Record all shows during a certain time period?

[Caiwyn]

I'm currently using MythTV at home, but I am considering switching to SageTV instead. I would like to know if it is possible to do the following:

I need to record all shows in a 4-hour period on a specific channel every day. The lineup changes daily, so it will be recording different shows every day. The shows need to be recorded individually, and not altogether in one file. They need to be identified by their guide information.

In MythTV this was accomplished by making a custom database query. With this, I could tell MythTV to record all shows on a certain channel between certain times, and I could even make exceptions to block certain titles from being recorded.

Is there any way to do anything like this in SageTV?

[GKusnick]

Not out of the box (as far as I know), but if you don't mind writing some code, it should be fairly straightforward to use the SageTV API to query the EPG and set manual recordings on whatever shows fall within your query parameters. (See GetAiringsOnChannelAtTime in the Database API.)

[Caiwyn]

Specifically, I'm trying to record the Adult Swim block of programming on Cartoon Network every day. The actual shows are different every day, and they frequently change the schedule to add new shows, move existing shows to new times, or throw in a movie.

Right now I'm using MythTV on a Linux-based PVR, and using the "Custom Record" feature (which is really just a MySQL database query) to record all shows on Cartoon Network that fall within a certain time period. I can even exclude particular titles I don't like and want to skip. Then MythTV records whatever falls within that time frame, labelling them with their proper titles and program guide info. This way I don't have to pay attention to schedule changes.

However, Linux sucks for video playback. I'm looking to switch to a Windows solution because the nVidia drivers are better and video playback is smoother on the Windows platform. I really like the extensibility of SageTV. But I need to be able to replicate this particular functionality, because this block of programming is the entire reason I built a PVR in the first place.

If it's not possible out of the box, how hard do you think it would be to find or create a plugin that would do this? Would anyone out there be interested in working on this?

[Opus4]

In SageTV, you could use Timed Recordings, but they would have no show data per recording. Alternatively, you could add code to the STV via Studio to keep watch for shows in such a timeframe & write code to record them.

But, since everything is on the same channel, you could try creating a Category or Keyword Favorite & use a very often used keyword (or even try just a space), then limit it to a certain timeslot on just that one channel. Since you want it to cover 4 hours, you'll need 4 Favs to cover 4 timeslots. This _should_ catch all shows in that time period. You would have to check the recording & mark the shows youdon't want as "Don't Like". There is a cusomtization avaialble that might help weed out shows you don't ever want.

- Andy