[LehighBri]

Hi LehighBri,

Hopefully we have addressed the first issue you mention, whenever something occurs that affects data (recordings, timers, etc) we set a flag that will trigger each client on it's next "healthcheck" to the server, that it needs to refresh the appropriate data list. So a recording being scheduled by one client, or being completed by the server etc, should now trigger all clients to update their lists on the next healthcheck. The healthchecks occur quite frequently so in general I hope you will find this "problem" now addressed.

Perfect, I'll test it out and assume that it works fine. Thanks and nice work (especially since I have multiple raspberry pis)!

For your second comment there are a number of ways to do this. We push all channels that are "visible" in WMC to XBMC, so if you don't want these channels to exist in either WMC or XBMC, you can simply "hide" them in WMC and we then wont push them over. If you do want them in WMC but just not in XBMC we support the "favourite lineups" (or Channel Groups in XBMC lingo) and furthermore we support "restricting" a client/s channels and/or recordings to only specific channel groups. So what you could do is create a Favourite Lineup in WMC containing the channels you want XBMC to have, then setup ServerWMC ClientRestrictions option in the config file to limit your named XBMC clients to only see channels (and optionally only see recordings) for these particular channel group/s. Also if you make use of Channel Groups outside of this "restricting" functionality you can also "hide" any named channel group from XBMC so it doesn't appear as a normal channel group (eg you might have Sports, News, Kids etc but you don't want "Channels over 500" group to show in XBMC. Make sense? Have a look in the config.xml file and there is a dummy example for ClientRestrictions that should hopefully be self explanatory.

Perfect, both options sound great. I just tested out the visible vs. hidden option and it works great, so I'll just hide channels I don't care about in WMC and then I'll always have the right set of channels coming in to XBMC. Thanks as well!

[scarecrow420]

Any more feature requests from anyone?! I cant wait for the next update because it will be the first real use of the "Check for Updates" and "Apply Update" functionality we included in build 1150

[LehighBri]

One more thought/question. Is the ability to edit timers supported? Reason I ask is I have a recording in flight, and I tried to edit the timer to have it end sooner than originally planned, but when I update the timer's end time and hit OK, I get the following message: "The PVR backend does not support this action. Check the log for details. An unexpected error occurred. Try again later or check the log for details."

So if it's not supported, can that support be added?

EDIT: And here's what I see in the xbmc.log file:
08:10:13 T:7984 ERROR: PVR - PVR::CPVRClient::UpdateTimer - addon 'ServerWMC:connected' returned an error: not implemented
08:10:13 T:7984 ERROR: PVR - PVR::CPVRClients::UpdateTimer - cannot update timer on client '1': not implemented

[krustyreturns]

Currently it is not implemented. I don't know how to implement the edit timer dialog that xbmc presents, but before I get into that, if you just want to stop an in-progress recording, you can just delete the timer, that will stop the recording and leave the file alone. Alternatively you can delete the in-progress wtv file, that stops the timer and DELETES the recording. These are the same functions that wmc gives you for in-progress recordings.

On the edit timer dialog, the parameters that it lets you change (channel, name, start and end time, etc) only make sense if the recording is not tied to a guide episode, but almost all recordings are tied to guide episodes. For example if you set it to record Fargo and then you change the channel in the edit dialog, what is supposed to happen?

To me, the edit dialog only makes sense if the timer is for a manual timer (recordings set by time-slot&channel), so the only option that I can think of that might make some sense is - if the user chooses this - to convert an episode timer to a manual timer when they edit it. If the timer is part of a series, that just that episode of the series is converted to a manual timer. This can't be done for in progress recordings though.

Also for episode timers wmc does not let you vary the start/end time so I could not provide this even if I wanted to, it does let you vary the padding and we could do that as an edit but we'd need to use a custom dialog.

Sorry for the long answer, this has been brought up before and I asked for user input then but nobody really knew what to do so we punted. We are still willing to implement this, we just need input.

[LehighBri]

Great, thanks. My specific use case is let's say I'm watching a sporting event. This event is an episode in the guide. If the event goes to OT or if the event always runs longer than the guide indicates, I'd like to extend the end time. So adding additional padding to the end time would be what I'm looking for.

If you can update padding, can you use the existing timer edit dialog but just calculate the padding from whatever the new end time is that someone specifies. I never use manual timers/recordings, it's always tied to guide data. I'm coming from a SageTV setup environment so I'm used to being able to edit. So not a huge issue, but something that would be nice.

[scarecrow420]

You can already do that by hitting "Record" again on the in progress recording. Each additional press will extend the recording by a configurable amount (i think defaults to 15 minutes but cant remember the default right now)

[krustyreturns]

I'm pretty sure the 15 minute extension thing only works with an 'instant' record. I guess the new feature is to see if we can add it to a regular scheduled recording.

[scarecrow420]

Oh yes of course, its only instant recordings. It should be possible if receiving a recording request for an already recording EPG entry, to extend the padding on that one. Assuming XBMC actually sends through the recording request (possibly it might not, since it knows the item is already recording).

[LehighBri]

I'm pretty sure the 15 minute extension thing only works with an 'instant' record. I guess the new feature is to see if we can add it to a regular scheduled recording.

That's one option. I'd also like to see an option where I can proactively edit the timer vs. doing it while watching the show itself.

[LehighBri]

One additional request. I couldn't seem to find this anywhere else so thought I'd post it here. Is there a way that the recordings can be integrated with the overall TV library (kind of like what NPVR's PVR addon has here: http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=195467)?

I'm sure this isn't trivial, and it's definitely not something critically needed, but just curious. The ideal goal being that you go to one place to watch shows regardless of if WMC recorded them or if you imported them.

[scarecrow420]

Well we also support post processing (external actions) so it seems you could already do this yourself by writing a script to rename the file and move it into whatever folder you want, then tell XBMC to reload the library. If you moved it into a non WMC folder though, it wouldn't appear under the PVR Recordings section anymore I guess though.

[krustyreturns]

There are a number of programs out there that rename wtv files to a scrape friendly format. One is:
http://wtvmetarenamer.codeplex.com/

You can rename the wtv files all you want and wmc (and therefore serverwmc) will still find the files since they rely only on metadata not the file name. But like scarecrow says, you have to keep the files in a wmc 'watched' folder for them to still be visible in our addon.

[kricker]

Renaming isn't the only thing needed to get them into XBMC. Shows/Episodes that are not on theTVDB/Rage/Xem need .nfo files created from the guide metadata. Otherwise you can rename them all you want, but they will not scrape into the TV library. That is something the NPVR tool does.

[krustyreturns]

That's a good idea. We could create nfo's too for people who want to add their wtv files to the video library. You'll still need name scraping to determine the season and episode since that data is not included in the wmc guide. I actually already wrote code to produce nfo files (all I have to do is find it...)

[kricker]

If the show isn't on any of the meta-data sites, how do you plan to handle season and episode numbers when that info is not in the guide data? I believe the NPVR tool uses the recorded date if there is no episode and season info.