[mythtv-users] why does myth commflag commercial free channels

Michael T. Dean mtdean at thirdcontact.com
Thu Apr 24 17:30:01 UTC 2008


On 04/24/2008 12:42 PM, Steve Peters - Priority Electronics wrote:
> I have my default recording profile set to comm flag recordings. When 
> i go into mythweb, i edited the channels and checked the box by 
> commercial free for several channels.
>  
> But, when i have recordings come up that are on those channels, myth 
> still wants to commercial flag them, and usually ends up finding 0 or 
> 1 commercial cut point. Why does it have a commercial free check box? 
> It doesn't seem to do anything.

Thanks for the reminder...  I had saved an old thread with the intention 
of updating it when I figured out the problem.  Nice to clear that out 
and clean one more thing off my TODO list.

The problem is that MythWeb has not been updated to use the new 
commmethod field rather than the deprecated commfree field.  The new 
commmethod allows you to specify a per-channel commercial detection 
method; whereas the old was a simple boolean.

So, the answer is:  don't use MythWeb to set the commfree field.  Use 
mythtv-setup to set the commercial detection method to "Commercial Free" 
on each commercial free channel.

I do /not/ recommend this approach, but those who have used MythWeb to 
set the commfree field could do something like:

UPDATE channel SET commmethod = -2 WHERE commfree = 1;

If you break your DB, don't blame me.  Your problem, not mine.  Backup, etc.

> Also, is there a way to do a record one showing of this title, but 
> only when it's on a commercial free channel? That way, i can select a 
> movie, and if it's on tbs, it won't record, but if in 2-3 weeks it 
> comes on hbo, it will record.

There's the option of using a custom recording rule to specify 
"channel.commmethod = -2" and setting it to a higher priority than 
another rule that doesn't specify a commercial-free channel.  There's 
the option of setting your commercial-free channels to a higher priority 
than other "commercial-full" channels.  There are probably many others, 
but I'll defer to others with far better understanding of prioritization 
than me.

Mike


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