Channel Management

[CharlieWayne]

Hello All,

Have questions about the easiest way to manage all of the channels that we are not subscribed to.

When looking through the guide we have channels going all the way up to channel 1990. Most every time me want to watch something we get a notice how were not subscribed.

I'm aware that you can right click on the channel in the guide and "delete". But who wants to do that 1500 times?

So is there any software too assist in channel management?

Thanks,

[holidayboy]

Have a look at GuideTool

www.1geek1tool.com/guidetool

[sorethumbs]

Just to add to Rob's post - would this help?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgJXQv4saIU

[CharlieWayne]

Just what I need

Thanks a Million.

[blueiedgod]

In the set up section of WMC, under Guide, you can check/uncheck all 1500 channels and then save, instead of doing them one by one.

I did that once, I have Verizon's TV listings from the website by me, and checked/unchecked what we get and what we don't. Only kept HD version s if we get both HD and SD versions. It's really easy and fast.

[CharlieWayne]

Yeah, I'm running FiOS also. We get all the music channels also that are meant to be apart of their on demand guide. That will take some going through manually I think.

However, this tool will make it much easier. I recall reading one user whom renumber his channels such as Local = 1-99, Sports = 100-199, Movies = 200-299, ... , and so on. I can't recall where I read what he did, but I thought it was neat.

[DSperber]

Have questions about the easiest way to manage all of the channels that we are not subscribed to.

Why wouldn't you simply create a FAVORITES list for the channels that you are subscribed to and DO watch, and therefore would like to see in a "subset Guide"?

That's exactly what a Favorites list is. You don't actually have to edit your "base Guide" that shows ALL channel numbers provided by your cable system. You simply create a new list that contains ONLY WHAT YOU WANT TO INCLUDE.

Then, you select that particular Favorites list (since you can define any number of such subset lists to meet assorted need, e.g. "Olympics" for the five NBC family of channels providing Olympics coverage"). When you push the GUIDE button, you'll be looking at the most recently selected Favorites list... not the "All Channels" list.

[Space]

I believe if you set up a keyword or "any channel" type series recording, it will only record from the channels that you have enabled (i.e. not disabled). So Favorites is a nice feature, but you should still use the "disable" function to disable the channels from which you do not wish to record.

Also, as mentioned by blueiedgod above, you can use "Tasks->Settings->TV->Guide->Edit Channels" to quickly check or uncheck channels to enable/disable them. You can enable the "Show Preview" option on that page to quickly tune to each channel to see if you receive it or not. You can also "Sort by Name" to make it easier to find duplicate channels or the SD/HD version of the same channel (although the SD and HD versions are not always named similarly, so don't always sort next to each other).
I believe the "Auto Select" function may automatically select the channels that you receive, so you may want to try "Clear All" and then select that option (I have never used it, so I am not sure how it works); if it doesn't do what you want, you can always just "Cancel" (upper left) out of the screen and no changes will be made.

Oh, and one last thing, after you have made a change to one or more of the check boxes on this screen, be sure to select the "Save" option in the upper left corner, otherwise all your changes will be discarded (if you try to exit the screen without saving, and you have made any changes, it should pop up a message asking if you want to save, but the default selection is "no" so if you press the select/OK button on the remote without paying attention, it will not save).

[volfan6415]

Have questions about the easiest way to manage all of the channels that we are not subscribed to.

Why wouldn't you simply create a FAVORITES list for the channels that you are subscribed to and DO watch, and therefore would like to see in a "subset Guide"?

That's exactly what a Favorites list is. You don't actually have to edit your "base Guide" that shows ALL channel numbers provided by your cable system. You simply create a new list that contains ONLY WHAT YOU WANT TO INCLUDE.

Then, you select that particular Favorites list (since you can define any number of such subset lists to meet assorted need, e.g. "Olympics" for the five NBC family of channels providing Olympics coverage"). When you push the GUIDE button, you'll be looking at the most recently selected Favorites list... not the "All Channels" list.

* edit started furiously typing before reading that my answer had already been provided .....



Because if you actually remove them from the guide then WMC won't think you have access to the channel and won't try and record any keyword based scheduled recordings on those channels. Otherwise if you have a keyword recording setup and a show comes on one of the channels that you don't subscribe to WMC will attempt to record the program and you will get a whole program times worth of "subscription error" recording, and WMC will block of a tuner during this time period.

[DSperber]

Because if you actually remove them from the guide then WMC won't think you have access to the channel and won't try and record any keyword based scheduled recordings on those channels. Otherwise if you have a keyword recording setup and a show comes on one of the channels that you don't subscribe to WMC will attempt to record the program and you will get a whole program times worth of "subscription error" recording, and WMC will block of a tuner during this time period.

Well yes... you're right. That is certainly a wrinkle I hadn't anticipated or fully thought through adequately.

I actually never (or virtually never) use this keyword-based advance recording approach, and certainly not when I know it might be "vague" or "ambiguous". I have used it on rare occasions, but then only when I KNEW what the title of the program was going to be and it was more than 13 days in advance so that the GUIDE didn't show it. Otherwise, if the program is within 13 days, I'll simply do a "search" and pick the program/series from the "hit list" and then schedule a one-off recording or a series recording. Can't ever go wrong there (as long as I'm careful to pick the OTA network broadcast rather than the TWC/LA version, e.g. 4.1 from my roof antenna instead of 404 from TWC, so as to avoid TWC re-compression and have best image quality).

So yes, it is absolutely and definitely appropriate setup technique to edit the channel list and only have in there only what you actually do subscribe to and receive (and then only the HD channel versions), if not additionally only what channels you might conceivably ever watch. That's certainly what I've done, and probably you and most WMC users, during that one-time-only configuration effort. That's why that configuration capability exists.

But once the channel list is slimmed down, it still is appropriate to compose one or more "Favorites" list subsets. Sure does make scanning the GUIDE (and then scheduling recordings) easier.

[Space]

I actually never (or virtually never) use this keyword-based advance recording approach, and certainly not when I know it might be "vague" or "ambiguous".

Not just keyword; don't forget the "Any channel" and "HD/SD preferred/only" (which are just refinements of the "Any channel" selection) scenarios.

For instance I wanted to record "Sherlock" which is on PBS here in the USA (actually is is called "Masterpiece Mystery!" in the guide). I have three local PBS stations. So I used the one airing of Sherlock that was in the guide to set up a Series recording, but changed the "Channel" to "HD only" so that I would get the HD version of all future episodes, on no matter which of the three channels it was airing.

I could have also used "Any Channel" instead of "HD only" since I have all the SD copies of these PBS stations "disabled", but I wanted to test it out. I think it is actually a better idea to use "Any channel" if you are sure the show will not air on any non-disabled SD channel (and you only want the HD version) since it is possible that the HD flag will not be present in the guide even if the show is HD due to bad guide data.

If there were a fourth PBS station listed in the guide, but for some reason I did not actually get any reception on that station, and it was not disabled, there is a chance it would have tried to record an airing of "Sherlock" from that bad channel. You want to avoid this by disabling any channels that you do not receive/subscribe or otherwise do not want to record from (such as foreign language or SD versions of HD channels).

Of course you may want to record from the SD version of an HD channel in certain situations (maybe to keep disk usage at a minimum), so in that case you can leave the SD version enabled, but then you need to use the "HD/SD preferred/only" options to record the version you want for each individual non channel-specific Series recording.