TV listing issue

[Cherran]

When searching for show times, I am getting a "This program has no other show times. Please try again later."  Amazingly, if I know the time the show is on, it actually shows in the listings, but search says it doesn't. This is inconsistent as well. Look at it one minute, there are show times, look at it a minute later, and there aren't.

???

[Zeph]

I'm experiencing this with BlueCurve TV.

[lmacri]

Hi Cherran:

Thanks for posting about this.

I've been having the same problem when searching my HD PVR guide (Motorola DCX3510-M) for show times for just over a week now. If the search finds a matching program and I highlight it and select OK to see details it almost always says "This program has no other show times. Please try again later" even though I can find the program listed in my PVR's channel guide.

The actual search can be very erratic as well. For example, if I want to search for broadcast times for the upcoming 2023 IIHF U-18 Men World Championship, typing in "IIH" will often find 0 results (if search is working correctly you should only need to enter a minimum of 3 characters or letters to start searching) but "IIHF" will find listings for 10 games (even though all but 2 of the 10 results show "This program has no other show times. Please try again later" when selected). If I select CLEAR and search again for "IIHF" a second time it will often go back to 0 search results, and I have to completely exit from the search feature and start again from scratch.

[Cherran]

HI Imacri,

I have the two of the same model PVR, and I've been having the problem for a couple of weeks now, and I've noticed some of the same issues with typing in (or deleting letters). I've searched for IIHF stuff as well, and have found that if the show title is 'World Men's Hockey Championship" it may show 0 results, but by deleting the 'p' at the end, it will show some episodes, but if I delete the next 'i' it will go back to 0 results. Delete another letter and some come back. It is when I try to see what actual times a show is on, and some of these hockey games come up as a folder in the search box, and are actually being aired at least 8-10 times, that it comes up with the "This program has no other show times. Please try again later" crap. What I have discovered in the meantime, is that if you wait for the error message to clear, and hit the enter button again, it might actually show some results. Or, it might take a couple or three times of doing this to see the actual results. I'm beginning to think that whoever is doing their programming is completely out of their depth. I've noticed other issues that seem to come and go, and require unplugging the unit for several minutes and letting it 'update' to whatever the latest firmware is available. Frustrating to say the least.

[lmacri]

Hi @shaw-tony :

Is anyone from Shaw looking into this? The behaviour of the search function on my HD PVR guide (Motorola DCX3510-M) is so erratic that it's essentially useless, and rebooting my PVR doesn't solve the problem.

There is a UEFA Champions League semi-final match (Man City vs Real Madrid) on CBS (my Channel 4) today at 2:00 PM CDT but if I search for "UEFA", SOC", "SOCCER", "MADRID" or any other search term I can think of the search returns 0 results  However,  I can see this game is scheduled for 2:00 PM when I scroll through the CBS / Channel 4 listing in my HD PVR guide . I apparently missed yesterday's first semi-final (Inter vs Milan) because of this problem.

[mdk]

@lmacri --  Hi shaw-tony : Is anyone from Shaw looking into this? 

It has been at least one year since "shaw-tony" has stopped participating in this peer-to-peer discussion forum.

This forum is not a direct path to Shaw Support.

I recommend that you contact Shaw (1-888-472-2222) to re-ask your question.

[lmacri]

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@mdk wrote:

...I recommend that you contact Shaw (1-888-472-2222) to re-ask your question.

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Hi mdk:

Thanks, but I already did that and nothing Tech Support tried remotely could fix the problem. They suggested that I either replace my DCX-3510-M HD PVR (which means I would lose all my recordings) or upgrade my service to BlueCurve TV (which can't afford). It seems unlikely to me that multiple users would experience the same problem with their search function at the same time due to a hardware failure, but I have a service call scheduled for Sunday May 21st, and they're going to swap out my HD PVR to see if that fixes the problem. I'll post back after that service call with a status update.

I should mention that if I search now (e.g., for "HOC" or "HOCKEY") there are "0 results" on the TV Programs tab of the search results but multiple matches for movies on the "On Demand" tab, so it appears that the search function is only broken if I'm searching for scheduled programs and movies listed in the HD PVR Guide.

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...It has been at least one year since "shaw-tony" has stopped participating in this peer-to-peer discussion forum....

---

Thanks for letting me know.  I'm sorry to hear that. Are there any Shaw employees who moderate this forum who still reply to customer inquires, or is that thing of the past now?

[lmacri]

Hi Cherran:

I made an interesting discovery. There seems to be a limit on the maximum number of scheduled series and/or number of recorded programs that I can have on the DCX3510-M HD PVR, and when I exceed that limit my search function stops working correctly.

I assumed Shaw would be swapping out my HD PVR on Sunday so I decided to delete a few series recordings (Series tab) and about a dozen recorded programs (Recordings tab) yesterday, and my search function started working (partially) again. It still isn't fully functional, but at least it doesn't always say "0 results" when I search now.

I'm currently back to where I was in early April. For example, there's a Yellowstone marathon on Channel 16 (Paramount Network) starting 26-May-2023 and after the cleanup when I searched for "YEL" or "YELL" I didn't see any results, but as soon as I entered "YELLO" one result popped up for a folder for Yellowstone. The first time I highlighted that folder and pressed the OK/Select button it displayed the typical "This program has no other showtimes. Please try again later", but if I pressed that OK/Select button three or four times the folder finally opened and I could see the 53 individual programs scheduled between May 26th and May 30th. I exited search and then tried again, and searching for "YEL" immediately returned results this time, and I could see that Yellowstone folder plus two additional movies (i.e, for movies starring the actor Anton Yelchin).

According to specs I found the ARRIS / Motorola DCX3510-M has a 500 GB hard drive and 512 MB of DRAM but only 64 MB of flash (nonvolatile) memory. I don't think lack of free disk space was the problem (according to the disk usage indicator on my Recordings tab I was only using about 2/3 of my drive for recorded programs before I started my cleanup) so it's possible there is limit on the number of program titles you can store in flash memory before the search function goes wonky. I'm going to delete a few more recordings this weekend to see if anything improves, but I think I'll phone Shaw back today and postpone my service call until I can figure out exactly what's going on. I don't know why Zeph is seeing the same problem with their BlueCurve TV, but I'm guessing that Shaw tweaked the search function in March or April of 2023 and it's now causing problems if you start to run low on flash memory.  I only have a 10 MBps internet connection so perhaps that's part of the problem as well.

[mdk]

@lmacri -- not to pick on you, but the phrases "only 64 MB" and "only 10 Mbps" are an indication of how things have changed since Bill Gates said "640 KB is enough for everybody", and since dial-up connections downloaded at a maximum of 56 Kbits per second.  640 KB is 0.64 MB, and 56 Kbps is 0.056 Mbps -- both 100 times smaller.

I once paid $100 for a used 1 GB disk-drive. Last week, I paid $20 for a new 240 GB SSD. That is 240 times the capacity, for 1/5 of the price, and $100 was more than one day's pay.  Now, $100 gets you four meals at Swiss Chalet or White Spot.