Optik PVR Unable to Series Record Properly

[tholley]

After 2 mo of numerous calls and swapping PVR boxes it appears that the PVR “series record” functions simply don’t work. Telus has apparently given up and stopped following up with the issue. They have also stopped billing me, which is nice, but I’d rather just have a system that works. The issue is that I want to record multiple news shows on a daily basis - but only once per show (no duplicates). The “series record” function is supposed to allow me to do that - ie specify only recording the show once per day. However, when I enter and save these series record settings, it deletes the series from scheduled recordings, and nothing gets record. That function is basically inoperable. That leaves me having to record series by “pressing record twice” on the show on the guide (2 red dots appear on the guide). If the show comes on 4 times per day it will record and save al 4 episodes (duplicates) when I only want one episode per day. Why anyone would want 4 copies of the same show is beyond me, but that is how it works. With all of the duplicates getting recorded, it prevents recording of shows I’ve specified since it’s busy recording all the useless duplicates. If the “series record” functions worked as intended, this would not be an issue. With those options you can specify to “only record once per day”. Unfortunately it doesn’t work - or at least no one at Telus support knows how to make it work. Any advice on this would be much appreciated!

[FuzzyLogic]

At least part of the issue is news broadcasts are not considered a 'series'. In other words they don't have episodes and seasons. There are tags used for recording a series and news broadcasts don't have these tags to make that feature work as you are expecting.

I have the older PVR and it has an option to manually record based on date, channel, start and end time. The problem with this is it's a one shot affair. There needs to be a way to do this and have it repeat daily or weekdays. I don't know if this feature is available on the new digital box.

[tholley]

Thanks for your comments, but I think there is more to it as follows:

- 6 mo ago, I could use the “series record” function and it worked for daily newscasts - now it doesn’t. That suggests that some sort of a bug has occurred in the system that prevents proper operation. That’s obvious and Telus should fix it ASAP.
- a basic alarm clock can be set “once” to come on at a certain time every day. Who would want an alarm clock that needs to be set 365 times every year (as my PVR does) ? This is 2024 after all.
- who would want an alarm clock that when set to come on daily, instead of coming on once, came in every hour ? That’s how my PVR works if I use the guide method for recording g the news every day.

At present, the functionally of my Telus PVR is dumber than a basic alarm clock, as regards recording daily news or other recurring broadcasts.

If Telus really cared about customer service, they would have their software people fix this ASAP. It likely affects many thousands of homes in the same manner.

Apparently they recognize the problem and have stopped billing me but I’d rather they just fix it.

[MrSL]

The function to set a manual recording based on date, channel, start and end time is not available on the TelusTv-21T STB.

[Optik-Kate]

Hi there, we are working on addressing the experience gaps around series recording. We have an update this month to improve the experience around recording news, please stay tuned! 

[tholley]

thanks for this information, I look forward to the update !

[tholley]

Hi Kate, Having reviewed this forum I understood that Telus had deployed a “fix” for recording newscasts on a daily basis. However, I just checked my system and it still isn’t recording newcasts. I would like to record BBC news and CBC The National on a daily basis. The Late Show did show up as a recording, but not the newscasts. Please advise when I can expect this to start working. Thank you

[Optik-Kate]

Hi @tholley, we found additional issues with the series recording feature where scheduled recordings are disappearing after guide refreshes. The team is still investigating and working on a fix, I will update when the fix is released. 

That said, I still want to make sure we take a look at your account to ensure it is the same issue. @A-B , could you kindly verify the user and I will pass the account along for investigation? Thanks! 

[Optik-Kate]

@tholley If you could let us know if you see the news episodes showing up in the scheduling tab as multiple episodes, it would be helpful. I'd like to narrow down if the problem is that the episodes do not get scheduled, or the episodes are not being recorded when it's scheduled. 

[A-B]

As @Optik-Kate mentioned, I'll be sending you a private message to gather some info from you. Look out for it!

[Optik-Kate]

Hi @tholley con you confirm if you're scheduling recordings via your mobile app or the box?