[mythtv-users] Re: Recording New Battlestar series

[Brad Templeton]

On Fri, Apr 15, 2005 at 05:04:13PM -0500, David Engel wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 15, 2005 at 10:02:33AM -1000, James L. Paul wrote:
> > As an aside, I really wish the showID (or whatever field Zap2It provides 
> > as a unique identifier) would be used if available instead of the title, 
> > it would virtually eliminate this type of issue.
> 
> We looked at doing this a while back.  There were enough unexpected
> cases where the seriesids weren't the same and probably should have
> been, that we decided to err on the sied of caution and stick with the
> title check.  You can always use the more advanced rules for those
> cases that really need better discrimination.

What sort of incidences do you see?  Some I know about from the past
have included the reunion episode of Survivor (which contains the
winner and is thus the most frustrating one to miss) having not just a
different series ID but a different title (nothing but keywords would
help you there)

However, using the title also introduces a number of errors.  The
Battlestar Galactica entry is a new one, but attempting to record
the movie "In the Heat of the Night" or other movies that have had
a series with the same title can generate some interesting experiences
when doing it by title with a FindOne for example.

The Battlestar case is probably going to be rare, but both approaches
will have errors, so the best plan is to judge which errors are more
annoying, or to see which can be more easily corrected centrally as
well as by users.   For example, some errors can be corrected by telling
Tribune Media Services, or with correction scripts.   (For example
it would be useful, and not too hard, to have a central site for
'correction scripts' in SQL to be downloaded and applied after a
mythfilldatabase.   Currently there is a script which fixes reruns, but
the concept could be generalized to something live.)

As another example, of late the data on The Daily Show has gotten wrong
and the episodes are all being listed with the generic coding, and
thus not recorded if you asked for new shows only.  Again a correction
script here would save the day.  Of course you must have only trusted
people make the scripts and they must be tested.