# Event Timer : "New Episodes"



## Legolas (Jul 21, 2006)

Hi
I am having some trouble understanding "New Episodes" Event timer.
I would like to record only NEW episodes of Daily Show and Colbert Report,
but it seems to record old episodes too. It is a pain to keep deleting these
unwanted recordings.

Any help would be appreciated. I just switched from 622 to 722 (said they
didn't have 722K,... another story) but I see the same behavior.

Thanks in advance.


----------



## HobbyTalk (Jul 14, 2007)

A search on Colbert Report would have given you this -> http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?t=146328


----------



## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

Yeah, unfortunately shows on Comedy Central have been notorious for not having correct guide info from Tribune... so the receiver doesn't know new from repeats sometimes.

I found the best route was to just set a daily timer (not new only) and still there would be dupes from time to time, but not nearly as many.


----------



## Legolas (Jul 21, 2006)

Thanks for the info. I hope this will be resolved when they have the
HD version available in a week


----------



## jlluck (Oct 18, 2007)

Stewart Vernon said:


> Yeah, unfortunately shows on Comedy Central have been notorious for not having correct guide info from Tribune... so the receiver doesn't know new from repeats sometimes.
> 
> I found the best route was to just set a daily timer (not new only) and still there would be dupes from time to time, but not nearly as many.


Can this issue be blamed back on Tribune for incorrect guide data? I hate to say, but I didn't have this issue with D*. Unless D* doesn't get its data from Tribune. 
I've had issues with A&E recording eps of The First 48 that weren't new as well as Comedy Central - South Park and Cartoon Network - Robot Chicken. I've found these shows record old and new eps when set to New Episodes only. Weird.


----------



## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

DirecTV does get their guide date from Tribune, I believe... but I should take a step back since I can't say for 100% sure DirecTV subscribers have had the same issues that Dish has had with "new" episodes.

I do know it is a guide-data problem... but am not completely sure who is to blame... I have assumed Tribune because not all new episodes say "new" and sometimes will have the wrong original air date as well.


----------



## CABill (Mar 20, 2005)

You shouldn't have any expectations of this being "resolved".

If you look at the events for the Daily Show timer, or the list of things to be recorded, you will notice that as along as the Info shown for one of the events displays N/A for Episode, that will qualify as a "New" episode. Most weeks, it is only the Monday shows that have N/A for Episode for Daily/Colbert and the shows for Tue on will correctly identify episode number so you'd only get one on those days. On weeks when there will be no new episodes, the Tribune info will remain N/A for all episodes on all days and you will get multiple copies of the same show.

If you pick the timer for "New" episodes of the Daily Show now, you'll probably see all of them are going to record until 30-Mar and on that day and/or the next, it will return to not having N/A for episode and it correctly skips recordings (but makes at least one recording for the NEW episode).

Groups.google.com had users with these same problems with DirecTiVos over 4 years ago and nothing has changed. "New" is "First Run" for Direct, but you shouldn't have any trouble finding similar threads in the DirecTV general forum. Here's a 2007 entry and Comedy Central hasn't "fixed" it yet - http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?t=97616&highlight=Daily+Show


----------



## phrelin (Jan 18, 2007)

Stewart Vernon said:


> DirecTV does get their guide date from Tribune, I believe... but I should take a step back since I can't say for 100% sure DirecTV subscribers have had the same issues that Dish has had with "new" episodes.
> 
> I do know it is a guide-data problem... but am not completely sure who is to blame... I have assumed Tribune because not all new episodes say "new" and sometimes will have the wrong original air date as well.


This is one of those pass the blame games. If you ask your signal provider, they point to the Tribune folks. If you ask the Tribune folks, they will say the channel provides the information which appears to be true. I haven't figured out how to get an answer from Comedy Central but I can guess that this is near the bottom of their list of problems.

TitanTV which has the most accurate guide available on line marks every _Daily Show_ at 11 pm Eastern/8pm Pacific as either new or it is unmarked while all other times are marked repeat. I think this means that they've designed some kind of filter that accepts a "new" marking for that time only if provided by Comedy Central.


----------



## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

In the interest of ratings, especially now that some groups are starting to count DVRed delayed viewings in their ratings... it would behoove any channel, and any program on that channel, to have someone spot-check to see if their episode guide entries are valid.

If people miss an event, be it Dish or DirecTV or Tribune or whomever's fault, ultimately the program and the channel suffer in the ratings... so regardless of fault and finger-pointing, I'd think they would care a bit more about getting this stuff right.


----------



## jlluck (Oct 18, 2007)

I was with D* for just under 2 yrs and never really had a problem with "double" recording of a show. It was pretty accurate and would only record the New Ep only. Even shows like South Park where they air the new ep several times in a week. It would only record it on the first night it was new. 
Petty complaint to be sure but kinda aggravating recording all these eps as new when technically they're not.


----------



## DustoMan (Jul 16, 2005)

Instead of using a "New" timer for The Daily Show and Colbert Report, I set a "Mon-Fri" timer. Every few weeks when they are repeats I go use the recording schedule to skip that week's episodes. It takes like three minutes or less to do.


----------



## Papa Midnight (Mar 17, 2009)

What I noticed is this was happening on all Comedy Central set shows, as well as some from FOX (like The Simpsons and Family Guy). What I did was set it as "New" episodes only while selecting the timer for the new episode. This seemed to solve the majority of my problems.


----------



## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

This has been discussed before and doing a search here on either of those two shows should find threads that discusses it. I think CABill has it right. What happens is there is no Episode ID and if no Episode ID the DVR does the conservative action and records the show. It could handle it another way and not record the show but then it could miss a show it should have recorded which is much worse in the DVR world. 

The fix here is that the guide data should be indicating an Episode ID period. No Episode ID.. Show is treated as New.. This is not a defect but a "Words as Designed". Fix the data and it will work as expected. 

As for why D* did not exhibit this behavior. Not sure.. Would have to dig into it and perhaps someone will, but it is not a defect in my opinion unless I am missing something.


----------



## Legolas (Jul 21, 2006)

CABill said:


> You shouldn't have any expectations of this being "resolved".
> 
> If you look at the events for the Daily Show timer, or the list of things to be recorded, you will notice that as along as the Info shown for one of the events displays N/A for Episode, that will qualify as a "New" episode. Most weeks, it is only the Monday shows that have N/A for Episode for Daily/Colbert and the shows for Tue on will correctly identify episode number so you'd only get one on those days. On weeks when there will be no new episodes, the Tribune info will remain N/A for all episodes on all days and you will get multiple copies of the same show.
> 
> ....


Didn't realize I will be unleashing the shared frustration of everyone in this forum 

When I press "Info" for the recorded Jon Stewart/Colbert shows, the older
episodes show year as 1995 or 1999, so the guide does have enough information to be able to skip the recording. I can understand if the DVR wants to play it safe and record 'N/A' shows but not shows marked old.
(In reality these shows are not really 10 years old, maybe only a few weeks.


----------



## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

This might be a clue here. Most likely we have a show identifier along with a episode identifier. We also have a air date. 

It is possible that the receivers do one of two things. 

1) Expect all pieces of information to be included and if not, the show is recorded to be on the safe side. 

2) Test for Show and episode ID. If this check passes then check the air date for new shows. 

Based on the post above I would expect possible #1 is being used. If it used #2 logic then would handle this case. 

I am sure I am over simplifying the logic here and most likely there is more to figuring out what is new and what is not, but if it is a simple logic change might account for bad guide data. 

However, the more I look at this the more my guess is that most likely the assumption here is if data is missing then we must assume the other data to not be reliable and rather be safe than sorry. If you got Garbage coming in, best not rely on it and do the safe thing. 

We are looking at one use case and saying. Well it is obvious.. Air date old.. So don't record. But if you look at the use case where you have a a new show but the guide data is bad or missing you want to do the best chance of catching the show. 

Two different approaches to the problem. Like I said. I think they took the more conservative approach because it is better to have extra shows recorded than to risk missing a new show. 

Personally I think this battle is outside of the receiver and at who creates the content for the Guide Data. Who ever does this for the Comedy Channel needs to conform to what appears to be a defacto standard (If not a standard).


----------



## CABill (Mar 20, 2005)

I'll certainly admit to frustration with "New", but if you recall, the first go round of "New" did use just the date. If "Date is current year, New". Seriously! So what we have is an improvement. By far the best suggestion I've heard was someone saying there should be a per timer option to "disable the play it safe rules for this timer and don't record N/A episodes as New".

Original Air Date is pretty much the last thing that needs to be checked. It first needs to check if (ShowID, EpisodeID) exists in the History of recent recordings (ignore priority skip entries, just make sure it wasn't recorded and deleted) and if it resides in the existing recordings. Either will skip the show as a duplicate. If it isn't a duplicate is when it would need to check OAD as being close to today. A Saturday rerun of something that first airs Monday will record on a NEW Timer if it isn't found in Event History.


----------



## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

Yeah, I've seen weird stuff like the air date being a future date (i.e. one for a couple of days from now) for a program on tonight on channels like SciFi before.

Also some interesting conundrums like "Look Around You" on Adult Swim. This is an old UK program circa 2002... but airing for the first time in recent weeks on Adult Swim.

I noted some airings had a 2009 "new" air date, while others would have the original 2002 UK air date. Fact is, they were both new airings on Adult Swim even though the original air date was older. I suspect more than one auto-timer was fooled by these situations as well.


----------



## Legolas (Jul 21, 2006)

Ron Barry said:


> .....
> 
> Two different approaches to the problem. Like I said. I think they took the more conservative approach because it is better to have extra shows recorded than to risk missing a new show.
> 
> .....


They also make it lot more difficult to delete recordings. Previous version (not sure which version) would move to the next recording, once we selected the recording in edit mode. Now it is an extra key press!! With so many recordings to delete, it gets annoying. Yesterday I deleted 27 recordings. I deleted
my timer altogether. I will setup the timer once the new episodes start to air and start using the Mon-Fri option. Oh that reminds me... I would also like the Mon-Thu option


----------



## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

CABill said:


> I'll certainly admit to frustration with "New", but if you recall, the first go round of "New" did use just the date. If "Date is current year, New". Seriously! So what we have is an improvement. By far the best suggestion I've heard was someone saying there should be a per timer option to "disable the play it safe rules for this timer and don't record N/A episodes as New".
> 
> Original Air Date is pretty much the last thing that needs to be checked. It first needs to check if (ShowID, EpisodeID) exists in the History of recent recordings (ignore priority skip entries, just make sure it wasn't recorded and deleted) and if it resides in the existing recordings. Either will skip the show as a duplicate. If it isn't a duplicate is when it would need to check OAD as being close to today. A Saturday rerun of something that first airs Monday will record on a NEW Timer if it isn't found in Event History.


Like the play it safe option. Would be a time saver for sure in these type of situations. Guess the problem I have is more along the lines of putting in hacks to deal with bad data. Data should be fixed, but given that data reliability is a big issue here having that options would help.


----------



## FarmerBob (Nov 28, 2002)

I've had the same problem with these two shows since the "New" feature was introduced. The root of the problem is the pathetic state of the EPG and trying to discuss the EPG even with the "executive" branch CSR's is a lost cause. BUT another thing I discovered when trying to get it to work, is that in the description the word News gets qualified as New(s). Any episode with the word News is a new episode. I had The Daily Show recording everytime it aired.

I found that setting it for Mon-Fri works the best.


----------



## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

Is there an example of this you can provide FarmerBob? Is it on the Daily Show. If it is my guess is it is a coincidence and the reason it is recording an old as new is because of inconsistent Meta data that i think you were referring to. I don't think Vip receivers do any parsing in terms of the description.


----------



## FarmerBob (Nov 28, 2002)

Ron Barry said:


> Is there an example of this you can provide FarmerBob? Is it on the Daily Show. If it is my guess is it is a coincidence and the reason it is recording an old as new is because of inconsistent Meta data that i think you were referring to. I don't think Vip receivers do any parsing in terms of the description.


You are over thinking this. The software is not that sophisticated. This was also confirmed by DISH as "another" software problem that will be fixed, well it started when Name Based Recording came out, eventually I guess. I'm thinking that the fix is the 922's new UI. The best thing that they can do is clean up the EPG with complete and accurate info. That I am being told there is no problem with the EPG. Yeh, right. This also dictated how I set up ABC Evening and Weekend News.

Using *"The Daily Show"*:

*Mon-Fri:* _*With*_ and _*Without*_ complete or accurate description:








​See that there is only one episode per day. None on Fridays.

*
New(s):*  *Without* complete or accurate description (which is 99.9% of the time):








​See that it is going to record every episode on each day, Monday for example. 36 events in the timer as opposed to 7. The Tuesday episodes up until the timer on Tuesday are repeats from Monday night or on other days the night before.

*
New(s):*  *With* complete or accurate description (which is 0.1% of the time):








​Notice that the description qualifies the episode and there are 35 up for consideration if the description was not present as opposed to 7. And also notice that in setting this up the total numbers of events changed from 36 to 35 under the same conditions.


P.S.
This is the same on my 501, 508, 625 & 722


----------



## phrelin (Jan 18, 2007)

I thought it was fairly clear for well over a year that for whatever reason Comedy Central's input for the Daily Show to the Tribune Guide system just simply doesn't work and we have to make adjustments.:shrug:


----------



## CABill (Mar 20, 2005)

FarmerBob said:


> You are over thinking this.
> 
> Notice that the description qualifies the episode
> 
> This is the same on my 501, 508, 625 & 722


I don't understand why you continue to use "description" since it isn't used at all in determining if a show is "New" for a Timer event. Instead of focusing on "description", look at one thing when you hit Info - Episode number. If it isn't provided, it would qualify as New.

A show having "News" or "New" in the description has absolutely nothing to do with whether a New timer will record the show. I thought that was Ron's reason for asking for an example of a show you thought that had its Description searched by a timer. You can search the Description with a DishPASS, but they aren't for a Timer.

The Daily Show recording reruns as New (or First Run in DirecTV or TiVo terms) goes back more than 3 years, probably more.


----------



## truthseeker (Feb 24, 2008)

Funny, I too had DTV two years ago too and remember having to set a timer every day for a certain show with the same problem. (I wish I could remember which show it was), but if other people posting didn't have the same problem with them it must depend on what show you are recording, and they obviously weren't trying to record the one I was.


----------



## BillJ (May 5, 2005)

Encountered a new problem with 'new episodes' today. I have a local broadcast of a syndicated program set to record 'new episodes' early Saturday mornings. They do a lot of repeats so I'm not surprised when the recording schedule shows Skip. But this morning's episode said 'new' and original air date '4/18/09'. I decided to double check the timer so I opened the edit screen for that timer. Everything looked okay so I clicked 'Done' to close it without changing anything. When the guide came back up the program was now scheduled to record. All this happened a few minutes before the program started. It did record.

I'm wondering if the guide might originally not have shown the episode number or new label, so the episode was flagged to be skipped. Later an updated guide included the 'new' tag but my 622 did not look again once it had marked it to be skipped. When I opened the edit screen for the timer I caused it to look again and update with the new info. I can't think of another explanation.


----------



## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

I don't know how often the receiver "refreshes" its timers... but I've seen similar things when new up-to-the-minute guide changes have happened. Sometimes it is in time for the receiver to stop/start according to the new guide info... other times it works off the older out-of-date info.

It could be that a manual edit like you did forces the receiver to check the timer against its current guide. If so, that'd be nice to know in cases where you are sitting at the TV vs out of your home when a timer is bout to fire.


----------



## Tylast (May 27, 2006)

This problem starting plaguing me back in 2006. I have the 922 receiver, it's the end of 2010, & this issue is still around. Wish there was an end in sight.


----------



## Steve (Aug 22, 2006)

jlluck said:


> Can this issue be blamed back on Tribune for incorrect guide data? I hate to say, but I didn't have this issue with D* [...]


DirecTV and TiVO DVR users have had similar issues to the OP's trying to record both _Colbert's_ and _Stewart's_ shows on Comedy Central.

Martin Tupper, over at the TiVO Community Forums, came up with a clever "work-around" that I was able to simulate on the DirecTV DVR's. I don't know if Dish DVR's have the ability to automatically record shows based on keywords, but if they do, you might want to take a look at this post to see if you can construct a similar query. I don't watch either show, but last time I checked, this technique resulted in only one episode of each show being recorded per day, and only Mon-Thur, using the TMS guide data.


----------



## jpeckinp (Nov 6, 2006)

AHHHHHHHH! Zombie Thread.:eek2:


----------

