Duplicate recordings?

[AnnasDaddy]

Is there a way in WMC to know if a recording is a duplicate of something that already exists on the HDD? The wife keeps recording movies that she would like to see (or my daughter would enjoy), and now I have several copies of the same program. I am getting tired of having to go in and delete recordings, and am hoping that there is an addin or just an option that I am missing.

It would also be great if it would compare the Bluray movies that I have ripped and stored, and not let her record those again either. Not going to get a recording to match a full uncompressed BD...

Thanks,
AD

[adam1991]

This sounds like a training issue as much as anything. It sounds like your wife is asking for a title or keyword to record every time--so that's what it does. That's by design.

What she should be doing instead is, when she sees the movie in the guide, simply hitting the record button and getting a single dot. That means she wants to record THAT show, period.

Training beats twisted workarounds every time.

As for comparing with your list of bluray movies...if your list is nearby when she's browsing the guide, she can do that quickly herself when she sees something she likes.

[mark1234]

I've not tried it, but this tool claims to deal with duplicate recordings.

http://www.fourteenminutes.com/code/wmc-dedupe/

[TheReaper]

Depending on how you use recorded tv (your wife may envision things different than you), this is what I do.

Task -> Settings -> TV -> Recorder -> Recoding Defaults

I set - Keep: Until space needed
I also set (for series default)
- Channels: One channel only
- Keep up to: 3 recordings

Then Media Center automatically deletes old recordings when it needs space for new recordings, with no human intervention. So if I have duplicates, I don't care.

Another thing is to clean up the guide. Disable alternate language versions of channels, and the SD versions of channels that you get in HD. To simplify things, I also renumbered the 3 or so most popular SD only channels, so they appear with the block of HD channels.

[AnnasDaddy]

This sounds like a training issue as much as anything.

Not sure that this is "training" related. I see it as a shortfall of the 7WMC software. It isn't that she is searching by keyword (refuses to do that because no keyboard input), but that there is no indication that the recording already exists on the HDD. If tonight on HBO Zone HD I see that "The Eagle" is playing and I want to see it, I will record it. Tomorrow, when the wife sees the movie "The Eagle" on HBO ZHD and decides she wants to watch it, there is nothing telling her that the show already exists and is stored locally. Make sense?

The only way that I am aware of to avoid duplicates is to switch A LOT back and forth between recorded shows, and the guide. Not exactly ideal...

I've not tried it, but this tool claims to deal with duplicate recordings.

http://www.fourteenminutes.com/code/wmc-dedupe/

I did see that, and have done something similar via perl (scraping metadata and moving/deleting if the same). The only downside to this is the recordings are still made, and only cleaned up afterwards.

Another thing is to clean up the guide. Disable alternate language versions of channels, and the SD versions of channels that you get in HD. To simplify things, I also renumbered the 3 or so most popular SD only channels, so they appear with the block of HD channels.

This is def. good advice. No reason to have the music channels/or any others that I don't watch even show up in the guide.

As far as space, this isn't an issue. I have massive amounts of storage on a raid 5 array. The only reason I am asking is because I would have thought that there would be a solution to it out there. Kind of tired having to hear about it from the wife.

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[richard1980]

I understand your pain. I hate recording the same movie multiple times. Unfortunately, there is no way around it except bouncing back and forth between the Movie Guide and the Movie Library.

FWIW, I'd like the following three functions added to the Movie Guide:

1. The ability to overlay an image indicating that I have previously recorded a movie, with an option to hide all previously recorded movies from Movie Guide.
2. The ability to overlay an image indicating that I currently have a movie in the Movie Library.
3. The ability to hide a movie from appearing in Movie Guide even if I haven't previously recorded it.

[eclas]

I know this is an old thread but I thought someone might have found a fix. My wife's system is recording duplicates of every show. I have it set to record on only 1 channel for each show. Both recordings show that it was recorded at the same time on the same channel. Very strange!