[mythtv-users] Category Record Over Time doesn't include "Sports event" anymore

[Gary Buhrmaster]

On Sun, Apr 11, 2021 at 4:31 PM Scott Simpson <simpson100 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Running current mythtv: 202104051304. In the past, I set up the Category Record Over Time in Setup->Video->General->Advanced->Category Record Over Time to 60 minutes for the category "Sports event". However, this list no longer contains "Sports event" but now it lists Horses, etc and a bunch of other categories. What happened to "Sports event"? Oddly it contains "Sports non-event".

First, the accuracy of EPG data may depend
on your guide provider(s) accuracy, and
your choice of grabber or EIT sources, so
what happens can vary dramatically from
case to case (so, the generic, "it depends"
answer).

In the case of XMLTV style EPG feeds,
the single category in the program table will
be the first that the guide provider prioritizes
*unless* it is one of the special types that
MythTV recognizes, in which case it will be
placed into the category_type field.  In at least
some cases, that means 'sports', being a
special type, will be in the category_type field,
and the type of sport will likely end up in the
category field.

I would expect that when CBS shows an
American football game before 60 minutes
the values would have been of the form
category_type:"sports", category:"Football".

In addition to the single category values in
the program row itself, there is the related
table programgenres which contain the
other categories that the guide provider
makes available.  Those may include a lot
more program related categories, and it
may be useful to use them for additional
categorization.