Dealing with cable news channels...

[coryking]

So I'm a bit of a political junkie. I like to watch Hardball and Countdown on MSNBC. The problem is, MSNBC and CNN both sets the episode ID for these types of shows in a way that makes SageTV consider each airing a different show. What this means is that if I add say, Hardball, as a favorite and dont narrow it down to a specific time (2pm) it will sometimes record all three shows duplicate shows from the same day. However, I dont like forcing it to record at a specific time as it might conflict with another show and unless I manually adjust that days show, it won't get recorded.

I can kind of understand why the cable news guys do this. After all, maybe some major news broke between the two airings and they decide to go live on the second or third airing. Such an event would indeed make each airing a different show. But still, for the most part it is annoying.

Does anybody have any advice on how to deal with cable news shows such as Countdown or AC360 that assign each airing of the same show with a different episode ID?

[Opus4]

Just a note: The episodes aren't all getting different IDs; each episode has the same generic ID for that show. SageTV can't tell those airings apart.

Maybe someone else has a better suggestion, but limiting the Fav to record at a certain time of day may be the best way to handle it.

- Andy

[coryking]

Originally Posted by Opus4

Just a note: The episodes aren't all getting different IDs; each episode has the same generic ID for that show. SageTV can't tell those airings apart.

Yup. That is true, I just didn't want to mention that because it might confuse the issue ;-) It does beg the question though--if they all use the same episode ID, why doesn't SageTV consider the whole series "watched" after the first airing? Is there a magic number the EPG guys use for stuff like this?

Maybe someone else has a better suggestion, but limiting the Fav to record at a certain time of day may be the best way to handle it.

Yeah. It is annoying though because I'd rather give SageTV the freedom to pick from one of the several during the day so if it wants to, it can use that precious 2pm timeslot for something else. Probably not much can be done though besides adding a special case that says "only one per 24-hour period and ignore the episode ID". Such a thing would probably be a tall order though.

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by coryking

Yup. That is true, I just didn't want to mention that because it might confuse the issue ;-) It does beg the question though--if they all use the same episode ID, why doesn't SageTV consider the whole series "watched" after the first airing? Is there a magic number the EPG guys use for stuff like this?

Please read the FAQ about this. The same info is on the PDF manual installed with SageTV on your PC.

- Andy

[scott2020]

I am trying to record TMZ which airs daily. The episode ShowID's are different from day to day, but they are not recording. If I reset the watched flag, sometimes they start recording again and sometimes not. Most of the time they don't. I'm not sure what I am doing wrong. "Friends" was the same way but resetting the watched flag started that going again, but I had to do it a few times. I wish there was a "record no matter what even if Sage thinks it is watched" setting..

[Fuzzy]

I have issues with NFL Total Access recording properly. It airs multiple times a day, with the new daily airing at 4pm Tues-Fri, but 3:30pm on Monday... This throws out using time slot as a filter as well. It is also an issue of EPG, as mondays's show will always record, as it is listsed as something like "Recap of sunday's games and preview on monday night", but tues-thurs all share the same description, being "Recap of week x, preview of week x+1", and friday just being "preview of whatever". It's frustrating me, and I end up haivng to just go in weekly and set manual record on the ones i want. I shouldn't have to do this. i wish the EPG would list them with an 'Episode name' of the date or something. Let it record them as NFL Total Access - 12/24.

[scott2020]

Right. My question is, if much of what is decided to be recorded is based on episode ID, and I am getting unique episode ID's, why aren't they being recorded? It can't just be based on description or else Sage would miss a lot more. Many shows are just generic descriptions. I thought unique episode ID's would be recorded?

[Fuzzy]

There is an option somewhere to 'Detect Repeat Airings by Show Description' or something like that. It will basically go off of description AND episode ID, and if EITHER match, it calls it a repeat.

[scott2020]

Oh yeah, I forgot about that. I wonder if changing that setting will totally hose things? One would think that if the episode ID is unique then things will be OK, but who knows. I ma willing to give it a try but I don't want to mess up the wife's Friends episodes and stuff!

[Fuzzy]

I guess I wish that all the EPG's worked like the XMLTV. I would like a way to intervene in the process a bit, to 'adjust' certain properties. I'd like to be able to scrape tv.com or mytvdb and replace the Episode ID with an actual season/episode number, which would also help to eliminate repeat recordings. I'd also like the ability to create an episode name based on air-date, or other custom rules, to be able to get around the multiple aired daily shows like news and sports...