[mythtv] Program Titles

[Michael T. Dean]

  On 12/12/2010 04:30 AM, James Courtier-Dutton wrote:
> I am in the progress of implementing EPG decoding for the UK SKY DVB-S
> within Myth.
> The titles of programs can be as follows:
> 1) The Italian Job
> 2) New Tricks
> 3) Batman
>
> When displayed in a list alphabetically one wants:
> 1) Batman     (sort starting from the B)
> 2) The Italian Job (sort starting from the I and not the T)
> 3) New Tricks. (sort starting from the N)
>
> How should the "Title" be presented to myth so that myth can sort then
> correctly.
> The EPG itself has a special character within the title string that
> indicates the "sort starting with" position within the title string.
> Does myth use a special character for this, or some other method?

MythTV currently has a (bit of a hack) using a regexp, that can be 
translated, to remove some words from the start of the title when 
sorting.  (And it's not consistently applied throughout code.)  
Generally, the regexp contains unimportant articles for the language 
(and can cause some problems--for example with a German-speaking user 
who has an English-language copy of the movie Die Hard).

See sortTitle() in programs/mythfrontend/playbackbox.cpp for one example.

That said, I'm sure a better approach would be considered.  :)

> Second question.
> The EPG arrives on a particular MUX. I therefore want myth to only
> look for the EPG when it is idle and not using a DVB-S card to capture
> a recording on some other MUX.
> How do I get myth to do stuff during idle times?

There's a plan to simplify and refactor the EIT code for 
http://code.mythtv.org/trac/ticket/3597 .  I don't really know much more 
about it, though.  Maybe someone else can give you some information on 
the planned design--or at least if it will handle your needs.

As it is, TTBOMK, MythTV will do what you want--with the one exception 
of looking only on that one mux.  It will scan all of them, but will 
only actually find usable EIT on the one.  And the EIT scanner will only 
look for EIT when the cards aren't in use for recordings (assuming 
active EIT scanning--which may be the only way that users will be able 
to configure systems for the described EIT mechanism, since passive EIT 
only scans the mux while recordings on that mux are in progress, so if 
it's a mux that's not used for recordings, passive EIT won't collect data).

(All of that EIT stuff is AFAIU--which may not be that far.)

Mike