AlexWilMac
Moderator
Autotimer is a great feature, embedded in OpenBlackHole and, somewhat also in BlackHole (although I experienced some little troubles, there): by this plugin I've managed many times to record films or series without even knowing they had been scheduled.
This post is only a little trick to avoid an unwanted behaviour when you create an autotimer for a TV series or something like that.
Imagine you want to catch any episodes of "Death in Paradise" and the channel broadcast each episode multiple times (replicas).
So, when your Autotimer setup is triggered by finding an episode in the EPG, it may find the same episode many times.
Well: first of all a little advice: wait until the first occurrence of the timer succeeds at recording that episode: you'll never know...
Now, you don't want to record the same episode many times and, in case you are wondering, you can't use the specific Autotimer option where you can decide how many times it will be executed, because we are talking about a series, not a programme like a film or something intended to be as a unique episode.
And even if it was a unique event, for the same reason above, maybe you want to be sure to catch also some replicas, just in case something goes wrong the first time.
So, you can't use that option, most of the times (I actually NEVER use it!).
But this has a counter effect: you may have a lot of timers created by autotimers for exactly the same episode.
What if you delete them? It's a waste of time, because Autotimer will be triggered again and will re-create them after a while.
So, THAT'S THE TRICK: don't delete those timers (for the same episode, of course!).
You should (and usually are) able to see in the timer name itself or in the extended description editable by pressing OK) which episode it refers to. Let's say the E4 had already been recorded: the trick is to DISABLE, not delete, the following identical occurrences of this 4th episode.
This way, these disabled timers will stay in the list until their scheduled time will be over and you'll see them as COMPLETED (although they won't have recorded anything, of course) and you'll be able to remove them from the list just by the BLUE key that cleans the list.
Simple but effective
This post is only a little trick to avoid an unwanted behaviour when you create an autotimer for a TV series or something like that.
Imagine you want to catch any episodes of "Death in Paradise" and the channel broadcast each episode multiple times (replicas).
So, when your Autotimer setup is triggered by finding an episode in the EPG, it may find the same episode many times.
Well: first of all a little advice: wait until the first occurrence of the timer succeeds at recording that episode: you'll never know...
Now, you don't want to record the same episode many times and, in case you are wondering, you can't use the specific Autotimer option where you can decide how many times it will be executed, because we are talking about a series, not a programme like a film or something intended to be as a unique episode.
And even if it was a unique event, for the same reason above, maybe you want to be sure to catch also some replicas, just in case something goes wrong the first time.
So, you can't use that option, most of the times (I actually NEVER use it!).
But this has a counter effect: you may have a lot of timers created by autotimers for exactly the same episode.
What if you delete them? It's a waste of time, because Autotimer will be triggered again and will re-create them after a while.
So, THAT'S THE TRICK: don't delete those timers (for the same episode, of course!).
You should (and usually are) able to see in the timer name itself or in the extended description editable by pressing OK) which episode it refers to. Let's say the E4 had already been recorded: the trick is to DISABLE, not delete, the following identical occurrences of this 4th episode.
This way, these disabled timers will stay in the list until their scheduled time will be over and you'll see them as COMPLETED (although they won't have recorded anything, of course) and you'll be able to remove them from the list just by the BLUE key that cleans the list.
Simple but effective