I have noticed a weird problem with how TABLO works (and I think allowing selective recording of a show from specific channels/times could help) (but I also think the show recording selection algorithm needs some work)
Here is an example … Sesame Street 1 hour length which normally airs monday - friday at 10am locally … however in the mornings/afternoons they often show an “abbreviated” Sesame Street which is only 30 mins in length… The current logic that select shows to record can not differentiate between the “full 1 hour length” and the abbrivated “30 min” shows (the 1 hour version is the proper version) …
For now I have to manually go in every few days and “uncheck” the recording of the 30 min version and ensure the correct 1 hour version is set to record (which sometimes the selection logic will uncheck in favor of the 30 min version)
Thanks for bringing this up - I requested a long time ago that we be able to select recordings from a specific channel only for a show. It was acknowledged by Tablo.
The way Tablo records things is by show ID. The show ID is chosen by our guide data provider and remains constant until/if a show is cancelled or goes over some insane # of episodes. (The Today Show’s ID was changed last year for this reason…)
It’s obvious here that there isn’t a separate show ID for the 30 minute Sesame Streets and the 1 hour Sesame Streets but you’re right that we should have a way to easily differentiate between the two.
Not that, but I’ve seen where Motorweek is widescreen on one PBS channel and 4-sided letterboxed 480i widescreen on another. I removed that offending PBS channel from my lineup. And then removed Motorweek from my recordings as I can get to the PBS website for that show. That’s here in the Los Angeles area.
I can add to this that there was a show, can’t remember which one right now, but it got moved from one channel to another. My Tivo picked that up and continued recording.
Although I like the idea of selecting a particular channel it might make things more difficult in that type of situation. Especially if you didn’t know or just forgot
One issue I’ve seen (may not be likely if Show IDs are different) is where an English and French showing of the same TV show get picked up, e.g. NCIS Los Angeles in English on Global channel 6 and in French on channel 40 get picked up as the same show on different days. Both would get recorded. This was on my previous device and not Tablo. To avoid this I had to schedule “this channel, once per week” and that resolved it.
Another issue I ran into, again with Global, was the HD and SD broadcasts. Some times the scheduler would choose the SD broadcast instead of the HD one. To solve that I had to choose “HD” check box on the episode attributes. MythTV had amazing flexibility to deal with this type of thing, even to the point of starting and ending a SPECIFIC record early or late when you know that this always happened for that show.
An HD checkbox would be handy for recording or even viewing the guide. So many movies. Most of them SD, or worse, 4 sided letterboxed SD.
Also, knowing what channel a recording came from or is going to come from would be nice. Sometimes that information is there, some times not. If I keep getting junk SD, I could remove yet another channel. Or avoid recording from it in the first place.
The duplicate ID’s here are the source of the issue. The problem here is that it goes all the way back to the broadcaster. They send an ID to our guide data provider, which feeds to the Tablo, which is then looked at by the smart scheduling logic.
The problem is that the broadcaster isn’t differentiating between the condensed and full-length versions of the same episode.
We’re going to take a look at this, but it’s trickier than it sounds. I know we’ll get a few suggestions on looking at different parameters of the show (the length, for example) versus the ID, but it’s unfortunately not all that simple - there’s a lot built into the smart recording logic.
@ericgus To add onto what @TabloTV what was saying:
The duplicate ID's here are the source of the issue. The problem here is that it goes all the way back to the broadcaster. They send an ID to our guide data provider, which feeds to the Tablo, which is then looked at by the smart scheduling logic.
The problem is that the broadcaster isn't differentiating between the condensed and full-length versions of the same episode.
We're going to take a look at this, but it's trickier than it sounds. I know we'll get a few suggestions on looking at different parameters of the show (the length, for example) versus the ID, but it's unfortunately not all that simple - there's a lot built into the smart recording logic.
Oh no … I realize this is a complex issue … why I wanted to bring it to your attention given its complexity…
@ericgus Oh no! I didn’t mean to sound dismissive or anything, just that we can’t fix this one overnight is all! But yes, thanks for bringing it to our attention
@ericgus Oh no! I didn't mean to sound dismissive or anything, just that we can't fix this one overnight is all! But yes, thanks for bringing it to our attention :D
You didnt! … dont worry… its all good … I figured you guys would find this problem interesting.
The only really annoying aspect of this bug is when it opts to record the 30 min version over the 1hr version and skips the right 1hr version if I dont catch it ahead of time … thankfully they repeat so it hasn’t been a huge problem …
i believe the way tivo does this is to use more than one criteria by using a combination of showID and channel. they may be using HD/non-HD as a criterion as well, but i’m not sure. perhaps @TabloTV can follow this logic on an upcoming update.
of course, if the 30 minute show appears on the same channel as the hour show, it’s a whole different game. and to future-proof potential problems of this sort, additional criteria should be allowed for and implemented as the problem pops up.
so allow for showID, channel, resolution (ultra-hd is on the far horizon), episode number, show length, original date aired, rating level (the parental guideline type), live/non-live, etc.
this is quite a large list to implement. i’m not saying to implement all of this now, just to allow for it and add each criteria when a similiar problem pops up.
i believe the way tivo does this is to use more than one criteria by using a combination of showID and channel. they may be using HD/non-HD as a criterion as well, but i'm not sure. perhaps @TabloTV can follow this logic on an upcoming update.
of course, if the 30 minute show appears on the same channel as the hour show, it's a whole different game. and to future-proof potential problems of this sort, additional criteria should be allowed for and implemented as the problem pops up.
so allow for showID, channel, resolution (ultra-hd is on the far horizon), episode number, show length, original date aired, rating level (the parental guideline type), live/non-live, etc.
this is quite a large list to implement. i'm not saying to implement all of this now, just to allow for it and add each criteria when a similiar problem pops up.
In this case yes… the show is on the same channel just at a different time.
