Can I prevent MCE from recording a specific episode in a series?

Hi,
First time posting, hope my question is easy to answer.

Before moving to Windows 7 MCE, I was using a dvr program called Beyond TV made by Snapstream. It was very intuitive and easy to use and it gave a lot of control over how/what/when/ bitrate/format/etc. to record.

I've made my peace with relinquishing control over format and therefore overall recording size of programs etc. but there was a nice feature that I would like to be able to use in MCE.

I was able to prevent a specific episode i a series from being recorded like say, for example, do not record the 5th and 7th episode of Season 1 of Grimm because I already saw them and don't want to waste cpu and tuner use.

Is that possible or do I have to let MCE record it so that it can then add it to the "watched" list and stop trying to record it.

Also, while we're on the subject, how do I "re-enable" a show that was already recorded to be "re-recorded" again. It's very rare but sometimes due to a glitch in the guide, MCE will record something, but the actual show was not recorded because the guide was erroneous and now it thinks its been recorded and skips trying to record it.

Thanks for reading.

studio54 said:

Hi,
First time posting, hope my question is easy to answer.

Before moving to Windows 7 MCE, I was using a dvr program called Beyond TV made by Snapstream. It was very intuitive and easy to use and it gave a lot of control over how/what/when/ bitrate/format/etc. to record.

I, too, used BeyondTV prior to moving to WMC. They both have their goods and bads, but both are fine products in my opinion.

I've made my peace with relinquishing control over format and therefore overall recording size of programs etc. but there was a nice feature that I would like to be able to use in MCE.

I was able to prevent a specific episode i a series from being recorded like say, for example, do not record the 5th and 7th episode of Season 1 of Grimm because I already saw them and don't want to waste cpu and tuner use.

Is that possible or do I have to let MCE record it so that it can then add it to the "watched" list and stop trying to record it.

There is no control over the "watched" list (i.e. History). You can't add your own items to it.

However you can look at your "upcoming recordings" list (either by date or by series name), and manually update specific individual upcoming scheduled recordings shwon to specify DO NOT RECORD. Of course you can only do that for scheduled recordings over the next 11 days or so, since that's the forward-looking limit of the Guide. But that's how you have to UN-SCHEDULE specific upcoming scheduled recordings for a series.

Also, while we're on the subject, how do I "re-enable" a show that was already recorded to be "re-recorded" again. It's very rare but sometimes due to a glitch in the guide, MCE will record something, but the actual show was not recorded because the guide was erroneous and now it thinks its been recorded and skips trying to record it.

Again, you would use the GUIDE to manually schedule a recording even though it is part of a scheduled "series" but has been automatically un-scheduled for recording by WMC because theoretically it's already been recorded previously.

Just go into the GUIDE, find the cell for that upcoming airing of the program you want to record (which will at the moment not appear with an indication that it's scheduled for recording, since it's been decided by WMC that's the right thing to do), and push OK and confirm the "record" query. You've now just manually forced the scheduling for recording of an arbitrary program in a Guide cell (which also happens to be part of a series recording, but that doesn't matter).