Collections
Watching Collection using the Play Next Vista Media Center Add-in
A series collection is when Recorded TV Manager "watches" the Media Center folders in your folder list looking for new recordings of a specified series. New recordings of the series are automatically moved to another location in the folder list, in other words, they are collected for later viewing. You can then watch the series in the Media Center interface in the correct order based on original air date.
You can use the Collections wizard on the Recorded TV Manager tab of the console to manage your collections. Click Collections to start the Collections wizard.
In
the Select a series to
collect dialog, select the series name. You can select a name from the
known series list or type the name in manually.
Note: The known series list only includes the names of series recordings since the add-in was installed, so this list may be empty. To populate the list with all current recordings, install and run the Recorded TV Manager WHS Client application on one of your home computers. The client application will add the series names of all current recordings in the folder list to the SeriesInfo database, They will be in the known series list the next time you start the Collections wizard.
Check Active collections only to reduce the known series list to only those series which are currently being collected.
If the series you want to collect is not in the known series list, or the list is empty, click Manually enter a series name: and type the name in the edit box. The series name is case-sensitive and must match exactly the name of the recorded program.
Click Next.
In
the Collect this series
dialog, Check the Collect this series checkbox and then
select a destination folder from the drop-down list. The drop-down list
will contain all the folders in the folder list and the wizard will pre-select
the first folder in the list which resides on the Home Server. If there
are no folders on the Home Server, then it will select the first folder in the
list. Use the drop-down list to select a different folder. New
recordings of the series (in any Media Center folder in the folder list) will be
automatically moved to the selected destination folder.
Click Next.
In
the Watch this series dialog, check the Watch this series
checkbox and then select a Media Center folder from the drop-down list.
When the last recording of this series is deleted from the specified Media
Center folder, then the next episode by original airdate, will
be moved from the collection folder to the Media Center folder.
Click Next.
If you start watching a collection and there is no recording of the series in the specified "watch" Media Center folder, the wizard will offer to move the first episode from the collection folder to the Media Center Folder. Check the Move the first episode from... checkbox to enable that.
Click
Finish.
If Move the fist episode from... is checked, then the AutoCopy service will automatically move the first episode, in chronological order by original air date, from the collection folder to the Media Center folder. Otherwise, use the Recorded TV Manager WHS client application to move the first episode to the Media Center folder.
Watch the series on the Media Center computer.
At this point, the first episode of the series is in the "Recorded TV" list in Media Center on the Media Center machine which was selected for watching this series. Watch the recording as with any other recording in the Media Center interface. When you are done watching this episode, delete it. The Recorded TV Manager AutoCopy Service, which is running on the Home Server will see that you have deleted the program in Media Center and make the assumption that you have "watched" it. The AutoCopy service will then "check" the episode to indicate that it has been watched and also mark it as the "last watched episode" of the series, which is kept in the SeriesInfo database. (You can access the SeriesInfo database using the Recorded TV Manager WHS Client application.) The AutoCopy service will then move the next episode, by original airdate, to the Media Center folder, and it will appear in "Recorded TV" in the Media Center interface. Repeat.
This will continue until you run out of episodes in the collection folder. If new episodes are subsequently recorded, then the whole process will start up again, automatically starting with the first new recording.