[mythtv] Why do we reject previously shown dates before 1940

[Gary Buhrmaster]

On Sun, Dec 6, 2020 at 9:37 PM Paul Harrison <mythtv at mythqml.net> wrote:

> I wonder how or where Schedules Direct get there original air dates
> from. I have 4 programs with original air date before 1940 in my DB
> currently. The earliest is for a program called Marconiphone from
> 1930-01-01.

I suspect that Schedules Direct uses the
release date for originalairdate for movies
when it can be determined.

Dates (and series/episode), for movies, and TV,
are complicated, and there are complex industry
rules involved for the dates, and none of those
rules necessarily align with how individuals
consider those numbers.

I will mention that for movies, Gracenote
(optionally) has the production year, and
the release date (and yes, they might be
different) available in the raw data.

> The 1940 date seems like an arbitrary date chosen at random maybe we
> could move it back to say 1920 or even 1900 without doing any harm?

I am sure 1940 made sense at the time.

While there was a few minute short that,
according to Guinness, is the oldest
surviving "film" (from 1888), the first
commercial movies are generally
considered to be from around 1895.

I am not a decider, but I think I would
be tempted to just drop the checks
entirely.  If the upstream data is bad,
complain to the upstream about their
data quality.  At least for Schedules
Direct, their upstream is responsive
to bad data correction.