Question regarding XMLTV and reruns

[owilsky]

Hi,

I am a little bit worried. I had a look at the sources of the different xmltv plugins and have one important (well, at least for me) question:

How does SageTV/ the plugin recognize reruns?

Is it because the plugin creates identical EP UIDs for shows with identical title and episodeName

OR

is it because of a <previously-shown> tag?

When I create a favourite for "Enterprise" and select only FirstRuns and then click on additional airings I also get the nightly rerun. But when I select "upcoming recordings", only the first run is shown.

At the moment I am creating a tool to insert the <previously-shown> tag into my xml data because it is not in there and I thought is is important.
But after looking at the plugin source I am not sure about it...

Slightly confused.....

Oliver

[nielm]

um.. both... but differently

Sage uses the EPGID (generated from showname/episode name) to recognise individual episodes...

So, if you have a favorite with an airing recorded on disk, and it sees that it is re-schecduled, it will not record the second airing...

It will also remember all airings that have 'dont like' and/or 'watched' set so that it knows not to record them again...

So if you have a favorite for Enterprise, recording first-runs and re-runs...

If you have 'Enterprise, episode Fusion' scheduled for Monday, with a repeat on Friday, Sage will know that the 2 airings are for the same episode, and will only record one of them (which one will depend on other recording conflicts)

Once you have watched that episode, if in a years time, it gets re-shown, Sage knows that you have already watched it (it will show up in italics in the EPG) and will not record it again...


The first-run/re-run tag in Sage is derived from <previously-shown/> in XMLTV, and is only used for scheduling favourites when you specify first-runs only. (and possibly for intelligent recording)...

The idea behind it is if you are not interested in re-runs of older series of Enterprise, you don't have to record them (even if they have not already been watched). This is probably more useful for very long-running series so that you only record 'current' episodes, not something from 5 years ago! (provided that the flag is populated).


So in summary, provided you have episode names, you don't need a tool to set <previously-shown/> and it may actually cause you more problems in recording conflict management...

[owilsky]

Originally Posted by nielm

um.. both... but differently

So if you have a favorite for Enterprise, recording first-runs and re-runs...

If you have 'Enterprise, episode Fusion' scheduled for Monday, with a repeat on Friday, Sage will know that the 2 airings are for the same episode, and will only record one of them (which one will depend on other recording conflicts)

Once you have watched that episode, if in a years time, it gets re-shown, Sage knows that you have already watched it (it will show up in italics in the EPG) and will not record it again...

So why is it called "first-runs AND re-runs" if re-runs won't get recorded?

BTW: If I watched all episodes of Enterprise and delete the favourite and 5 years later the whole series is aired again and I want to watch it again and create a new favourite I hope the watched status from the old favourite is deleted?

The first-run/re-run tag in Sage is derived from <previously-shown/> in XMLTV, and is only used for scheduling favourites when you specify first-runs only

Did I get that right? The <previously-shown/> tag is only if you select "first runs only"

I think I understood the whole thing wrong. I was worried because record "first AND reruns" was the default setting for a new favourite and of course I wanted to record each episode only once.

From the manual:

Also, once an episode has been watched, it will remember that the episode was watched, even if the recording is later deleted, and will not record the same episode again.
Taking all this into account, SageTV will attempt to create a recording schedule so that it can record as many unique airings of the show as it can.

But WHEN does SageTV records a rerun if "record re-runs" or "record first & re-runs" is selected?

Oliver

[Cayars]

Originally Posted by nielm

um.. both... but differently
<snip>

So in summary, provided you have episode names, you don't need a tool to set <previously-shown/> and it may actually cause you more problems in recording conflict management...

How/why? All this does is "pre-set" a show with the same setting it would get if you did it manually after it is recorded.

This is exactly the functionality found is some of Malore's original code and it works great.

[nielm]

Originally Posted by nielm

So in summary, provided you have episode names, you don't need a tool to set <previously-shown/> and it may actually cause you more problems in recording conflict management...

Originally Posted by Cayars

How/why? All this does is "pre-set" a show with the same setting it would get if you did it manually after it is recorded.

not really: first-run/re-run are different to sage's internal 'i have already recorded this' flag, and different again to the 'watched' flag. the first-run/re-run flag only appears to have any affect on favourites that have 'First Run Only' set in their options.


Example of how this can cause conflict problems.

Enterprise is shown on Monday, with repeats of the same episode on Wednesday and Friday.

If you have a favorite set with 'First Runs Only', and you modify the XMLTV data so that Wed/Fri's airings are 're-runs', then they will never be recorded by that favourite.
If something else needs to be recorded on Monday at the same time, then there is a recording conflict that needs to be manually resolved, and you would have to manually record the Wed or Friday episode.

Now, if you leave the XMLTV data so that Mon, Wed and Fri's epsiodes are all marked with the default of 'First run' then if something else needs to be recorded on Monday at the same time, Sage will automatically resolve the conflict by recording the Wed/Fri episode of Enterprise.


Now, if the EPG data is good (XMLTV in general is not), then you can have:

Enterprise: new series, shown on Mon, repeated Wed and Fri (first-run flag set on all airings)
Enterprise: old series, shown on Tue, Thur (re-run flag set on all airings).

A favorite with 'First-run only' would only record one episode of the new series per week with automatic conflict management, and none of the old series being recorded.

[owilsky]

Originally Posted by nielm

Now, if the EPG data is good (XMLTV in general is not), then you can have:

Enterprise: new series, shown on Mon, repeated Wed and Fri (first-run flag set on all airings)
Enterprise: old series, shown on Tue, Thur (re-run flag set on all airings).

A favorite with 'First-run only' would only record one episode of the new series per week with automatic conflict management, and none of the old series being recorded.

Yes, for that I have created my XMLTV-Tool.
I enter "Enterprise#2#Enterprise (Old)" so it replaces "Enterprise" in the title of every show that is aired on Tuesday (2nd day of week) to "Enterprise (Old)". So I have created a "new" series with another title. So only the new series is recorded.

[nielm]

Originally Posted by owilsky

So why is it called "first-runs AND re-runs" if re-runs won't get recorded?

Because sage knows you have already watched it... On the short term scale, this makes a lot of sense: You watch and delete a program: you don't want a repeat of the program re-recorded a day later.

BTW: If I watched all episodes of Enterprise and delete the favourite and 5 years later the whole series is aired again and I want to watch it again and create a new favourite I hope the watched status from the old favourite is deleted?

No.
Watched status (shows in italics in the EPG) is set on an show independantly of the favorite/manual record status, and will be kept indefinatly (as far as I know).

So what will happen in 5 years time is that all these repeated shows that you have watched will be in your EPG in italics, and even with a new favourite will not be scheduled to record, independantly of first-run/re-run status

Originally Posted by nielm

The first-run/re-run tag in Sage is derived from <previously-shown/> in XMLTV, and is only used for scheduling favourites when you specify first-runs only

Originally Posted by owilsky

Did I get that right? The <previously-shown/> tag is only if you select "first runs only"

My comment was not clear. If the favourite has the option 'First Runs and Re-Runs', the re-run status of the show is ignored, so it does not matter if there is a <previously-shown/> tag or not.
The tag becomes important if the favorite has the option 'First runs only', and it will be used to ignore shows that are marked as re-runs (shows having a <previously-shown/> tag)

But WHEN does SageTV records a rerun if "record re-runs" or "record first & re-runs" is selected?

"record re-runs" is not an option

Sage will record an episode of a favourite if the following conditions are ALL satisfied

• you have not already watched that episode at any time in the past (episode is marked as watched)
• a recording of that episode is not already on disk waiting to be watched
• there is no recording conflict with other favorites/manual records
• If 'first-runs and re-runs' is set, OR if 'first runs only' is set on the favourite and the episode is NOT marked as a re-run

Remeber that a TV network's idea of what is a repeat is diffferent to your own idea of what you have already watched, and Sage tries not to re-record something which it thinks you have already watched

[nielm]

Extra info:
Malore's STV's viewing history screen (and my web-browser through the search facility) give the ability to clear the watched flag from programs that show up in your viewing history, so that Sage will start recording them again.

There is also an option to clear_all_watched in the sage.properties file to clear the watched flag on all shows when Sage is next started, but I have never used it and cannot make any guarantees...

[Cayars]

Sorry Niel, I didn't read what you said in the context of the message.

You are of course correct.