Categories

[BJReplay]

Firstly, the category information in the guide seems quite good.

However, MCE guide information has a category map that is part of the guide data, that is loaded by MCE, and used to assign each programme to a category within the MCE guide.

I've attempted to allocate the categories found in the iceTV XML to the sample set of categories I've snaffled from a real MCE guide, but it is difficult, and results in anomalies.  For example, The Movie Show DVD Edition has a iceTV category of Entertainment - which happens to be one of the sub-categories of Childrens - which it obviously isn't.

While the mapping problem is one of my own making, I'm trying to second guess the iceTV's category structure - and failing.

The other problem is I'm attempting to provide for other sources of category information - which are a little different.

So, to the request - is there a definitive (even if evolving) set of categories or category hierachy behind the categories in the iceTV XMLTV guide?  If so, can this be published?

Secondly, is it possible to utilise the fact that the schema supports multiple categories to have a major and minor category included in the XMLTV data - say Movie, Adventure, for example?  This would also allow MOVIE: to be removed from the programme title.

Thanks

BJ

[Russell at IceTV]

So, to the request - is there a definitive (even if evolving) set of categories or category hierachy behind the categories in the iceTV XMLTV guide?  If so, can this be published?

Hi BJ,

Sure, here's the current list of categories we're using -- although as you said, it's evolving as we need new ones, but we don't add new ones very often lately:

Action
Adventure
Animation
Arts & Culture
Biography
Business & Finance
Cartoon
Children
Comedy
Cooking
Crime
Cult
Current Affairs
Documentary
Drama
Education
Entertainment
Family
Fantasy
Game Show
Horror
Infotainment
Lifestyle
Murder
Music
Mystery
Nature
News
Real Life
Religion
Romance
Sci-Fi
Science & Tech
Shopping
Sitcom
Soap Opera
Sport
Talk Show
Thriller
Travel
Variety
War
Weather
Western

We're not currently using multiple category levels, so everything's flat.  But a particular program can have more than one category associated with it.  For example:

<programme start="20050202150000 +1100" stop="20050202153000 +1100" channel="5">
  <title lang="en">Huey's Cooking Adventures</title>
  <category lang="en">Cooking</category>
  <category lang="en">Lifestyle</category>
  [...]
</programme>

Secondly, is it possible to utilise the fact that the schema supports multiple categories to have a major and minor category included in the XMLTV data - say Movie, Adventure, for example?  This would also allow MOVIE: to be removed from the programme title.

We don't currently support that, but we can look into it and see what the possibilities are.

Are you able to convert our category list as it is today to something that can work with MCE?

Thanks,
Russell

[BJReplay]

<programme start="20050202150000 +1100" stop="20050202153000 +1100" channel="5">
  <title lang="en">Huey's Cooking Adventures</title>
  <category lang="en">Cooking</category>
  <category lang="en">Lifestyle</category>
  [...]
</programme>

We don't currently support (multiple levels), but we can look into it and see what the possibilities are.

Are you able to convert our category list as it is today to something that can work with MCE?

Thanks,
Russell

Hi Russell, I can use your list - I think I will convert it into a hierarchy which is what MCE expects.  For example, I'll put Children and Cartoon as subcategories of Childrens Programs, Buisness & Finance and News, Current Affairs, etc, as subcategories of News.  Science & Tech looks like a subcategory of Education, perhaps.

The problem with this approach is that each category can only belong to a single major category - for example, Animation can only belong to Childrens or Movie, for example, even though there's kids animation and there's animation that definitely not for kids.

Anyway, I'll see how I go.