EPG HD flag, who's responsible?

[phelme]

Was scratching my head this morning as to why the new WGN America show "Manhattan" wasn't being picked up as a favorite recording until tomorrow (Monday), even though it premiers tonight. Then it hit me, Favorites always prefer HD recordings and all the listings for today, Sunday, don't have the HD flag. And of course it's 2014 and that's just not right.

Not the first time I've seen something like this. Anyone know who might be ultimately responsible, Zap2It, the provider (i.e. Comcast), the network, in this case WGN?

[Slugger]

The network sends the metadata values, which Tribune just propagates down the stream to us. If it's wrong, it's the network's fault. If you complain to Tribune they'll usually investigate and eventually fix it if necessary.

[Tiki]

I've noticed that the guide data has gotten much worse over the last year in this respect. Many networks just aren't bothering to flag any airings as HD anymore.

It would be nice if we could just flag a channel as HD, rather than relying on individual programs to be flagged correctly.

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by Tiki

It would be nice if we could just flag a channel as HD, rather than relying on individual programs to be flagged correctly.

<Shameless Plug>
My sdepg plugin allows you to script this kind of thing. I do it all the time for one sports channel of mine that doesn't flag anything HD even though 99% (probably 100%) of its programming is broadcast in HD. Fox used to be bad about this, too, but has been better in recent months. I have rules for Fox as well. I have rules to fix the airing times on another channel because Tribune insists I'm wrong when I say a show only runs 30 minutes but they list it as 31 minutes, which screws up the following recording, etc. Tribune says I'm wrong and refuses to change it even though I've got the recordings to show I'm right. Instead of arguing with them any further, I just script another rule that auto corrects the airing times as needed. I've got a handful of rules I've scripted that corrects the crappy data that Tribune refuses to fix. It's nice to be able to do that kind of thing when necessary.
</Shameless Plug>

[Tiki]

Originally Posted by Slugger

<Shameless Plug>
My sdepg plugin allows you to script this kind of thing. I do it all the time for one sports channel of mine that doesn't flag anything HD even though 99% (probably 100%) of its programming is broadcast in HD. Fox used to be bad about this, too, but has been better in recent months. I have rules for Fox as well. I have rules to fix the airing times on another channel because Tribune insists I'm wrong when I say a show only runs 30 minutes but they list it as 31 minutes, which screws up the following recording, etc. Tribune says I'm wrong and refuses to change it even though I've got the recordings to show I'm right. Instead of arguing with them any further, I just script another rule that auto corrects the airing times as needed. I've got a handful of rules I've scripted that corrects the crappy data that Tribune refuses to fix. It's nice to be able to do that kind of thing when necessary.
</Shameless Plug>

Does your plugin require me to use (and pay for) the Schedules Direct EPG data, or can I use it with the free Sage / Zap2It data?

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by Tiki

Does your plugin require me to use (and pay for) the Schedules Direct EPG data, or can I use it with the free Sage / Zap2It data?

The plugin itself is free, but does only support the use of Schedules Direct, which isn't.

There is no way to override the behaviour of the Sage EPG feed. You can write alternatives to it, but can't modify what the internal Sage EPG data feed does.*

* Well, if one wanted to reverse engineer the protocol used between Sage and its EPG server then you could write an "alternative" epg plugin that uses the Sage EPG data and then does what my plugin does on top of it. I chose to pay $2.08 a month to avoid that headache. In reality, Schedules Direct was chosen intentionally since at the time of this plugin's inception, Google had just stepped in and I wanted to be sure I had an alternative EPG source if needed. Turned out I developed enough added features to the plugin that I've just never looked back and have been using the SD data feed + my plugin exclusively for some 2 years now.