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FibreOP Mediaroom Features Discussion

140K views 426 replies 86 participants last post by  pestul 
#1 · (Edited)
Now that Aliant is installing their Microsoft Mediaroom TV service, I've started this thread to discuss Mediaroom features and answer questions about how it works.

Aliant is using Mediaroom 1.6.25314.102, which is the same version as Bell and MTS.

One of the differentiating features of Mediaroom is the Whole Home PVR that records up to 4 shows at once. You can watch programs from any set-top-box (STB), erase programs and schedule future recordings.

The PDF of the Mediaroom User Guide is here:

http://productsandservice.bellaliant.net/PS/pdf-download/3513573/default.pdf

The PDF of the Mediaroom Channel Guide is here:

http://productsandservice.bellalian...565873/FibreOP_Channel_numbers_EN-Apr2013.pdf

Aliant also has support pages for additional info:
Select: For Your Home > Support > FibreOP > TV.

You should see a choice of 2 guide styles. Choose the transparent guide for Mediaroom.
 
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#55 ·
Well, if you don't have a PVR it is an issue. Even if you do have a PVR, what if you don't want to record it? Just want it to change channels when the show comes on in case you forget about it. If you don't want to record it, but use that function so it will change channels, you are just going to end up with a cluttered mess of shows on your list that you are going to have to clean out.
I just don't know why they couldn't have left this feature in, it was/is very handy.
 
#64 ·
If you don't want a bunch of episodes cluttering up your recordings listing, set the series timer to only keep 1 episode. This is what I do with the evening news and it works well.
 
#56 ·
One feature I am surprised isn't available on the Mediaroom PVR (or maybe I'm missing something) is the prompt saying "You can't record this channel because you don't subscribe to it." Or something along those lines.

I attempted to record a show quickly last night and had nothing in the morning since the channel I chose to record wasn't unlocked for me. Coming in from the Roger's PVR it wouldn't allow recordings on channels you don't have and provided a prompt saying you couldn't create a recording. Is this something a later version of Mediaroom can do or is it something that has to be enabled on the STB by Bell Aliant or something?
 
#57 ·
@Meanie, Mediaroom doesn't allow recording of channels that you don't subscribe to. I've had the same version of Mediaroom as you, as well as older and newer versions and they're all the same in this regard. It's possible Aliant has something mis-configured with their channel selection.

If you try to record from the guide you will get the message "This program cannot be recorded".
 
#60 ·
It certainly appears to be busted. I went to a West Coast channel that gives a screen saying "Call us to Subscribe to this Channel." I opened the Guide and recorded a show 30 minutes ahead of now. The "Recording Scheduled" banner appeared and the big Red Circle was listed on the show.

Same thing happens when you search for a program and chose to record on a channel you do not subscribe to. There is no warning saying "This program cannot be recorded." Looks like I'll be calling Aliant. Thanks for the assist Dave.
 
#61 ·
Definitely not working the way it should.

With Mediaroom on MTS, when you get the "Program Info" screen (by pressing the INFO button for example), the only menu option you see is "Other Times". There is no option to "Record Episode" or "Record Series". In addition the descriptive portion of the screen also says something like "Channel 335 CITYp doesn't allow recording" flashing yellow about once per second.
 
#63 ·
It certainly does not have any yellow prompts on our end. I placed a called with Tech Support last night who basically said "I'll transfer you to Sales, they might be able to get your question to the right team since I can't fix that."

Seemed like shitty service, but I did speak with Sales who said they'll bring up the concern to their "TV People." I also mentioned the random info Bug popping up to hopefully get that one fixed for everyone, but at this point that fix is probably years away if it's not even resolved on Mediaroom 2.0. However, the more widespread it is, the more likely it will also get fixed.

Thanks again!
 
#66 ·
Does anyone know if you're supposed to get any kind of notification when a recording does not go through? I have various series set to record, but some do not, and I assume that's it's due to live streams eating up what the recorded streams need to record but there doesn't seem to be any notification or indication when something doesn't record.

Sometimes I have the recordings set to record by series but the listing will not have the record circle on it, other times it will show it but with an X if there is a conflict. Is there some kind of bug that I'm not aware of?

So the latest example is the Ultimate Fighter series is in my record list, anytime, anyday, first run and rerun, but here it is 10pm and no recording symbol as if nothing was set. I don't get it. I hit record to start recording after the program started and it is recording fine.
 
#67 ·
@JimmyFace, if you have a red circle with an X. there is a conflict because you have more programs scheduled than you have streams. For example, if you have 3 HD programs scheduled and you only have 2 HD streams, one of the programs will show a conflict.

You can press the press the INFO button on the program with the conflict and choose "Resolve Conflict" to choose which programs should have priority. If you still wish to record the other programs you can choose "Other Times" for some of the programs and reschedule the program at another time when there is no conflict. If that's not possible, you can record one of the programs on an SD channel. You can go to "Recorded TV" and scan "Scheduled Recordings" to see if there are any conflicts with an X.

Scheduled programs take priority over live streams, so the live stream will be interrupted to start the recording.

Re: "The Ultimate Fighter" - Mediaroom only schedules recordings on one channel. Is it possible you were looking at the same program on a different channel and that's why it wasn't scheduled. Mediaroom only schedules a named episode once (it actually uses an internal episode ID), so perhaps the episode was scheduled at a different time. When you choose "Any day, anytime", Mediaroom gives priority to episodes around the time of the one you selected. If no showing qualifies, it will choose another showing. You can see when the episodes for a particular series are scheduled by going to the series tab, selecting the series and pressing the left arrow to see scheduled recordings.
 
#68 ·
So when this occurs it's likely that the showID has changed on that channel for whatever reason and is no longer considered part of the series by MediaRoom. That's the only thing that makes sense but it seems be happening a lot for me. It happened with Ultimate Fighter and now for tomorrow night with Smallville and Supernatural. I'm not sure how I can fix this. I'm suprised this isn't happening for others.
 
#70 ·
Ok, 480WPIX for Smallville, so tonight is the finale and I have the series set to record but no recording shows up in the schedule. So I go directly to the show in the guide and click the record button and it says already scheduled to record or something, but there is no red dots on the guide listing to indicate it will record, and it's not in the schedule tab. So I cancel the series and create a new series recording and then it works, but this is happening for several of the shows I have set to series recording. Last night the office and outsourced didn't record and I don't get what's going on. It seems to be a glitch in MediaRoom but I don't know why nobody else is complaining about it.

Exact same thing as this guy on MTS:
http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=121549

I think it would be useful to have a known issues or bugs thread for MediaRoom.
 
#71 ·
Hi JimmyFace,

As you can see from that thread from a year ago, I'm an MTS TV Mediaroom user and I wasn't able to reproduce the problem that person was having, even though I had the same series scheduled.

There have been a few isolated problems with guide data, but these are relatively rare. I rarely watch anything "live". I've had as many as 100 active series set up, with several recording daily. I've removed the cancelled series from my PVR and I'm down to 88, though some of those won't be back until the fall. I got into the habit of checking my scheduled recordings when I had cable TV and still do that. Mediaroom is much more reliable and I can't recall the last time I lost a scheduled recording.
So I go directly to the show in the guide and click the record button and it says already scheduled to record or something, but there is no red dots on the guide listing to indicate it will record, and it's not in the schedule tab.
The only time I've seen that is when the recording fails due to lack of disk space and I'm trying to reschedule on a secondary STB (not the PVR). The STB thinks the recording is still scheduled, since it wasn't notified of the failure.

It just occurred to me that maybe you're having a problem with a STB getting out of sync with the PVR. Are you seeing the problem on a STB? If so, do you see the same thing on the PVR?

I do almost all of my scheduling and 95% of my viewing on my PVR. Maybe that's why I seldom have problems.
 
#72 ·
Well I've verified the problem on both STBs and I've found numerous threads through google where people are complaining about this. The fact that it works for you is great but there is obviously a glitch with MediaRoom. I guess my only fix right now is to cancel and then re-record the series.
 
#73 ·
@JimmyFace, I would suggest that you try a total reboot of your system. Power every thing down and then turn on the modem and wait for a few minutes until it's completely initialized. Then power on the PVR and wait for about 5 minutes until the list of recordings is accessible. Then power on each STB, one at a time.

If the problem persists, the next step is to contact Aliant. There could an issue with the guide data or the way that Aliant processes it. I've seen situations where only certain customers are affected for some reason.
 
#74 ·
Question regarding FibreOp PVR

Hey All,

I have a couple questions about the VIP1216 PVR using the new Mediaroom OS.

1) Is there a way to make the PVR show the amount of time remaining to record in Hours & Minutes? On our older Bell Expressvu PVR would give a rough estimate pertaining to how many Hours/Minutes were left for HD and SD recordings, respectively. The only indication on Aliant's PVR is burried deep within the system settings and only shows a percentage used. Not very accessible nor user friendly :(

2) My girlfriend's sister also has Aliant TV in their house via FibreOp with the same VIP1216 PVR. Her husband wishes to record SportsCenter on TSNHD each morning at 07:00 to 08:00, as the rest of the day are repeats. When we try to setup the series recording, we specify "each day around 7am", and have tried both using "First Run & Rerun" as well as "First Run Only". If we try using "First Run & Rerun" it records EVERY SINGLE SHOW that airs (and there are LOTS! ~ 300 recordings scheduled) or if we select "First Run" it schedules 0 recordings and never records.

How can they set their PVR to record that show so that it's a repeat timer at 7AM each day and only record once? We can't figure it out...

Thanks in advance for any help :)
 
#75 ·
@larathydo

1) Unfortunately there isn't a friendlier display of available disk space in Mediaroom. Mediaroom deletes the oldest unprotected when the available space reaches about 10%.

I have MTS TV in Manitoba and my VIP1216 holds about 100 hours of SD video. If my available space is 15%, then I can record about 5 hours of SD before Mediaroom starts deleting old programs. You may have slightly different results with Aliant, depending on how they encode the SD and HD streams.

2) "Any day around 7am" will record the program up to 2 hours before and 2 hours after that time. That option works great for prime-time programs which can be rescheduled at the whim of the network. It doesn't work so well for programs like SportsCenter that have the same "program" scheduled many times per day. In this case Mediaroom would schedule any SportsCenter program starting between 5 am and 9 am.

I don't know how well it will work, but you could try "Any day, anytime, once per day". My experience is that Mediaroom will give preference to the program around the time-slot when you set the series recording. I don't know if this works in every case.

If the series recordings don't work well for you, the best solution may be to set up a manual recording recording for each day at 7 am. Go to 7 am in the guide and press the RECORD button. Press the FF button to advance to the next day and press RECORD again. Do this until you reach the end of the guide. I would repeat this about once a week to pick up the future programs as they show up in the guide. Not the most elegant solution, but it works.
 
#76 ·
Does anyone have an idea about how much disk space is on the PVR boxes going out in NB? I like the BEV style where I can just hook in my own external HD, is it possible they could add that to the FibreOP TV boxes?

Second question, what about this scenario... You can't pause/rew/fwd live TV on the non-PVR boxes, but what if say I start recording a football game, and while it's recording on the main PVR, wife starts watching Survivor there. Since the fooball is a recording in progress, can I still access the recording from the other set-top boxes in my house, and get a sort of fake-live-TV thing going?
 
#78 ·
@niall111, the VIP1216 has a 160 GB hard drive which will hold about 100 hours of SD video. The Aliant user guide mentions "up to 100 hours of HD video". If this is correct, then Aliant would have to use the VIP1232 (320 GB) which is what Bell uses for Fibe TV in Ontario and Quebec. Mediaroom doesn't support external hard drives. There is a USB port, but it is not currently used.

2) With Mediaroom 1.6 you can also start the recording from the STB and play it back while it's recording for the "fake-live-TV thing". Mediaroom 2.0 will allow you to pause live TV on a STB because it buffers all the video streams on the main PVR.
 
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