Watched Flag - being set too soon! 33% through a show

[Fastrack]

Update:

V9 has fixed the issue with both of the recorded shows. Seems to mark it as watched around 3-4 minutes to the end of the 2hrs now. Which is perfect.

I have not installed Schedules Direct yet though. I figure I have time to do that

I do have metric selected in the Gemstone UI and now I see 37C instead of 3C. So that's broken, but unrelated to this

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by KarylFStein

You should try SRE (Sage Recording Extender). It will monitor many live sports and automatically extend the recording. It's a great tool .

It would be nice if it would adjust favorites airing after sports too. I too have missed a show because it aired right after a game and started late.

Because it doesn't work for shows following sports and I have to pad those favorites to take that into account it is just as easy to pad the sports favorites as well as the favorites for shows after the sports. For those favorites, sports and following shows, I just pad them by 1-1/2 hours.

Stupid network schedulers who can't properly set time slots for sports that virtually NEVER, EVER, EVER fit into the allotted time slots!!

[Tiki]

Originally Posted by waynedunham

Stupid network schedulers who can't properly set time slots for sports that virtually NEVER, EVER, EVER fit into the allotted time slots!!

Hello CBS!

[NetworkGuy]

Originally Posted by Tiki

Hello CBS!

And screw-up all the shows later that night.

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by Tiki

Hello CBS!

They aren't the only one, but definitely one of the worst! What good does a crawl at the bottom of the screen do announcing when the shows will actually air that night when you may not watch the recording for hours/days/weeks/months/years after the show was recorded.

Huge PITA, but I have any Sunday night CBS, and Fox shows set for 1-1/2 hours extra padding. Fox isn't nearly as bad as CBS, but still push things from time to time.

And lets not get into networks where Nascar, NBA, NHL, and MLB games air. <sigh>

[NetworkGuy]

Originally Posted by waynedunham

Huge PITA, but I have any Sunday night CBS, and Fox shows set for 1-1/2 hours extra padding. Fox isn't nearly as bad as CBS, but still push things from time to time.

My Sunday night CBS recordings are all set for 2 hours. I found I was still missing parts of shows with only 90 minutes.

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by NetworkGuy

My Sunday night CBS recordings are all set for 2 hours. I found I was still missing parts of shows with only 90 minutes.

I have missed the ends of a few shows, but usually 1-1/2 hours is enough. When that hasn't been enough it is usually during the playoffs/championship games in various sports. Oh, and I forget which network that Nascar is on, but that one will bite me BIG TIME whenever there's a rain delay.

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by waynedunham

They aren't the only one, but definitely one of the worst! What good does a crawl at the bottom of the screen do announcing when the shows will actually air that night when you may not watch the recording for hours/days/weeks/months/years after the show was recorded.

But that is the point. They want you to watch it live and catch all the commercials.

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by BobPhoenix

But that is the point. They want you to watch it live and catch all the commercials.

If THAT ever becomes my only option that will most certainly break me of the habit of watching too much TV. I haven't watched commercials regularly in well over 25 years and I'm not about to start. NO TV IS MUCH MORE DESIRABLE THAN TV WITH COMMERCIALS!!! .....And don't think I am excluding you mr. "Can't skip the *commercials*" before the DVD/ Blu-Ray movie starts! Death to YOU as well!!

Now if commercials weren't completely stupid, inane, and blatant lies it might be different. But when we are relying on Allergy medication commercials to teach our kids basic math. (6 is > 1..... well DUH!) then all hope for commercials is lost.
If your product bites SOOOO BAD that you can't even hide the lies to the most ignorant viewers then you probably shouldn't be advertising..... aren't you embarrassed?

Is every commercial bad? No, but there are so few good ones it only makes the horrible ones stand out even more. And I don't really want to watch the "good" ones either. Maybe once or twice over the course of a year or two might be acceptable, but certainly not 5 times in an hour long show.

Has there ever been a good medicine commercial since the lawyers took over? 3 seconds of commercial and the other 27 seconds are all the possible side effects and warnings.

[peternm22]

Originally Posted by Narflex

It's not 66% explicitly. There's 2 requirements:

1. You must have watched at least 66% of it
2. There must be no more than 5 minutes left in it for non-movies, and 10 minutes left for movies.

In addition to that, it uses the running time of movies (Show duration) when that exists rather than the actual duration of the Airing.

I watched an episode of the TV show Agents of Shield earlier this week, and as soon as I hit the 40 minute mark of the recording (it's a 60 minute show with commercials), it marked the entire recording as watched. The "running time" of the show was listed as 45 minutes, so that seems to meet the two requirements you mentioned even though this is a TV show and not a movie.

I honestly don't think it should ever use the running time instead of the actual duration of the airing. The running times always assume there are no commercials, which it really shouldn't assume.

Does anyone know if the Schedules Direct EPG data specifies which channels are commercial free? If that data is available, it could help solve some of these issues.

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by peternm22

I watched an episode of the TV show Agents of Shield earlier this week, and as soon as I hit the 40 minute mark of the recording (it's a 60 minute show with commercials), it marked the entire recording as watched. The "running time" of the show was listed as 45 minutes, so that seems to meet the two requirements you mentioned even though this is a TV show and not a movie.

I honestly don't think it should ever use the running time instead of the actual duration of the airing. The running times always assume there are no commercials, which it really shouldn't assume.

Does anyone know if the Schedules Direct EPG data specifies which channels are commercial free? If that data is available, it could help solve some of these issues.

They do have commercial free channels flagged. SageTV doesn't do anything with that data or store it anywhere. I suppose it could be stored as a byte on the Channels in the database. That will require a database version increase, but it's a fairly minor modification. I could see this information being helpful to the Comskip plugin too.

[Monedeath]

Originally Posted by waynedunham

If THAT ever becomes my only option that will most certainly break me of the habit of watching too much TV. I haven't watched commercials regularly in well over 25 years and I'm not about to start. NO TV IS MUCH MORE DESIRABLE THAN TV WITH COMMERCIALS!!! .....And don't think I am excluding you mr. "Can't skip the *commercials*" before the DVD/ Blu-Ray movie starts! Death to YOU as well!!

Ah, but to play devil's advocate for a moment, the Broadcast Networks, who have the least legal grounds to force anything because they use the public airwaves(and thus subject to "fair use"), also has a compelling argument for why they should be able to force you to not skip the commercials. The business model that existed from the launch of broadcasting in general, up through about 15 years ago, was that original programming had to "pay for itself." The means by which they determined if a program was doing so was determined by comparing the cost of producing the program vs the amount of advertising revenue being earned during the timeslot that the program aired in.

Which is where TV ratings became a factor. They wanted highly rated television programming not because everybody watched the show, but because they could charge advertisers more for commercials shown in that time frame.

TANSTAFL applies, if you're getting a service for "Free" then somebody else is paying for it(and you're probably the product). For Television programming, that's normally been advertisers.

The exceptions are entities like PBS(non-profit, and routinely begs for donations), or "The Premium" channel offerings which are (largely) commercial free, but you pay a premium for having access to. (HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, Stars, etc)

More recently(since about Y2K) you've had the widescale adoption of DVDs and now Blu-rays as well as things like Netflix and Ultraviolet which enabled a lot of "aftermarket" opportunities for content creators to earn revenue that exists separate from the money they make through sales of commercial advertising. These are things they now calculate for as well(again, also based off of ratings at least in part--if nobody is bothering to watch it, its likely nobody will bother to buy it).

But this again creates "problems" for them when it comes to things like SageTV, because you have the potential to record their program in high-def while it's on a network programming lineup, and you can skip out on buying to DVD or Blu-ray(or wait for the price to drop). Your ability to also completely ignore any/all advertising that was placed in the original network airing just adds salt to the wound, as it plays havoc with their various business models because you're obtaining content from them, but also avoiding every tool they have available with which to make any money off of your having done so.

Which then moves things into the next realm, they're losing ad revenue from DVRs(And being able to skip the ads) and internet streaming options, they're (arguably) losing direct sales due to DVRs. So their next recourse is to demand money from the services they can demand money from in order to at least create some kind of revenue stream.

Which is where they go to your local cable company, or DISH/DirectTV/etc and demand that in order to rebroadcast/show their content through their commercial service, they will pay them(the content provider) $___ per household/business that is able to obtain said service. Which then translates into your "cable bill" going up as they pass that cost down the line to you.