[mythtv-users] wrong description for many recordings

[R. G. Newbury]

Marco Nelissen wrote:
> On Sun, Sep 6, 2009 at 3:27 PM, Michael T. Dean <mtdean at thirdcontact.com> wrote:
>> On 09/05/2009 10:52 PM, Marco Nelissen wrote:
>>> In the last few weeks I've noticed that many shows have the wrong
>>> description. For example, I record Curious George and Dragon Tales for
>>> my 3 year old from the local PBS station, and while it still records
>>> them OK and the show name is correct, about half the time the
>>> description is wrong and seems to be taken from some soap opera.
>>> Today I noticed that it had recorded an episode of This Old House, but
>>> given it the description of a How I Met Your Mother episode.
>>> Any ideas as to what might be going on here? I'm using SchedulesDirect
>>> for guide info.
>> That sounds like you're using /both/ Schedules Direct (or XMLTV) and EIT
>> data on the same channels.  That configuration isn't supported.  The EIT
>> will stomp all over the non-EIT data causing exactly the kind of confusion
>> you're seeing.
> 
> Indeed EIT was enabled. Seems strange that it would allow me to
> configure both when that doesn't actually work.


I have occasionally seen this sort of error and I do NOT have EIT enabled.
1.	I have never noticed the error while setting up a recording. Since I 
often list all of the available shows of a particular title, and choose 
which input channel and time slot to record for an episode, it would be 
possible that I would see this sort of error while checking the 
episodes. But I have not. Especially for PBS shows which are often 
repeated 2 or 3 times on the prime HD channel and again a couple of 
times on the SD channel.
2.	For some reason, this error *seems* more common on my PBS station 
listings. It does occur on some other OTA stations. I have never seen it 
on a cable channel (Rogers, Toronto)...Source problem? I don't really 
think so.
3.	I run about 6 weeks behind on viewing what I record, so I do not see 
the error until long after the program schedule has been deleted. Kinda 
hard to trace!
4.	Tracing this error will require some work and time. We do not know 
whether this is bad data, or some sort of database error. In order to 
check, you need to have the raw data available as well.
5.	mythfilldatabase writes files to /tmp and the files get deleted after 
the database is updated. There are 2 ways to grab the raw data.

a)	Run mythfilldatebase manually and save the data for one day at a 
time. Daniel Kristjansson sets out this procedure:

****************
Just run mythfilldatabase normally, but after it has finished
downloading the data for the day you are interested in hit Ctrl-C
The data will be in a folder under /tmp with a name like
/tmp/mythtv_ddp_RANDOM
If there are multiple such directories, then
   ls -ld /tmp/mythtv_ddp_*
will tell you which one is most recent.
Inside that directory there will be several files, the ones
you are interested in begin with mythtv_dd_cache_
At the end of each file is the UTC dates covered by that file.
So in my case:
  mythtv_dd_cache_1_danielk_UTC_20090901040000_to_20090902040000
this is for source 1, user danielk, and is the schedule data
for this file is for 9/1 EST. (UTC+4).

You can also import this directly
mythfilldatabase --dd-file 1 1 \
   "ECHOST:-" \
 
/tmp/mythtv_ddp_XIsQzm/mythtv_dd_cache_1_danielk_UTC_20090901040000_to_20090902040000

mythfilldatabase --help gives the dd-file format, you need to specify
source and the day for this import relative to today's date, so for 9/1
I specified 1 1. Then the DataDirect source name and finally the file
to be imported. Obviously this is not very end user friendly because
you need to know all this mythtv internal info.. Other than the file
name and relative day, all of it is listed in the videosources table.

*****************

b)	Robert Eden sets out a shorter procedure, which can grab up to 14 
days worth of data, in either of 2 formats, using XMLTV to grab the 
data. (This is for North America, obviously)

	tv_grab_na_dd --configure  # first time
	tv_grab_na_dd --dd-data dd.xml --days 14 --download-only # to  download 
in DD format
	tv_grab_na_dd --output tv.xml  --days 14 --download-only # to download 
in xmltv format.

	You should change the names of the file to reflect the date range 
downloaded.

6.	When you find an error go back and trawl through the raw data, to see 
if it exists in the feed, or not. Let everyone know.


I have been meaning to do this for some time, but the error rate is very 
low and the time required....just does not seem to be available!

Any and all help would be appreciated.


Geoff





If you're on windows, simply grab http://alpha-exe.xmltv.org  and put 
"xmltv.exe" in front of all the above commands. 	




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