Tvheadend

I'd suggest looking at your log file (syslog or equivalent) to see why the time was missed. I'd guess that there's no free tuner for whatever reason, or tvh is unable to create the recording file in your target directory. What happens if you record on demand (just grab a channel and see)? Does it happen with all channels or just some, with SD, HD or both?

Switch on debug logging to get a bit more information about what's happening.

Thanks. Debugging says "Unable to create directories". I've tried chmod 777 on the folder on the hdd it records to but that doesn't help. The folder I'm trying to record to is /media/mydrive/tv/recordings I'm wondering if ownership might be the problem????? It's a Pi and I think the owner of most of it is pi. Wondering if I need to change ownership and if so how?????

I should add that the drive is vfat. Not sure if it helps

I think recordings default to hts/video, as that's the default user/group of the tvheadend process - not sure how you have it configured, though, but that's where to start.

Try su-ing to the user under which you run tvheadend and creating a file in your target directory. A chmod of 777 on the directory should solve it, though, so something's still not right there... I presume you're creating sub-directories by channel/title/date or similar? Is it that step that's failing?

You could try changing the target directory as well, especially if your target drive is on removable media (which it will be on a Pi) as write permissions may be controlled at mount time? (guessing)

I'd start with su and go from there, as it's not tvheadend per se, it's an OS/UID/GID issue, I think.

I'm thinking of doing a complete fresh install with an ext4 filesystem, so I'll hang fire on this temoprarily. But I'm sure I'll be back!

The answer was to use it on an ext4 filesystem it seems. Maybe permissions are easier with both the pi and hdd on linux native than a mishmash of linux and microsoft filesystem.

Usually this error is due to difficulties with different "unsafe" characters in the title of the file to be recorded. Checking the box from Configuration|Recording|Remove all unsafe characters from filename will help here.

I just wish someone could add a descriptive error like "Unable to create a file 'xyz'" instead of something as stupid as "time missed"