XMLTV Guide Prob - Underbelly 2 marked as a Repeat on Monday Night..

Started by NiallG, March 10, 2009, 04:44:23 PM

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NiallG

Hi -

Your XMLTV Feed has been incorrectly marking 'Underbelly 2' (Nine) as a repeat for it's 8:30pm Monday Night Showing (which is supposed to always be a new episode) - and incorrectly includes the <previously-shown /> element.  (but doesn't include a 'previously shown' date)

My Location : Melbourne
Guide Source : XMLTV feed

I think the other Underbelly listings seem to be incorrect as well - ie.

For next week - there is a repeat screening on Sunday Night (10:30pm) - where no proper episode id has been provided (and one of the entries is not marked as repeat) - and then on Monday night it's marked as a repeat (on both 9 and 9HD).

This same problem existed with feed for last night (where Underbelly was listed as a repeat by inclusion of the <previously-shown/> element).

Can you please fix this.

Thanks
Niall





Russell at IceTV

Quote from: NiallG on March 10, 2009, 04:44:23 PM
Your XMLTV Feed has been incorrectly marking 'Underbelly 2' (Nine) as a repeat for it's 8:30pm Monday Night Showing (which is supposed to always be a new episode) - and incorrectly includes the <previously-shown /> element.  (but doesn't include a 'previously shown' date)

When I bring up the XMLTV feed for Melbourne for 9 March, this is what I'm seeing for that show:

   <programme start="20090309093000 +0000" stop="20090309103000 +0000" channel="7">
      <title lang="en">Underbelly: A Tale Of Two Cities</title>
      <sub-title lang="en">Stranded</sub-title>
      <desc lang="en">When the Kiwi authorities catch up with Terry Clark and demand he faces the music over some dirty dealings back home, it forces Allison to take the reins of the flourishing drug trade. In the meantime, there&apos;s a snitch who needs to be silenced.   Matthew Newton, Peter O&apos;Brien, Dustin Clare, Roy Billing. </desc>
      <category lang="en">Crime</category>
      <category lang="en">Drama</category>
      <episode-num system="icetv">18375-60190</episode-num>
      <subtitles type="teletext"/>
      <rating system="">
         <value>M</value>
      </rating>
   </programme>

Quote
For next week - there is a repeat screening on Sunday Night (10:30pm) - where no proper episode id has been provided (and one of the entries is not marked as repeat)

Here's what I see for Sunday 15 March:

   <programme start="20090315113000 +0000" stop="20090315123000 +0000" channel="7">
      <title lang="en">Underbelly: A Tale Of Two Cities</title>
      <sub-title lang="en">Stranded</sub-title>
      <desc lang="en">When the Kiwi authorities catch up with Terry Clark and demand he faces the music over some dirty dealings back home, it forces Allison to take the reins of the flourishing drug trade. In the meantime, there&apos;s a snitch who needs to be silenced.   Matthew Newton, Peter O&apos;Brien, Dustin Clare, Roy Billing. </desc>
      <category lang="en">Crime</category>
      <category lang="en">Drama</category>
      <episode-num system="icetv">18375-60190</episode-num>
      <previously-shown/>
      <subtitles type="teletext"/>
      <rating system="">
         <value>M</value>
      </rating>
   </programme>

Quote
and then on Monday night it's marked as a repeat (on both 9 and 9HD).

Here's what I see for 16 March for Nine:

   <programme start="20090316093000 +0000" stop="20090316103000 +0000" channel="7">
      <title lang="en">Underbelly: A Tale Of Two Cities</title>
      <desc lang="en">In the 1970s, Robert Trimbole and Terry &quot;Mr. Asia&quot; Clark, lavishly using the services of hitman Christopher Dale Flannery and gangster George Freeman, used the illegal drug trade to transform Australia&apos;s underworld from a provincial outpost of organised crime to a major international player. Lone courageous voices which spoke out against it, like that of Donald MacKay, were permanently silenced. The Australian Federal Police took them on with varying degrees of success. Matthew Newton, Peter</desc>
      <category lang="en">Crime</category>
      <category lang="en">Drama</category>
      <episode-num system="icetv">18375-0</episode-num>
      <subtitles type="teletext"/>
      <rating system="">
         <value>M</value>
      </rating>
   </programme>

And for Nine HD:

   <programme start="20090316093000 +0000" stop="20090316103000 +0000" channel="91">
      <title lang="en">Underbelly: A Tale Of Two Cities</title>
      <desc lang="en">In the 1970s, Robert Trimbole and Terry &quot;Mr. Asia&quot; Clark, lavishly using the services of hitman Christopher Dale Flannery and gangster George Freeman, used the illegal drug trade to transform Australia&apos;s underworld from a provincial outpost of organised crime to a major international player. Lone courageous voices which spoke out against it, like that of Donald MacKay, were permanently silenced. The Australian Federal Police took them on with varying degrees of success. Matthew Newton, Peter</desc>
      <category lang="en">Crime</category>
      <category lang="en">Drama</category>
      <episode-num system="icetv">18375-0</episode-num>
      <subtitles type="teletext"/>
      <rating system="">
         <value>M</value>
      </rating>
   </programme>

These all look correct to me.  Are you seeing something different?

It's possible that the guide team modified them recently, but this is how it looks when I check it right now.

Russell

NiallG

Hi Russell,

I think maybe your EPG team modified them at last moment - but I need to check (I have incramental snapshots taken of your xmltv going back 2 weeks). To confirm - I also downloaded your Win7 feed as well yesterday - and I'm 99% confident it also picked up same error and had isRepeat="true" marked.

However - why do you have episode # of '-0' being assigned to what is obviously a new episode? This causes issues (on VMC and Win7) - and even if you don't have the new episode title/description - you at least know it's a new episode being shown (and you can preallocate an ID to it - with a 'TBA' etc as episode Title).  Then when you have an encore performance (ie. sunday night) - the same id should be allocated - so the PVR system know's it's the same episode screened as previous monday.

Also - the 'previously-shown' tag (when used) - should have the date of when it's previously shown. This is a no-brainer for Underbelly (as it's an Encore performance) - so should always be the previous monday's date. I understand on some content - you may not know original air date (where it was first shown before icetv existed).

Niall

Russell at IceTV

Quote from: NiallG on March 11, 2009, 09:00:47 AM
I think maybe your EPG team modified them at last moment - but I need to check

Quite possible.

Quotewhy do you have episode # of '-0' being assigned to what is obviously a new episode? This causes issues (on VMC and Win7) - and even if you don't have the new episode title/description - you at least know it's a new episode being shown (and you can preallocate an ID to it - with a 'TBA' etc as episode Title).  Then when you have an encore performance (ie. sunday night) - the same id should be allocated - so the PVR system know's it's the same episode screened as previous monday.

When the guide team starts working on a new day, they take data from the previous week, and then modify the episodes for those shows that are episodic.  At the moment I can see that the episode hasn't been set yet for that series on 16 March yet, but I assume it will be soon.  The only exception would be if for some reason they didn't know what episode it will be.  Remember that this is on channel Nine, which is handled differently by the guide team because of legal reasons, so it's possible that's why it hasn't been set yet.  But it's usually always done well before air time, so it should still get recorded.  Until it's set, the show is handled the same as if it was non-episodic, and the episode id is set to zero.

What issues are you seeing with it being zero?  Media Center should still schedule the show on the 16th for recording (even though it won't have any episode info for it at the moment) because it should still see the showing on the 16th as being part of the same series recording.  It seems to work fine in Win7 at least, which I just now checked.  Are you seeing something different?

Quote
Also - the 'previously-shown' tag (when used) - should have the date of when it's previously shown. This is a no-brainer for Underbelly (as it's an Encore performance) - so should always be the previous monday's date. I understand on some content - you may not know original air date (where it was first shown before icetv existed).

The guide team fills in this data when they can.  It's possible they didn't know that new episodes are on Monday and repeats on Sunday, or maybe they just didn't get to it yet.  When there's no date available, the XMLTV guide includes an empty previously-shown element to indicate that it's a repeat.  Most systems interpret an empty element correctly, even without an actual date.  In the MCE guide, we use a date of 1900-01-01 to indicate the same thing -- that it's a repeat, but we don't know the original air date.

Russell

NiallG

Quote from: Russell at IceTV on March 11, 2009, 09:23:33 AM
Quote from: NiallG on March 11, 2009, 09:00:47 AM
I think maybe your EPG team modified them at last moment - but I need to check

Quite possible.

Quotewhy do you have episode # of '-0' being assigned to what is obviously a new episode? This causes issues (on VMC and Win7) - and even if you don't have the new episode title/description - you at least know it's a new episode being shown (and you can preallocate an ID to it - with a 'TBA' etc as episode Title).  Then when you have an encore performance (ie. sunday night) - the same id should be allocated - so the PVR system know's it's the same episode screened as previous monday.

When the guide team starts working on a new day, they take data from the previous week, and then modify the episodes for those shows that are episodic.  At the moment I can see that the episode hasn't been set yet for that series on 16 March yet, but I assume it will be soon.  The only exception would be if for some reason they didn't know what episode it will be.  Remember that this is on channel Nine, which is handled differently by the guide team because of legal reasons, so it's possible that's why it hasn't been set yet.  But it's usually always done well before air time, so it should still get recorded.  Until it's set, the show is handled the same as if it was non-episodic, and the episode id is set to zero.

What issues are you seeing with it being zero?  Media Center should still schedule the show on the 16th for recording (even though it won't have any episode info for it at the moment) because it should still see the showing on the 16th as being part of the same series recording.  It seems to work fine in Win7 at least, which I just now checked.  Are you seeing something different?

Quote
Also - the 'previously-shown' tag (when used) - should have the date of when it's previously shown. This is a no-brainer for Underbelly (as it's an Encore performance) - so should always be the previous monday's date. I understand on some content - you may not know original air date (where it was first shown before icetv existed).

The guide team fills in this data when they can.  It's possible they didn't know that new episodes are on Monday and repeats on Sunday, or maybe they just didn't get to it yet.  When there's no date available, the XMLTV guide includes an empty previously-shown element to indicate that it's a repeat.  Most systems interpret an empty element correctly, even without an actual date.  In the MCE guide, we use a date of 1900-01-01 to indicate the same thing -- that it's a repeat, but we don't know the original air date.

Russell

Hi -

I checked back on the data - and looks like the EPG team over there edited this data at last moment (so looks ok right at this instant) - however during the time it wasn't fixed (which I think was right up until the day of airing) it wasn't working.

With regards to use of episode '0' - this is a bit of a problem - as it makes it quite a bit more difficult to determine what is a new episode and what isn't (and makes processing of the xmltv feed a lot harder)...  For example - if you get the EPG on Monday - and it has data for that night through to following Monday - then all 4 screenings (9/9HD = x2 screenings - not including the encore) will be marked as episode 0 (and hence difficult to determine that there are 2 x unique sequential episodes there).

In your Win7 feed - i think you're actually referencing the same parent Program from each of the four schedule entries (ie.   '!Program!XXX-0'  ) - so once this program has been successfully recorded once - 7MC may not recognize other screenings to be new episodes. (as 7MC makes a decision on whether to record something partially based on whether a successful recording occurred previously).

So anyhow - it would make things a whole lot easier if your EPG team could preallocate a unique EpisodeID - even if you don't yet know the episode title/overview.  That way you'd have a unique Program UID for each actual episode (that would be shared accross the HD simulcast - and through to the encore showings on Sunday night).

thanks

Niall







Russell at IceTV

Hi,

This should be fixed now.  If you reload the guide in MCE, you should see that Sunday night's showing (22/3) of "Underbelly: A Tale Of Two Cities" is a repeat, and Monday night's (23/3) is new.  We had a problem with repeats in the guide data for MCE that was affecting several shows. 

The only thing is that at the moment, Monday night's new showing doesn't have the episode set yet (although I'm sure the guide team will get to that soon) so it just shows up with the series name and no episode name.

FYI -- For shows that have an episode set, and are repeats, MCE shows "Repeat" next to the episode name on the program details page.  But if the show doesn't have an episode (or if it's something like a news program that's non-episodic) the only way to tell it's a repeat is by looking for the "Original air date" at the bottom of the program details page.  If there's any date at all, it's a repeat -- if not, it's new.

As for the episode id's of zero, I'm afraid this isn't something we can do right now because it's quite a bit of work.  But we'll keep it on the wish list and see if we can work it in at some point in the future.  Sorry I don't have a better answer for you on that.

Thanks,
Russell

Russell at IceTV

QuoteHowever - why do you have episode # of '-0' being assigned to what is obviously a new episode? This causes issues (on VMC and Win7) - and even if you don't have the new episode title/description - you at least know it's a new episode being shown (and you can preallocate an ID to it - with a 'TBA' etc as episode Title).  Then when you have an encore performance (ie. sunday night) - the same id should be allocated - so the PVR system know's it's the same episode screened as previous monday.

Here's an update on this situation:

http://www.icetv.com.au/iceforum/index.php?topic=1376.msg8074#msg8074

Thanks,
Russell