Choose which channel the default series link goes to

[cheenis]

Couple of questions for you all...

Q1 - Series link behaviour:
Ok, so I may be weird here as I suspect everybody else wants to do the opposite, but... my LCD is pre HD and thus I'd rather the series link defaults to BBC one rather than BBC HD as it will take up less space on my drives.

Is there a way to set Win7 MC to prioritise the none HD channels for a series link?

Q2 - Optimisation:
Could anybody tell me what ‘Optimisation' does on media centre? Should I have it on if my OS is on an SDD?

Q3 - EPG Data:
Where does Win7 MC store this information and what does it do with the old data? Does it get wiped over/ deleted? Does it bloat into an enormous file?

Q4 - Series link/ recording schedule:
Where does MC pick this up from? Where do these files sit? I guess where I am really getting to is are there (and if so, where are they) bits of Win7 MC that need tidying up once in a while to avoid hard drives cloging up?

Q5 - TV Recorded Movie file management:
I'd like for film recordings to be placed into my movie folder rather than the TV Recordings folder so I have all my movies in one place automatically. Happy to an auto move post recording or for it to identify the file as a movie and record it directly to the movies folder... any ideas?

Thanks in advance

 

[steford]

I'll have a go at (1). There is the option in recording settings to "Prefer SD" or "Prefer HD". This only works for channels 7MC knows are HD and where it sees alternate recordings it seems. My preference is to merge any simulcast SD/HD channels into a single channel and prioritise HD based on tuner. This though is for both viewing and recording AFAIK so may not be ideal in your case.

 

[steford]

Now I think about it there is an option to pick channel. So if 7MC sees a series on more than 1 channel then in options you should be able to pick "any" or just one of the channels. This should do what you want.

 

[spyder viewer]

In Settings/Recorder/Recording Defaults/Channel, select One channel only.

When you choose a programme to be recorded, select the version on BBC SD channel. If you don't watch HD, you could disable the channel in the programme guide.

 

[cheenis]

Thank for the response guys.

First post from Steford sounds exactly what I want, but I cannot find that option on mine. Sorry as it is probably in front of my face, but I just can't see it. Could you give me the menu path please? I had seen the 'record from 1 channel' option previously, but this was imperfect to me as I sometimes have clashes so I want to capture the late night re-run or something like that. Also, if I can't catch an SD airing then I'd rather catch the HD version than miss it, but given the choice I'd take the SD stream.

I had thought about picking the right channel in the first place, and this may be how I have to do it, but I tend to use the search function and it doesn't give you the channel option like that... unless my W7MC noob mind hasn't spotted it yet.

Currently working on getting films to appear in the movie section following a rip from makemkv... these forums are a life line and I'm sure I'll find the answer soon!

 

[steford]

As I see it the prefer SD and prefer HD options only come up when 7MC knows about an HD alternative. I've only seen this appear for BBC2/BBCHD (not BBC1/BBC1HD). If I filter the movie guide by "HD" relatively few show - so I'm not convinced 7MC "knows" all the HD channels currently available.

 

[cheenis]

This makes sense. It's not the end of the world anyway as I've got a good amount of disk space, but I know how quickly this space dissapears

 

[Stiggy]

As I see it the prefer SD and prefer HD options only come up when 7MC knows about an HD alternative. I've only seen this appear for BBC2/BBCHD (not BBC1/BBC1HD). If I filter the movie guide by "HD" relatively few show - so I'm not convinced 7MC "knows" all the HD channels currently available.

There are only 'HD' listing for BBC HD at the moment. For the other channels (BBC ONE HD, ITV 1 HD, Channel 4 HD) you have to manually copy over the SD listings.

MS should really have sorted this by now. With the demise of The Green Button site I don't even know who to complain to.

Edit: You can report Guide data problems here:
https://connect.microsoft.com/site1145/Feedback

 

[talos2010]

Couple of questions for you all...

Q2 - Optimisation:
Could anybody tell me what ‘Optimisation’ does on media centre? Should I have it on if my OS is on an SDD?

All it does is restart Media Centre

 

[Stiggy]

Q2 - Optimisation:
Could anybody tell me what ‘Optimisation’ does on media centre? Should I have it on if my OS is on an SDD?

I thought Optimization was a bit like a daily defrag. Without it, those big files which are daily created and deleted will get fragmented.

Whether or not you should do it on an SSD I don't know.

 

[steford]

There are only 'HD' listing for BBC HD at the moment. For the other channels (BBC ONE HD, ITV 1 HD, Channel 4 HD) you have to manually copy over the SD listings.

MS should really have sorted this by now. With the demise of The Green Button site I don't even know who to complain to.

Edit: You can report Guide data problems here:
https://connect.microsoft.com/site1145/Feedback

As I thought.

I would say then that for the OP there are 3 choices:-

1) Keep the HD and SD channels separate and schedule series recordings on SD channels only allowing HD channels to be viewed live

2) Merge SD and HD and prioritise SD meaning SD will be recorded over HD and HD used as a fallback if the SD tuner is busy. I think this will prevent watching HD live though as it will also default to SD - not sure how to cycle through tuners

3) Merge SD and HD and prioritise HD. HDD will fill quicker but you get to use HD where possible (there's not that much stuff). I guess it depends on viewing habits. My 1TB drive is only half full and I've got stuff going back a month already - deleting after watching, deleting when space required, keeping important stuff until watched etc ought to help although I realise we all record different amounts of stuff on different channels for different reasons.

 

[cheenis]

I'll give the merge a go tonight, When my TV finally dies and I join the HD revolution then I can undo it then. This approach seems to make sense to me as I don't want to remove the option of falling back onto HD recording if there is a clash.

Thanks chaps & I think I'll leave the optimsation alone. Everything I've read about SSDs says to turn the defrag off and I have (I'll be posting my build log soon once I've got my photos sorted and finished playing with media browser, etc).

My next question is how people schedule archiving to their NAS... do you use something like Robocopy? I'd like to be able to automate it based upon the age of the file and to set it to run as specific times. If I can have it so that the PC wakes up when it is sleeping to do this and then goes back to slepp then great, but if it can't do that then I'm not going to cry. Ease of use is also a factor as I'm lazy

 

[talos2010]

I thought Optimization was a bit like a daily defrag. Without it, those big files which are daily created and deleted will get fragmented.

Whether or not you should do it on an SSD I don't know.

No, it restarts the ehshell.exe service.
Schedule Windows 7 Media Center Optimization for Better Performance - How-To Geek