[mythtv-users] Weekly recording

Stephen Worthington stephen_agent at jsw.gen.nz
Wed Oct 2 06:54:45 UTC 2013


On Wed, 02 Oct 2013 06:53:07 +0200, you wrote:

>On 02.10.2013 06:28, Phill Edwards wrote:
>>
>>
>>     It is deliberate.  In 0.27, the record weekly (and daily) options are
>>     not offered for normal recording rules.  This is to simplify things
>>     for the common cases.  The options are still available for search and
>>     manual recording rules.  In the OPs case, he'll probably need to
>>     create a custom search rule.
>>
>> Gee, that sounds a bit of a bummer. I also use the "Record Weekly" to
>> let the system work out when to record something if there is a conflict
>> and it's going to be shown at another time. While it might simplify
>> things for some people (though it didn't seem very difficult in the
>> first place) it's going to cause problems for quite a lot of other folks.
>
>The way of the MythTV is to go and fix your guide. Then the scheduler
>can make better decisions. For NZ that may be as simple as switching
>from the transmitted EIT guide to the transmitted MHEG5 guide (whatever
>that is). E.g. http://code.google.com/p/mheg2xmltv/

No such luck.  The MHEG5 and EIT data come from the same sources - if
there is a problem with one, the other will have it too.  And the most
problematic EPG is for SkyNZ - only available as EIT as it is only
broadcast as Videoguard encrypted DVB-S/S2.  The Freeview FTA channels
have shown some improvement in their EPG in the last year, with the
addition of series/episode data for most prime time programs on TVNZ
and TV3, but Sky, as the one and only (and therefore a monopoly) pay
TV provider, ignores requests from its customers for better EPG.  They
want us all to pay them for their PVR box "MySky", which is far too
limited for what I want to do and obeys them not me.

It is common for SkyNZ to provide only a generic description of the
program which does not change at all from episode to episode, and they
never provide series/episode numbers or any equivalent.  So you have
to make your recording rules do the work in those cases.  It is not in
fact uncommon for SkyNZ to be playing multiple series of the same
program at the same time (eg Mythbusters), with the oldest series
having no subtitles and generic description, the next oldest having
subtitles and bad descriptions (often different from when the series
was played first a year or two ago), and the current series usually
with reasonable subtitles and descriptions.  So I often wind up using
the O key to bring up a weeks worth of a program and just manually go
down the list marking them appropriately as "Never record" or "Do not
record" for the ones that I have already seen but they have messed up
the EPG for.  If I do not remember an episode, I can sometimes use a
manual SQL query to search the MythTV database and find if it matches
something.  This week, I can see 20 episodes of Mythbusters on SkyNZ,
all of which are repeats and of them, only three are automatically
being recognised as repeats.  Another 11 have been manually marked as
"Never record" (either this week or in the past), and the remainder I
have had to manually mark as "Do not record" because "Never record"
does not work as it has too little to work on.  As well, Prime TV (FTA
DVB-T) is showing another (last years?) series.  Prime are owned by
SkyNZ, but despite that the EPG is different from the Mythbusters
episodes as shown on SkyNZ/Discovery Channel, so I am having to mark
them manually as well.

Fortunately, now that David has told us what changes were made, I now
again know where to go to make weekly recording rules - Custom Edit.
And all my old weekly recording rules seem to have been converted
correctly and are still working.

>PS: Yes I do know that you will be sticking out your head for it to be
>chopped off if you provide a free guide in NZ, so I'd try the above
>solution first. http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/XMLTV#New_Zealand
>
>Regards,
>Karl


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