# What is a "New Episode"?



## ChicoJeff (Jul 11, 2007)

When I set a program to record "New Episodes", how does the receiver know what's "new"? The issue is that I get a lot of re-runs recorded and this takes a decent amount of time to clean up. The most recent example is "The Daily Show". It should only be one new episode each day M-F, but we sometimes get 6 or 8 a day.

Is there a work around? I was wishing for something like "record programs with a title = "The Daily Show" and with a description containing the word "new".

-Jeff


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

There is something called a Episode ID that is part of the EPG. In some cases the EPG episode id is 0. In this case the 622/722 does the right thing in this case and assume it is new and records it. One thing you can do is limit the number of shows to keep on your drive. There is a setting in your timer that will allow you to do that. 

Comedy channel is one of the channels that this happens a lot on.


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## Marriner (Jan 23, 2006)

This problem speaks not to a bug, but to the quality and accuracy of the program description data. These data are provided by the programmer. I have a similar thing occuring when recording 'NEW' episodes of "The Colbert Report". I guess that this is an issue with Comedy Central not posting episode numbers on the reruns.


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## ChicoJeff (Jul 11, 2007)

That's what I was thinking - a limitation of the guide info for that channel/show.

Actually, it just dawned on me that I could probably set up a scheduled timer for a certain channel/day/time to catch just the new episodes. I'll look into that approach.

thanks

-Jeff


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

Good approach Jeff if new shows are on scheduled day and time.


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

I had the same problem... so I set up a M-F timer for Colbert Report. It fires just the once per night, except for Fridays and days when it is pre-empted... catches the time-changes if something delays it until say midnight or something. Only drawback are weeks like this one where he is on vacation, so I have to go through and manually skip the events OR delete them after they record.

Still, much easier than trying to delete bunches of events every day. Maybe one day the EPG info will be more reliable, but for now I'm fairly impressed the Dish receivers do as good a job as they do with the sometimes screwy EPG info that is provided by Tribune.


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## lujan (Feb 10, 2004)

HDMe said:


> I had the same problem... so I set up a M-F timer for Colbert Report. It fires just the once per night, except for Fridays and days when it is pre-empted... catches the time-changes if something delays it until say midnight or something. Only drawback are weeks like this one where he is on vacation, so I have to go through and manually skip the events OR delete them after they record.
> 
> Still, much easier than trying to delete bunches of events every day. Maybe one day the EPG info will be more reliable, but for now I'm fairly impressed the Dish receivers do as good a job as they do with the sometimes screwy EPG info that is provided by Tribune.


On weeks like this when "The Daily Show" is on vacation, I just delete the timer itself and then I don't have to keep deleting them every day. I just have to remember to re-create the timer again when the news ones start up again.


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

lujan said:


> On weeks like this when "The Daily Show" is on vacation, I just delete the timer itself and then I don't have to keep deleting them every day. I just have to remember to re-create the timer again when the news ones start up again.


I debated doing that myself... but I figured after 2 weeks of repeats I might forget to set the new timer. I use my laziness to my advantage!


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## Galaxie6411 (Aug 26, 2007)

I've found with this new guide that has been used for the past few months many shows are always listed as "new" One trick is to see if the date is always the same or changes. Some of them only have the original air date and they almost always come up as being "new" every time. I noticed for next week my South Park timer set to record every 7:30 show, none of which are new. I also have this problem with Gearz, it records every single one of them. Problem with setting a certain time is that the show time moves around.

I don't know what they changed but with the "old" guide I had very few of these problems.


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## whatchel1 (Jan 11, 2006)

Sorry but don't understand what you are meaning by the "Old Guide".


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## Galaxie6411 (Aug 26, 2007)

Recently, within the last month or two Dish either switched the company that does the guides or they had a major update. After that change nothing has worked as well as before. It now says: TV listings Tribune media Services. From what I remember it did not say that a few months ago and the windows changed somewhat along with no episode descriptions on a lot of stuff where it used to be.


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## rbonzer (May 13, 2002)

Its not just Comedy Central. For me, last night all the CBS shows were "new" and taped. How I Met Your Mother, Christine, 2.5 Men, and Rules of Engagement all taped.

I haven't seen the guide this bad before.


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## Zaphod (Aug 31, 2006)

But it used to work. It wasn’t until a upgrade a while back the problem became widespread. It should be able to be fixed.


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

rbonzer said:


> Its not just Comedy Central. For me, last night all the CBS shows were "new" and taped. How I Met Your Mother, Christine, 2.5 Men, and Rules of Engagement all taped.
> 
> I haven't seen the guide this bad before.


What do you mean new and taped? Are you saying that you had a new timer for these and even though the shows were not new the 622 recorded it. There could be reasons for that and if it appears to only be that one night my guess is the EPG for that station was hosed up that night.

Personally I have not been noticing any issues with excessive recordings of my timers but ofcourse my viewing habits are different than others. Like I said, Comedy Central always comes up when this issue is discussed.

If you are seeing it... Please note the specific channels and shows you are seeing it on. I doubt this is a 622/722 issue but perhaps we are getting more bad data being delivered. As to changing guide provides, I am not aware that Dish did this and it has been tribune for as long as I recall.


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## dbconsultant (Sep 13, 2005)

I see this happen whenever an episode number is 'N/A'. This does happen a lot on Comedy Central and it used to happen a lot on the USA Channel and on Equator as well. When you see the 'N/A', you can almost bet money that the 'flag' that tells if an episode is new has not been set properly in the guide info and will record as a new episode even if the date showing is from 2004. The 'flag' is what determines whether an episode is new, not the date showing on the guide info.


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## orenr (Jun 10, 2004)

One clarification/rant about the guide: the bad or incomplete data doesn't come from the programmer, it comes from the provider of the guide (i.e. Tribune or whatever they are called).

I switched from DirecTV to Dish about a year ago, and although I'm much happier with what I get from Dish, the guide is very bad by comparison. DirecTV uses TV Guide, which provides movie classifications (comedy, drama, etc.) and much better (more verbose) descriptions for each program.


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## ebaltz (Nov 23, 2004)

orenr said:


> One clarification/rant about the guide: the bad or incomplete data doesn't come from the programmer, it comes from the provider of the guide (i.e. Tribune or whatever they are called).
> 
> I switched from DirecTV to Dish about a year ago, and although I'm much happier with what I get from Dish, the guide is very bad by comparison. DirecTV uses TV Guide, which provides movie classifications (comedy, drama, etc.) and much better (more verbose) descriptions for each program.


Perhaps you haven't seen the big TV GUIDE logo on the Dish guide. Obviously it gets its information from TV GUIDE as well.


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## rbonzer (May 13, 2002)

Ron Barry said:


> What do you mean new and taped? Are you saying that you had a new timer for these and even though the shows were not new the 622 recorded it. There could be reasons for that and if it appears to only be that one night my guess is the EPG for that station was hosed up that night.
> 
> Personally I have not been noticing any issues with excessive recordings of my timers but ofcourse my viewing habits are different than others. Like I said, Comedy Central always comes up when this issue is discussed.
> 
> If you are seeing it... Please note the specific channels and shows you are seeing it on. I doubt this is a 622/722 issue but perhaps we are getting more bad data being delivered. As to changing guide provides, I am not aware that Dish did this and it has been tribune for as long as I recall.


I mean taped, as in the timer is set for new shows, and it recorded those four shows, which were clearly repeats. I went home to check out what information was in the description to see if there were any clues (like missing information), but my wife had erased them (they were repeats, after all).

Turns out that 'Til Death taped two episodes last night for me. Just plain freaky. I double checked the timers, and they are set for new. The info had episode numbers (12 and 15) and dates (1/18/07 and 2/8/07). Can't figure out why they would have taped. I looked at the upcoming events, and nothing else looks like it will be taped, but I think I would have noticed these in the list, had they been there.

I'll try to keep an eye out for any patterns. I wonder if I'll have to recreate all my timers.


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## Galaxie6411 (Aug 26, 2007)

It definitely is tied to the N/A on episodes. On most of the shows I get this problem the new show dates aren't shown with this new guide it just lists the original air date. I have the biggest troubles with Speed and Comedy Central. I wish I paid more attention to who the old program guide was provided by. Wonder if some of my 6+ month old shows would have the old info?


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## Tylast (May 27, 2006)

I e-mailed Dish about this issue months ago & they told me that it was the company that provided them with the data. The respondent told me that it wasn't Dishes fault. I told her that I don't care & that they need to have them fix it. Funny how they were shifting blame....like I have anything to do with who they get their data from. This issue has been around for over a year & only on The Daily Show & Colbert Report for me. It's about time Dish fixed it!


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## FastNOC (Sep 11, 2007)

ebaltz said:


> Perhaps you haven't seen the big TV GUIDE logo on the Dish guide. Obviously it gets its information from TV GUIDE as well.


That might be true, but I can definitely confirm the person is right about how well this works. I dont remember having this problem with D*. Maybe a couple times but certainly not often.

I record a LOT of shows per day because I watch them from the dvr to skip commercials and there is simply no comparison. I've only had my 722 for a couple weeks and I'm new to Dish, but this is really a badly managed feature and I don't believe for a minute that the provider (guide) isn't putting enough/correct information out. It's the correlation between their data and the box's software to do this.

Now, one thing I THINK contributes to this is the nature of these networks. For instance:

if CBS runs a new show, it's shown once. After the season is over they'll show re-runs. But if Comedy Central runs southpark, or Discovery runs mythbusters, it's still new, but they rebroadcast it over and over again, even the same day. It still shows up as new.

Am I wrong?


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## whatchel1 (Jan 11, 2006)

FastnoNOC said:


> That might be true, but I can definitely confirm the person is right about how well this works. I dont remember having this problem with D*. Maybe a couple times but certainly not often.
> 
> I record a LOT of shows per day because I watch them from the dvr to skip commercials and there is simply no comparison. I've only had my 722 for a couple weeks and I'm new to Dish, but this is really a badly managed feature and I don't believe for a minute that the provider (guide) isn't putting enough/correct information out. It's the correlation between their data and the box's software to do this.
> 
> ...


You are not wrong. The Daily Show & Colbert Report are the examples being used here. Since they are repeated w/in the 24 hr window of the day those are listed as new for that 24 hrs. Has to do w/the fact the way Comedy ch repeats the showing for E & W time zones. BTW the guide provider for E* is Tribune Media Services it isn't TV guide.


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

FastnoNOC said:


> That might be true, but I can definitely confirm the person is right about how well this works. I dont remember having this problem with D*. Maybe a couple times but certainly not often.
> 
> I record a LOT of shows per day because I watch them from the dvr to skip commercials and there is simply no comparison. I've only had my 722 for a couple weeks and I'm new to Dish, but this is really a badly managed feature and I don't believe for a minute that the provider (guide) isn't putting enough/correct information out. It's the correlation between their data and the box's software to do this.
> 
> ...


I believe you are wrong based on my experience. Take a look at the shows you are talking about. IF you see an episode that is N/A that will tell you that the 722 cannot determine if the show is new or not so it defaults to recording it. I am sure there is some other criteria but without an the episode id is defaults to New. Might be some room for improvement, but I am sure if it tried to do some fancy tricks the net result would be a show being missed and that definitely has more pain associated with it than recording a show that should not have been recorded.

Perhaps Dish needs to have a discussion with Tribune on the quality of the data but based on my tests and checking it does appear the 622 is working as designed. As for the difference of D* and E*... Perhaps D* has a better source or does some other things to determine when the ID is 0. They might be more aggressive and in that cause would also run a higher risk of missing a show it should have caught.


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## FastNOC (Sep 11, 2007)

You make a very good point about it defaulting to record. I didnt' even think about that. Thank you.

FYI, just so I'm clear, this is the ONLY thing I've found so far in my migration from D to E that is negative. I do have some peeves about the DVR library displays but that's preference. The rest of my experience has been surprisingly positive. 

I'm glad I changed over.


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

Actually I did take a look at those programs you mentioned and where I think there might be a bug is where you have a episode of 0 and a old date. In this case I would expect a skip for new but it appears not to do it. It does appear to handle dates of 0 correctly. There might be a good reason for this, but it is not the behavior I would have expected.


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## CABill (Mar 20, 2005)

FastnoNOC said:


> That might be true, but I can definitely confirm the person is right about how well this works. I dont remember having this problem with D*. Maybe a couple times but certainly not often.
> ...
> Am I wrong?


Yes, you aren't remembering correctly. Search here in DBSTalk or Groups.google.com. The Daily Show has been a problem for a very long time (since long before Colbert existed as a separate show). DirecTiVo's were having the same problem as DISH NBR because they use the exact same database from Tribune, and both key on episode number. They both default recording as "New" when episode # is zero or N/A for something episodic (Movies and other shows aren't).

http://groups.google.com/group/alt....st&q=tivo+Daily+show&rnum=69#ab5992d22af85827


> You'll find the data isn't different "enough" for the Tivo to be able to tell
> they're not the same show. This is the fault of the publisher of the guide data.
> A few programs have had this problem, some continuously (like the Daily Show).


A 2004 Post about Daily Show issues at http://groups.google.com/group/alt....bc995ca297/b386edfa00d49411?#b386edfa00d49411

April 04 - http://groups.google.com/group/rec....st&q=tivo+daily+show&rnum=97#558029eb5740f603


> If the guide data includes what episode it is, TiVo can keep track of
> which episodes it has recorded and only record a given episode once.
> But on a lot of shows with frequent reruns (like the Simpsons,
> Daily Show and a lot of daily news-like shows), the network doesn't
> ...


This predates 2004, but you would have to Google for the others. The D* forums here should have the same issues (I don't frequent them though).


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