MegaSack DRAW - 6pm Christmas Eve - LIVE on our YouTube Channel
Had this problem from new as in when I use the smart TV epg to record to an external hard drive about 1/3 of recordings lose the ending ..often just a few minutes .It does it on many different channels and must be related to the TV as it didn't occur when recordings were made on our old PVR which we used to get round the problem.
We've had the TV a couple of years but being from J Lewis it still has plenty of warranty.
The PVR has recently packed up so the recording problem has raised it's head again and I contacted JL who are organised an engineer .He phoned and said it was because programs often start and finish at different times to the epg info so I would need to adjust every recording to include extra time..That procedure is a lot of hassle on the TV and can't be done on series recordings so I consider it to be an unsatisfactory solution and also not the full picture (excuse the pun) because if what he said was correct then why did an older PVR never have this annoying problem?
Anyone know how these systems work and any workarounds apart from adjusting recording times manually on every recording or buying a new PVR?
The TV has been factory reset and updated as well as the hd reformatted.
Your advice would be much appreciated .
Thanks in advance
Bill
sorry, but thats the answer i was going to give too. got a samsung blueray player/recorder, and yes when its set to record itd record to the eaxt supposed minute, so i just use to access it manually and add a few mins.
no idea if theres a simpler solution, nor why a PVR wouldnt have had the same problems.
out of interest, did the PVR always finish dead on the end of every programme then? i can only assume then that programmes also give out some form of signal to when they do actually start and finish rather than 'should do' and that samsung just dont use that method.
Although this doesn't help you with your problem directly, what the fella from JL said was true - I work in TV playout and we pass the EPGs in advance to the broadcasters - Sky, Freeview etc. based on our planned schedule.
However, these schedules can be anything up to 5 minutes out, as things slip, or the billed times in the schedules use nice round numbers etc. And we don't send new EPGs unless there is a programme change. The EPGs aren't "live".
Most PVRs take this into account and have a "padding" setting to record 5 or 10 minutes before and after the billed time from the EPG, your television may well have this as a global setting to record a bit of video extra - look for the phrase "padding" in the menus.
That's useful info ..thank you..I have never seen the word padding in the menu anywhere but will look in more detail. I've just looked at the old PVR which still has lots of recordings and it actually adjusted the times almost exactly with little padding !For example if a program was due to originally start at 10 and finish at 10.30 but was 3 minutes late the PVR actually recorded from 10.03 to 10.33 ...starting and finishing at almost exactly the right time. It also adjusted recordings if things started early.How do you explain this?..there must be another system involved surely.
Could it be there are 2 different systems in use. One uses information from the internet ie the smart TV but the older sony PVR uses info directly from the channel itself ie a signal? Something must be communicating changes to the PVR as it doesn't speak internet language !
researching further it does seem that channels often do transmit start and finish signals for pvr's to be on the look out for .. so maybe my hypothesis above is beginning to look likely ?...Have you not heard of this Tarka?
Yes, it's called AR or Accurate Recording, and it is the system which superceded PDC. The theory is that in addition to the normal EPG data, there is a "Now/Next" flag which should be turned on as soon as the programme starts, and which changes as soon as the programme finishes - your PVR can use this flag to start/stop the recordings.
But, there's a catch - you have to rely on the broadcaster being punctilious about this - the BBC are amazing as it is generated in their playout suites so it is "live", ITV less so, CH5 even less so - and us (un-named channel) even less so! AR is good, but you are at the behest of the broadcaster. We record hundreds of mass off-air recordings here - and pad everything - we don't trust AR at all.
Strange though that our Sony
PVR recorded loads of different channels including many commercial and less popular ones including all the 5 related etc and nearly always recorded accurately ...far far better than the Samsung..and we got it free about 8 yrs ago.
Also makes you wonder why there aren't more people complaining about it all over the web.
