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It seems some programs on 7TWO are flagged as being in HD such as both episodes of Samantha Who? tonight (2009-11-09). Since 7TWO is an SD channel, I suspect this is probably incorrect.

This is probably the same issue as the HD flags on SD channels issue which has been raised previously. Is there any update on this?

I see the guide data has already been updated. Thanks.

"The Hawking Paradox" airs on SBS at 2008-04-27 20:30. IceTV is still showing "The Gulf Stream And The Next Ice Age" as airing in this timeslot.

Found out via an advert on SBS last night and confirmed on their TV guide.

Originally we included the HD flag on SD channels because we had a lot of customers that said they didn't always check the guide for the HD channels, and having that indicator there let them know that they could also record the show on the HD channel if they wanted.

I guess some people have PVRs that don't let you just say "Record this program on any channel" with a channel preference list configured elsewhere.

Since the way people use the HD channels is changing lately because there's more content available, maybe it's time we looked at this feature again and thought about removing the HD flag from all SD shows, regardless of the "copy" feature.  Comments are welcome.

Yes please. I don't want the HD flag on SD channels at all but some users may. Perhaps this HD flag should be an option like "Copy SD to HD" is.

Indeed it would be nice if this could be fixed. This has been raised previously by myself in January 2008 and by others in 2007 and 2005.

I'm not sure there's any good reason to have this flag set on SD channels at all. That's what the HD channel feeds are for. When I get some free time I still plan to write a script to strip the HD from from the SD channels.

Yes, this is quite annoying. I raised the Catalyst issue on the Episode Titles thread but nothing came of it. Last night I had an ABC2 recording even though I already watched the same episode on ABC1.

If IceTV have data on what episode is airing (i.e. episode number or original air date) but do not have an episode name (i.e. for shows which do not have episode names), it would be really great if this data could be used as the episode name so aid PVRs in preventing duplicate recordings. This has been done in the past with The Chaser's War on Everything.

I noticed the episode-num element in the XMLTV feed. I checked this week's Catalyst episode and again the two sub-titles are different and also the episode-num field is different.

Does anyone know if MythTV (or any other PVR) uses the episode-num field for de-duping? With ABC shows where there's a first new episode airing on ABC1 and repeats of the same episode a few days later on ABC2 (Catalyst, Media Watch, Chaser, etc), it would be great if at least the episode-num could be the same where it's known the same episode will air if a place-holder epsiode title isn't possible.

On the topic of ABC episode titles, I noticed an inconsistency with this week's episode of Catalyst:

ABC1 2008-02-28  "Atom Smasher / Research Vessel Southern Surveyor / Beach Fingerprinting"
ABC2 2008-02-29  "Biggest Atom Smasher / On Board The Southern Surveyor / Beach Fingerprinting"

True names are definitely the correct thing to do. Thanks for the explanation.

Will "HD Docos" disappear (if it hasn't already)?

Oh, so that's why I haven't had any HD docos recorded lately? Back to reading the guide I guess :(

I might have to look into how to setup a schedule for all documentaries on Ten HD with Myth. At worst, a small shell script should do the trick :)

The purist pedantic in me thinks the new title/subtitles for documentaries is the best way to go. Ideally it'd be great if there were tags in the feed which PVRs could subscribe to as well as program titles.

As far as the renaming from "Our World in HD" to "HD Docos", should this have been posted to the forum so we would know to update our schedules?

Here on the Gold Coast it's showing as "Sat, Jan 12, 20:30 to 21:20 (50 mins)" on my PVR (MythTV). Guide data for Prime looks fine as well.

If there is a problem with IceTV, it's certainly not showing here.

... programs on the SD channels with a quality of HDTV ...

.. and by this I mean the quality field in the XMLTV feed:

Code Select Expand


        <programme start="20080116113000 +0000" stop="20080116123000 +0000" channel="133">
                <title lang="en">Moonlight</title>
                <!-- ... -->
                <video>
                        <aspect>16:9</aspect>
                        <quality>HDTV</quality>
                </video>
                <subtitles type="teletext"/>
                <rating system="">
                        <value>M</value>
                </rating>
        </programme>


Channel ID 133 is:

Code Select Expand


        <channel id="133">
                <display-name>Nine Gold Coast</display-name>
                <region-name>Gold Coast</region-name>
                <lcn>0</lcn>
        </channel>

.. which is an SD channel.

The issue with programs on the SD channels with a quality of HDTV has been raised before but I couldn't find any official response on this issue. If this isn't something that can be fixed across the board, can we at least have a preference like the "Copy SD to HD" option to only use the HD flag on HD channels?

From my reading of section 5.1.5 of Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB); Specification for Service Information (SI) in DVB systems (ETSI EN 300 468) "scrambling" of the EITs (Event Information Tables) that constitute the EPG is explicitly allowed for (how it's done isn't in that standards document). They're clearly not doing it now, but that appears to offer a mechanism that would let them restrict the EPG information.

Thanks for posting this reference. It seems you are correct, the EIT can be scrambled using CA. It appears like the intended usage is for event info on channels which themselves are subject to CA (premium channels, perhaps adult channels or similar (i.e. think of the childrenâ,,¢)) but it certainly could be used for this purpose as well. With the correct decoding hardware support (CA card?), the EIT data could be compliant and scrambled.

In any case, my original thought was with regard to existing decoders out in the market. There's no technical way that I can think of to allow these to work while preventing uncrippled PVRs from accessing the same content.

I can confirm that Ten have renumbered their channels on the Gold Coast mux. LCN 1 and LCN 12 are now "TEN HD", LCN 10 is "TEN Digital". There's no longer any Guide LCN.   

In fact I'm getting an 8 day guide on some channels.

Okay, my curiosity got the better of me and I just had a look with dvbsnoop. I am seeing what looks like full 7 day guides with descriptions from Nine and Ten but as usual Seven is lagging behind with just now and next data (in which they are still shouting out their event names in glorious capital letters). I didn't check ABC or SBS. Things certainly have improved since IceTV started but are no where near complete enough to use yet.

Of course if the guide data is accurate and standards compliant they can't exactly stop any EIT supporting recorders from using the data for scheduling. Are they going to try and pull DMCA style legal tactics?