[mythtv-users] A workaround for the "Daily Show" and other repeats problems

[Bruce Markey]

Brad Templeton wrote:
> As many people know, the Daily Show runs several times a day, all
> repeating the episode that airs earlier at 11pm the day before.

...which algorithms can't detect and only humans can assume based
on observation. However, if you look at the current listings, this
assumption is likely untrue. There is an 11:30 generic episode,
and again at 1:30pm Tue that is almost surely not a repeat of
the 11:00pm episode.

>   The
> listing data is often not filled it, often it is just a stock line
> about "A humorous take on today's news stories."

And a programid of SH2930530000. This is the generic episode.

> Thus Myth (and Tivo and others) don't know how to handle it.  They can
> either treat all the shows as repeats or all as new, which is not waht
> you want.  You end up needing to do a manual timeslot setting for each
> day.

"manual timeslot setting for each day"? Sounds like an approach
for an antiquated system. A daily manual would suck because it
would always record with no regard for duplicate detection or
even if there was something scheduled other than TDS. MythTV,
however, has a Timeslot record type that will verify that it is
the intended title and will check for previously recorded and
even Repeat if you use the new episodes only option.

Generally, generic episodes have an old OriginalAirDate so the
new episodes option will consider them as repeats. For TDS this
is generally true so I have this set. It will record each new
episode once and skip old or generic episodes.

There is one nasty exception lately. They seem to not always get
in the episode/guest info in in time for Monday's listing. Therefore,
I have a Weekslot for Monday with default dup rules. This will
record new or generic episodes but will skip episodes with info
that matches previously recorded. This takes precedence for Mon 11pm
and the rest of the week it grabs each unique new episode once.

> I have worked a kludge up to fix this, though I have not tested it long
> term.

If the programid is present, it match on programid with no
regard to string matching of the descriptive fields.

>    The following mysql script will find the entries with the
> dummy description, and add a subtitle for the correct air date.

Any logic to do something fancy would be better served by
putting the same logic in the scheduler so that an option
could be chosen dynamically rather than have it hardcoded
by altering listings data with non-authoritative information.

> However, it won't be perfect yet.

Or ever. You can't get blood from a stone. If the station
does not provide unique episode information then you can
only speculate what to do about it. A pattern that seemed
to be true last week may not be true this week (see TDS at
11:30pm tonight).

>   First of all, during repeat weeks, it
> will give the shows unique identifiers, and so you will record the
> repeats if they have the dummy description.  Fortunately they often get
> a real description when they are repeats, but you might still record them
> if you never saw this description.

For this particular title, it is generally a safe bet that a
generic is a repeat with the Monday exception.

> Secondly, when the Daily Show _does_ have a description, it's pretty simple.
> I have not tested if, when it says "Senator John McCain", that
> anything differs from the other times they have had him on the show so

Ah, but it is different. Each time Sen. McCain has been on there
has been a different programid. If you go to the upcoming list the
lower right hand corner shows the programid for the current item.
You can scroll down the list to compare episode numbers. "U" for
program details will also show show this as well as if something
is marked as a Repeat and will show the Original Airdate if present.

> The technique I apply could be used on any other show that has no
> description but repeats multiple times a day or week.   Let me know
> how it works for you.

See all above =). If you set a Weekslot for Monday and New
episodes only for the rest of the week, you should get much
more accurate results than what you are trying to do here.

>   Perhaps if these work we could add a patch to
> mythfilldatabase to have it invoke post-processing scripts like
> this.

You can invoke anything you'd like with a wrapper script. Not
only from cron but Setup->General->Mythfilldatabase asks for a
path. You can simply give it the path to a wrapper script and
include any other daily tasks that you'd like.

--  bjm