Favorites of same show on different networks...hmmm

[tvmaster2]

Here is a bit from the manual:

"SageTV will only record one airing of each episode, rather than recording every single airing, as long as the guide data for the show contains enough information for it to be able to tell one episode from another"


ok, so here's what's happening: trying to record Formula 1 racing off different channels, using different tuners at the same time (TSN - NBCSNHD)

The shows are named exactly the same thing in the guide for each channel - "Formula One Racing"

Sage only seems to want to accept either/or, but not both. In the Favorites menu, I can select every channel there are available airings on, but only one channel will show up in the recording schedule as "F"

Is this a limitation of the "one airing of each episode", regardless of channel?
For some reason I had hoped being on different networks, I could "favorite" both....no?

[sflamm]

I assume you have created 2 separate favorites each of which only allows recording on a single channel?

[tvmaster2]

Originally Posted by sflamm

I assume you have created 2 separate favorites each of which only allows recording on a single channel?

I actually tried to do that...but since the show titles are identical, Favorites lumps all the channels into one Favorite, even though I set them up individually.

[sflamm]

interesting - sounds like it is designed to only record a show once... which makes sense as there are not a lot of instances of your use-case.

an easy work around is to install a second sagetv server that writes to the same recordedtv directory...

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by tvmaster2

Here is a bit from the manual:

"SageTV will only record one airing of each episode, rather than recording every single airing, as long as the guide data for the show contains enough information for it to be able to tell one episode from another"


ok, so here's what's happening: trying to record Formula 1 racing off different channels, using different tuners at the same time (TSN - NBCSNHD)

The shows are named exactly the same thing in the guide for each channel - "Formula One Racing"

Sage only seems to want to accept either/or, but not both. In the Favorites menu, I can select every channel there are available airings on, but only one channel will show up in the recording schedule as "F"

Is this a limitation of the "one airing of each episode", regardless of channel?
For some reason I had hoped being on different networks, I could "favorite" both....no?

Yes, this is a limitation of the way it schedules favorites. The scheduler searches for all 'airings' of a given show, and determines the best one to record. It will schedule that one, and that's it. The only way to get it to record the same 'airing' twice, is to use manual recordings.

[tvmaster2]

OK, thanks for your help - that's what I feared. If only one of the channels would just use a different name ... lol

[MattHelm]

I thought it used the episode number to tell if the shows were the same or not, not the show title????? I know shows with no info are recorded, like Castle reruns on local channel, as I have to go mark them as watched, or SageTV tries to record them.

Also there is a setting (forget the name) that tries to figure out show that should be the same, maybe that's turned on, and overriding the difference????

(Sorry, not at home to see the setting screen)

[sflamm]

I believe he is attempting to record the same show / episode on multiple tuners...

[sflamm]

And in the case of 'Formula 1' racing there is probably be no associated episode anyway...

[tvmaster2]

yeah, that's the problem. Both networks must be getting their descriptive data from exactly the same place....title and episode are identical on both. I'll just have to Favorite one and 'manual' the second.

[sflamm]

I've never done it but you can use SJQ to manual record on the 'start' event of the favorite.
That will automate it...

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by tvmaster2

yeah, that's the problem. Both networks must be getting their descriptive data from exactly the same place....title and episode are identical on both. I'll just have to Favorite one and 'manual' the second.

Usually if you setup a manual recording of a favorite then any other recording scheduled as a favorite of the same thing will not be recorded. So you will have to setup 2 manual recordings.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by BobPhoenix

Usually if you setup a manual recording of a favorite then any other recording scheduled as a favorite of the same thing will not be recorded. So you will have to setup 2 manual recordings.

this is correct. the scheduler handles manual recordings first, then favorites, in order of priority, then intelligent recordings, if enabled. If that favorite is already satisfied by the single manual recording, it will not be recorded again by the favorite manager.

If it is a big enough issue for you, there are ways to fix this on the guide data end - but it would take switching to slugger's Schedules Direct plugin. I believe he implemented a groovy scripting system in it that could be triggered to make changes in certain guide data - in this case, modifying the show/title for your formula 1 races to include the station, or something similar.

[tvmaster2]

ok, thanks again. more good advice for this problem. I have been eyeing the alternate EPG for a while, so this may be a good enough reason to take the leap

[Slugger]

Yeah, with my EPG plugin and a rather simple groovy script, you can massage the data on one of the channels such that the Sage core would see them as unique airings and record both.

You would need a Schedules Direct sub, of course.

[Slugger]

Actually, fair warning, what you want is still very possible with my plugin, but not quite as easy as I originally thought. It's more than doable, but we'll probably have to work on it together. 100% it can be done, but I've never actually tried to do specifically what you want to do (clone & massage a program object into the EPG then relink specific airings to the cloned program).

Anyway, definitely can be done, but might take us a bit of experimentation to get it just right.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by Slugger

Actually, fair warning, what you want is still very possible with my plugin, but not quite as easy as I originally thought. It's more than doable, but we'll probably have to work on it together. 100% it can be done, but I've never actually tried to do specifically what you want to do (clone & massage a program object into the EPG then relink specific airings to the cloned program).

Anyway, definitely can be done, but might take us a bit of experimentation to get it just right.

Somewhat related, Is it possible to basically create whole new entries in the EPG with your plugin? There's a few things I've though of over the years that zap2it never really has dealt with properly. Things like NFL Total Access not sharing an ID for all it's re-airings in the same day, so it wants to record all of them. Some sporting events not recording because the same matchup from a previous year shares the same 'episode' title, etc. the ability to add in dates, or years, etc would be very useful for these situations.

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

Somewhat related, Is it possible to basically create whole new entries in the EPG with your plugin? There's a few things I've though of over the years that zap2it never really has dealt with properly. Things like NFL Total Access not sharing an ID for all it's re-airings in the same day, so it wants to record all of them. Some sporting events not recording because the same matchup from a previous year shares the same 'episode' title, etc. the ability to add in dates, or years, etc would be very useful for these situations.

Yes, you can inject new program objects into wiz.bin created via groovy scripts and create new airings of those programs that override the original airings for a given channel. (You can also create new channels and populate airings in those channels, etc.)

But as I was saying last night, most of this is theory. I have little doubt any of this can be done, with some work, but most of this I haven't actually tried. The foundation is there with the groovy hooks I've built in, but I've never actually leveraged many of the hooks I've created. My use cases have been limited to massaging program details of existing objects and massaging airing details (adding missing HD flags, etc.). I've tested all the other hooks to some degree, but I've never actually used most of them in production.

I know there will be some issues with the scenario you describe. Basically, right now you want to filter & massage airings based on the details of other airings. That isn't really how I created the filters - a filter only knows about the lone object it's currently filtering so there's no built in way to refer to some other airing while massaging the current one. Now, you might be able to get away with this by using a static variable in the filter script that is a list of airings and "collect" all the airings of interest then only act on them when you have them all. Of course, the tricky part is knowing when you've collected them all. Also, I'm not sure if groovy scripts called in this context can have static vars -- that will require some experimentation.

Just like cloning objects in filters. That's not what filters do (right now). You can't inspect a Program for F1 racing and say, "Ah, I want to clone this and change the program ID of the clone only, inject the clone and leave the original alone". You can look at it and mod the progId, but there's no way to clone it and inject it. There are a few other ways to go about it, but it assumes that the program you want to clone is already in wiz.bin and you know how to find it. But I'm confident in this case because if you have a fav setup for the F1 races then finding the race program you want to clone should be very easy with but a few core API calls.

My point is, I guess, that the scripting hooks I've put in place should allow people to do almost anything with some imagination. And where things aren't possible or too complicated, then I'm more than willing to consider mods to the current hooks and their functionality.