Question About Favorites

[KeithAbb0tt]

I have had a favorite set up to record my favorite MLB team for the past few years. Everything seemed to work fine until yesterday, when my regional sports network (RSN) and MLB Network both showed the same baseball game in the program guide. Sage began recording the game from the MLB Network which, as it turns out, was broadcasting something other than the baseball game (maybe a local blackout???). Something similar happened during today's game, which was broadcast on both Fox and the RSN. Sage picked the Fox game which, again, was probably not the better choice (since there was a rain delay, Fox reverted to it's regular programming - the "Sherri" show).

So I added an additional favorite, to hopefully force Sage to record the games from the RSN first, and then any other channel for the times that the RSN is not broadcasting the game. I was hoping that anyone familiar with favorites processing could verify whether this will accomplish the goal or not:

[jdaminc]

I have had to add multiple favorites of a show before.. not sure why it doesnt record the original sometimes.. I assumed it had something to do with the scheduler not having the correct program ID attached to it. I never really looked into it

[KeithAbb0tt]

Well, the extra favorite that I added did not appear to work. Although the favorites have a "priority", it appears to only work when there are more programs to record than available tuners. When that happens, it will select the program to record based on the priority of the favorites. In my case, I have plenty of tuners, the issue is that there is more than one channel airing the same program (the show ID is identical). When that happens, it is not clear to me what criteria it uses to determine which channel to record. Evidently, it is not looking at favorite priority to determine that. For some reason, SageTV always seems to pick MLB Network over my RSN when MLB Network is airing Tigers baseball games. So it's working exactly opposite of how I would like it to work.

Again, if anyone has any suggestions, please share!

[Ugadata]

I don't think this is what you want but ........

As part of the Favorite setup, you can choose what channel or channels you would like for it to record from, by default it is ANY.

Also there is a plug-in to disable a Favorite, without deleting it. It is possible to create multiple Favorites for the same content, each limited to a specific channel and enable or disable the desired Favorite.

I expect this is a bit more manual than what most would like.

[KeithAbb0tt]

@Ugadata - you're right on both counts, it's not what I am looking for and it's a bit more manual than I would like. But unless someone comes up with a better way, I'll be doing the (slightly) manual method. I've been using the enable/disable favorite plugin for awhile now, so I will disable the "any" channel favorite until games that are not broadcast on my RSN come along. At that point, I'll enable the favorite, watch the game, and then disable the favorite afterwards. Clumsy, but doable...

[mickgeller]

I have seen similar issues with MLB favorites as well as SRE not extending a recording where it should. I began noticing them last year. I wonder if it is a change in the content of the guide data. One thing I have seen in my local MLB data is games incorrectly marked "First Run" when they were repeats. Unfortunately, that does not explain everything.

I have given up on depending on my MLB favorites. I review the MLB schedule periodically, every three or four days. I check the SRE data when I need to verify if a game starts at 1PM, or in the evening. I then manually schedule the game. I do this to schedule games at the end of the two weeks' of guide data I have. During the season, I ensure I stay on top of it.

Furthermore, I find I have the best success by reviewing the daily schedule while I eat breakfast. If an MLB game is scheduled for the day, I will do an SRE override, even though I am not changing anything. If the SRE data is not yet ready for the day, I try to remember to check it later. Fortunately, with the pitch clock, it is not as big an issue as it used to be.

The only remaining MLB issue is when Intelligent Recordings decides to record ALL MLB games for me. That seems to happen one a month. I end up using the Don't Like button on speed dial.

[trk2]

I had this issue too when I had cable card and I believe the solution is that I had to remap my preferred channel to a channel number lower than all the alternatives. My memory is that when all else is equal (HD vs SD, no tuner limitation), Sage will default to the lower channel number. There was a thread on this issue on the old forum but I can't find it so this is all based on memory.

[KeithAbb0tt]

You might be right, I'll give it some time and see. I initially thought the same, so I had changed the MLB Network channel to be a higher logical channel number than the RSN. However, I didn't initially see a difference, it was still picking the MLB Network airing instead of my RSN. Since then, I've restarted the SageTV service, so it might be behaving now. I'll keep an eye on it and post an update with my findings.