PVR Manager not finding The Strange Case of the Law

[dinkypumpkin]

On 06/07/2012 09:46, Derek Moss wrote:
> On 6 July 2012 09:45, Derek Moss <dmgi at stoptheviolence.co.uk> wrote:
> Hmm, wouldn't it be easier just to put whatever commandline is needed
> in pvr_manager.cmd, so that the cache is automatically updated
> whenever the Web PVR Manager is started?

The batch file doesn't have access to your web pvr settings, so it won't 
know which caches to refresh.  The settings are stored in a browser 
cookie wherever your browser saves cookies, and the cookie may not even 
exist if you use a cookie manager of some kind.

What you suggest might work up to a point.  You could add an entry for 
the "type" option with your preferred programme types to your options 
file and then insert a call to "get_iplayer --refresh" at the top of 
pvr_manager.cmd to force a cache refresh before the web pvr launches. 
For users with slow connections, that will slow down web pvr startup 
noticeably, but if you were going to add this feature you should make it 
optional, turned on by a command line switch.  Additionally, you can't 
manage your options file from the web pvr gui, but you might not care if 
you always search on the same programme types.

The basic question here is whether or not you should have to use the 
options file to configure web pvr functions that can otherwise be 
managed in the gui.  The guy who wrote the web pvr obviously thought 
not.  In general, I agree that the web pvr should remain in its own 
little universe.  For one thing, there is no equivalent of the above for 
anyone who runs the web pvr as a CGI application in a web server (though 
that is most likely a tiny group of users).  More importantly, from a 
support perspective it's much easier to communicate "hit Refresh Cache 
and search again" when someone complains that they can't find a 
programme in the web pvr.  The alternative would be "close your browser, 
kill the web pvr, open a command prompt, enter a certain command to 
update the options file (which web pvr users may not even know about and 
thus might require additional explanation) to add the programme type(s) 
you want, restart the web pvr, make sure caches update on startup by 
looking for the listing in the terminal window, open your browser and 
reconnect to the web pvr, then search again".