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..searching planner entries
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I've been getting a lot of entries lately in the planner with ..searching as the programme name. I can tell from the channel, date and time that they are series links I have setup. If I delete them and then re-add them all is fine but sooner or later more entries look like this. Has anyone had anything similar happen to them?
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Take out of standby and all should be ok.
Phil
Am I really the only one this is happening too? This used to happen on occasion but since last week it has been getting worse. I cleared the planner and did a full reset a mere 2 weeks ago.
Today I have a weird one. I discovered a programme in the planner that had recorded which I didn't set up. It was Murder She Wrote on BBC1 at 1340. It has a programme name of ..searching, the channel is blank but the synopsis is correct.
Is anyone else having this problem? I phoned Sky but they wanted me to take the card out and then do a system rest. With the 17 min bug possibility I'm not willing to do that.
I certainly don't get this problem as regular as yourself klw
Regards James
It's pretty ridiculous. In the planner, a page has 10 entries. Of these normally about 6-8 (!!!) of these will be ..searching.
These entries are all series links.
Every few days I go through the planner and fix the ..searching entries by deleting them and adding them again from the EPG. But when a new entry gets added by a series link, it will frequently have the ..searching name again.
I've even got a few recordings with a prog name of ..searching.
KLW have you got a lot of recordings?
I've got a 120 GB drive and probably have about 100-120 recordings. A lot of these recordings are tiny because they are radio recordings.
I have been wondering if having lots of recordings causes the ..searching entries due to yet another Sky+ bug.
(I didn't see KLW's thread and so I has created a new one. Oops!
My thread: prog names in planner replaced by "..searching")
I was down to my final 10% on a 120GB last night most of which are movies, so you could say my box is pretty full after a full system reset 10 days ago. I ended up deleting a load that I know I won't have time to watch in order to make way for Christmas stuff.
If you phone Sky+ tech support they'll tell you to take your card out of your box and then put the box in standby and pull the power. Of course this could introduce the 17min bug so do so at your own risk. In my experience this is only a temporary fix, the problem will come back again sooner or later. I have periods where everything is fine and then the bug returns again after weeks or months, full system reset or not.
Maybe it would be a good idea to post which programmes are being affected and any rogue entries, like I added yesterday. Then we can see if there is a pattern somewhere. I will start:
Type: future recording
Date: Tuesday 24/12/03
Time: 1930
Channel: ITV2
Name: Creature Comforts
How added: Automatic series link
Reoccurrence: TBC
Action: Deleted link and re-added
Type: recorded programme
Date: Tuesday 24/12/03
Time: 1340
Channel: BBC1
Name: Murder She Wrote
How added: Search me! I didn't add it.
Reoccurrence: TBC
Action: Deleted recording
I'm guessing that because the EPG is limited to 2 days whilst DR is active, it couldn't browse the EPG to find the correct programme title as this was 7 days in advance.
But as I say, as soon as one of the DR's finished, it fixed itself.
In the past 2 years, I have had to reboot my box perhaps 5 times at most because of the 'Searching For Listings' or "Further Info Not Available" problem.
When it happened, it affected ALL of the channels and you had little choice but a reboot.
Since DR I see this ALL of the time!!! The new 'bug' happens randomly and don't affect all channels or timeslots.
For example, nearly every day, I look at the Search and Scan bar, I can always find channels show "Further Info Not Available", for programs and times
Looking at the EPG, it always seems to be "Searching For Listings" and Series links sometimes won't add (You get told "Series Link Info Not Available")
To me, the DR software is beyond a joke... My box is more unstable than it ever has been.. No matter how welcome DR has been, I if given a choice I would be tempted to go back to the pre-DR days!
There are normally a lot of 100% "reliable failures".
eg I have series link reminders for Stargate SG-1 at 6pm on Sky One, and 7pm on Sky One Mix.
100% of the time these are replaced by "..searching" entries when the series link adds the reminder for the next prog.
I think that at the moment 100% of series link reminders are "..searching" entries.
With series link recordings this drops to maybe 30-50%.
I'd loose the DR function, but I'd gain the ability to actually watch what I'd recorded without the 17 min bug freeze at 1 hour problem!!
(Actually I'm lucky because I think I've only got a mild form of the 17 min bug at the moment, but it's very likely to just get worse.
I don't remember being scared to turn my VCR off, or worry that it was going to suddenly erase lots of tapes sitting on the shelf!
I'd guess this is a secondary symptom of the very slow listing updates that many people are experiencing post DR. There must be some sort of EPG memory leak/fragmentation that's got worse since DR.
Through laziness or inadequate software infrastructure, instead of waiting for the proper name to appear before making the series linked new planner entry, the programmers are simply waiting a bit and taking what's there. Untill the proper listing entry arrives, that's "..searching". They could have covered their tracks better by copying the title from the recording that triggered the new series linked recording.
The DR fiasco makes one suspect that the programmers are not too experienced in real time multi-tasking software development! Or maybe the good ones quit because management couldn't tell the difference between good and bad!
Haven't been able to work out any pattern yet (although haven't really tried yet....), but confirm that I definately didn't have this until a couple of weeks ago, presumably starting with the DR version.
(Although it might have become worse since the DR update - I'm not sure.)
The problem clearly appeared before the evil DR update:
klw started this thread on 04-11-2003 = about 4 weeks before DR
(I started my thread on 21-11-2003 = almost 2 weeks before DR. (But then I found this thread.))
Good point - didn't notice the earlier dates. I first started the have the problem either on or just before the 23rd, and then found the klw's 2nd post.
Blooming annoying whatever has caused it !
If you phone Sky they tell you to turn the box off, take the card out and then cut the power and turn it back on. As this may introduce the 17m bug I wouldn't do it unless you have a relatively empty planner.
A box crash has the same effect. To get your box to crash, if you're game, select a programme to view and then press backup quickly. That's how mine crashed last week.
I too am being plagued by "..searching" planner entries. This is on a relatively new V2 box with a Maxtor 120GB HDD which is now pretty full but I did start to see this very soon after I got the box in December when the HDD was less the one-third full.
The vast majority of Series-Linked Reminder entries will generate a "..searching" entry in the planner for the next episode of the programme and I estimate that approx. half of the Series-Linked Recordings are also generating a "..searching" planner entry.
As others are reporting the Programme title in the information banner for the "..searching" entries displays the wrong name but the Description section displays the correct contents. This seems really strange because it seems to indicate that the EPG does have access to the correct information when it is creating the planner entry (or does it pull the programme description in later).
Has anyone found any method other then a full System Housekeeping Reset to correct this problem? I have tried a power-cycle but this does not do anything to help fix this problem and only serves to make my "17 minute bug" problem worse.
regards
For example last night i scrolled down the epg to set eastenders to record.
All of the epg channels showed the corrcet data but bbc1 just showed 'searching for listings' and as long as i waited and as many times as i tried i couldnt get to set recordings on bbc1 until today when the listings came back.
This happens at least once a week on various different channels on the epg.
Does simply unplugging and removing the card do anythin ?
This has started to happen more often for me as well. It seems like it happens when the box is dual recording and it tries to add the next recording for a series linked program that has just started (although this is just a gut feeling). It seems that generally the entry does eventually go back to what it should be..........
Would be interested to hear others' thoughts though!
It will always do this when dual recording and the programme is more than 6 to 8 hours ahead as the box needs to access the EPG data stream and cannot because both tuners are already in use.
I had it on my HD box this morning and have seen it a few times on my PVR 2.
It appears to be to do with the fact that the EPG populates across the 7 days over a few seconds. Even when recording nothing it might occasionally not have cached up to seven days from now if you look too quickly. Most of the time the caching happens fast enough to beat you to it, but when searching appears you have won the race - but only by a second or two - as it soon fills in.
Dual recording restricts access to the EPG (try searching through it whilst doing this and you will see that you cannot get very far ahead). So the cached data does not get acccessed to fill in the entry until the box is freed to do so when one recording ends.
I doubt this is a box problem. Rebooting every now and then can help general performance but I doubt it makes much difference to what I suspect is just a generic thing on all boxes that we only notice now and then.
But most of this is educated guesswork, I should add. Feel free to set me straight.