v17 Series timer not working since 17.1
#1
EDIT: ugh, never mind.

I've not set any PVR series links for a while but when I tried last night I found nothing was happening. I did recently jump onto a nightly build because DVBLogic have said they pushed a new version of their addon which is only in the nightlies. I have also tested with the original 17.1 release though and it's not working there either. If I roll back to 17.0, it works again.

Here are the logs:

17.0 - Working
17.1 - Not Working
17.1 nightly - Not Working

In each test, I'm trying to add a series link for 'Masterchef' on BBC One HD. For 17.0, a timer appeared in the Kodi EPG and the DVBLink web interface. With 17.1 and the latest nightly, no timer icon in the EPG and nothing on the backend. I did try clearing my guide data on each version to no avail.

edit: I just noticed something when doing some cleaning up of series links in the DVBLink web interface - the Kodi 17.1+ addon is actually creating something but it's not a valid timer rule. So in the list of timers on the backend, there is an entry created for 'Masterchef', it says it's a series timer but it doesn't actually do anything i.e. it sets no individual timers. Very odd. I've created a thread on the DVBLogic forum because I can't see this being a Kodi issue. I've said that before though and it's turned out to be so that means nothing Big Grin
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#2
@ksooo

I've kind of figured this out now, maybe it is a Kodi issue after all, I can't quite tell.

I compared the little SQLite db DVBLink uses to track epg timers between a working series link and a none-working one and the only difference was the "series_new_only" flag. Upon further investigation I've found that in 17.1+ when I long press 'r' to bring up the series timer window, it always defaults to 'Record only new episodes'. In my case, I guess because Sky EPG data is lame, this ends up recording absolutely nothing. If I change this to "All episodes" the resulting series link works as expected.

The thing that makes me wonder if this is a Kodi bug is I already have the Prevent Duplicate Episodes (Settings -> Live TV -> Recording -> Prevent Duplicate Episodes) set to "Record all episodes" which you'd think would take precedence. I did try toggling this between the two options in case the GUI representation was mis-aligned with the actual setting but that didn't fix it, everything still defaults to "Record only new episodes" when I long press 'r'.
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#3
I've been using 17.1 ever since it was released and haven't found a problem with the series timers which I use all of the time. To check, I created a series timer for 'Masterchef' on BBC One HD and it scheduled episodes 7,8,9 and 10 of 25 with no problems. I know it isn't always helpful for someone to say that something works fine when you have a problem but it could possibly point to the problem being local rather than an issue with 17.1.
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#4
What does your series timer window default to for the 'Prevent Duplicate Episodes' option when you bring it up though? And more importantly, if you change that setting in the main Kodi settings (Settings -> Live TV -> Recording -> Prevent Duplicate Episodes), does that carry into the series record window or is it ignored? It may just be that your EPG data has the correct flags for new/repeat shows set and mine has nothing flagged as 'new'.
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#5
(2017-04-12, 17:25)beeswax Wrote: The thing that makes me wonder if this is a Kodi bug is I already have the Prevent Duplicate Episodes (Settings -> Live TV -> Recording -> Prevent Duplicate Episodes) set to "Record all episodes" which you'd think would take precedence.

This setting has no effect and has been removed from the next Kodi version 18.0.
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#6
Oh balls, yes that's it then, just found this which sort of explains it. So the global Kodi option doesn't work and DVBLink is now blindly setting "new only" for everything. We really need DVBLogic to make that user configurable then because anything I set as new-only doesn't record anything.
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#7
(2017-04-12, 17:38)beeswax Wrote: Oh balls, yes that's it then, just found this which sort of explains it. So the global Kodi option doesn't work and DVBLink is now blindly setting "new only" for everything. We really need DVBLogic to make that user configurable then because anything I set as new-only doesn't record anything.

If you check in the DVBLogic backend you can change the definition of 'New Only' schedules, I always set it to 'Previously not recorded' which works fine and doesn't rely on EPG flags.
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#8
Hm, I've checked that setting and I already have it on 'Previously not recorded'. This is really weird. I've jumped around in the guide a bit more and with other programmes, it's working OK without changing the default. But with some, Masterchef for example, I have to set the "Record all episodes" option otherwise I get nothing. I guess this comes down to DVBLink's interpretation of "Previously recorded". I don't recall ever having recorded a single episode of Masterchef though (which is why I chose it for this test) so why would I need to set the 'All Episodes' option?

The last 2 occasions I've seen the Mrs trying to set series links have been for shows I've never recorded before too and they didn't work either. At the time, I just accessed the web epg on my phone and did it from there but something's definitely up. All I know is that for whatever reason, I get reliable series linking with the duplicate option set to "All episodes" and inconsistent results with the new default.
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#9
If you are using the 'Previously not recorded' setting then the fact that I use Freeview and you use Sky should be irrelevant. Perhaps your DVBLogic database is screwed up?
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#10
I have played around a little with this.
It seems that indeed how series recording is handled depends highly on the epg information in the streams.

Certainly not an expert, but i think there's not any flag in my case (my provider is Ziggo), because it does not matter what i set the prevent duplicate recordings setting (@backend), it just is ignored.

In the end i opted to just have every episode of a series record en manually delete duplicates.
Not very tech-challenging but it works
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Series timer not working since 17.10