[mythtv-users] xmltv grab_uk_rt or EIT data, which is the best option?

[Toby Smith]

On 04/10/06, Nick <knowledgejunkie at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 04/10/06, drbob <drbob at gmx.co.uk> wrote:
> > I've recently set up a mythtv back end (using mythweb as a front end
> > until I get PC for the living room). Looking at the radio times xmltv
> > data, it appears to provide info on whether a show is a repeat and a
> > "series id" number for each show, which doesn't currently appear in the
> > EIT over the air data.
> Some thoughts...

[snip - all points I agree with]

To add my 2p's worth, what you really want for an ideal MythTV
listings source is *consistent* subtitles / descriptions between
repeat shows, so that the duplicate checker can do it's work.

The Radio Times listings are pretty good, to my mind, about including
subtitles on shows that have them - many of my schedules work on
subtitle only duplication rules because of this.

Where they do differ is their habit of providing special reviews of
the more salient shows as the description, but not copying that review
to any repeat of the same episode, which will have the
channel-provided information instead. This does occasionally mean that
on shows without subtitles you end up with a double recording. In
general I've only found this to be a mild occasional annoyance - "seen
that, hit delete", but in theory recording a duplicate could loose you
a lower priority programme you'd rather have got instead. Depends how
much you record / how many tuners / how similar the timeslots are etc.

My problem with the EIT listings, and why I moved off them, was that
many of the descriptions were the same, but different in mild ways -
punctuation, mistypes etc meaning that to a  computer they were
different. It almost felt as if each listing was separately typed in
and some of the data entry people liked commas and others didn't.
Quite irksome.

I also found that the EIT listings for the "minor" channels was less
specific - I quite like Scrubs, the earlier series of which gets
regular reshowings on ABC1. EIT listings put down ALL episodes with
the same generic desorption of the entire series ("US Medical comedy"
or something) whereas the RT listings includes episode titles and
descriptions. Considering how often they are repeated on ABC1, EIT
listings were really not helpful in duplicate detection.

It probably comes down to personal preference related to the type of
shows you watch and the comparative data quality on those between the
two guides. Your mileage, as they say, might vary.

--
Toby Smith -=- At Home