

It's not built in to ATV, it has to be downloaded.

Gerry Wicklow wrote: »

Ah righto. But it's a simple install from the plugins menu anyway.

Installs of OpenATV are getting less and less simple. It appears to be targeted specifically at the German market, with little allowance for other users. If I was starting out again I'd try OpenVix, but that horse is long bolted.

NewClareman

Puggy wrote: »

I recently got a ZGemma H7s with the latest Openvix image. Only learning how to use it, but AutoTimers works as well as series link did on Sky box. It’s not perfect, tried to record reruns of Motherland on BBC2. They were broadcast back to back over a few nights nights from about 23:30 till 01:30 . So it didn’t record them all. Other than that, everything else has worked fine.

You can edit an Autotimer to record on multiple week days. You can also set a maximum number of recordings. There is substantial help built in, accessed from the menu.

Gerry Wicklow

NewClareman wrote: »

Installs of OpenATV are getting less and less simple. It appears to be targeted specifically at the German market, with little allowance for other users. If I was starting out again I'd try OpenVix, but that horse is long bolted.

If you switched over to vix you should be able to import your backups for the bulk of your settings, bouquets etc. AFAIK they use different folders for the backups but YOU would be well able to investigate and adjust.;)
I used to be a ATV fanboy but gave up on it cos they broke too many things

dam099

Gerry Wicklow wrote: »

If you switched over to vix you should be able to import your backups for the bulk of your settings, bouquets etc. AFAIK they use different folders for the backups but YOU would be well able to investigate and adjust.;)
I used to be a ATV fanboy but gave up on it cos they broke too many things

Plus if you have a multiboot box you could try Vix in a different slot for a while while keeping the existing install while you evaluate.

athlone573

Just to say thanks all, you really are a mine of useful information

There isn't much worth watching during the summer so I am holding off for now.

Johnboy1951

athlone573 wrote: »

Just to say thanks all, you really are a mine of useful information

There isn't much worth watching during the summer so I am holding off for now.

I would think that the time of least use and dependency on something new is the correct time to set it up.

Give yourself a chance to get familiar with everything before it is absolutely needed.

NewClareman

Gerry Wicklow wrote: »

If you switched over to vix you should be able to import your backups for the bulk of your settings, bouquets etc. AFAIK they use different folders for the backups but YOU would be well able to investigate and adjust.;)
I used to be a ATV fanboy but gave up on it cos they broke too many things

Thanks for the vote of confidence.

What I have meets my needs, so I'll stick with it for now.
(I did have a quick look at OpenVix a few months ago, but it would have taken a bit of work.)