[mythtv-users] Season/Episode: guide listing grabber vs. metadata grabber

[John P Poet]

On Sun, Jan 4, 2026 at 8:41 AM Barry Martin <barry3martin at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> My question is, should I extend the flexibility to give themers the option
> to format the data one way if syndicatedepisode exists, and another if it
> does not, and another if the subtitle does not exist, and ....
>
> Or, do I take the choice away from the themer and just have "s01e01" and
> "1x1" automatically return the syndicated episode information in preference
> to the metadata grabber information?
>
> Thoughts?
>
> Hi John!
>
>
> Personally I think the “S1E1” looks the cleanest: is easy to read and
> takes up less space on the Watch Recordings menu. It would be nice if the
> people creating the Themes gave us the option, but that would also mean
> they would have to (OK, should!) fallback to the other display options.
>

A lot of people think that MythTV already has too many options. At the same
time, we can't agree what the correct behavior should be if an option is
removed.


> Whinings since I haven’t used my 30 seconds of floor time. <g> Currently
> we’re using the Themes MythCenter-wide 1.10 and Mythbuntu 35.0, depending
> on which Frontend. Nothing wrong with the others, just cleaner for our
> aging eyes. One problem is with the date stamp set for DOW M/D the column
> is too narrow so the date information is truncated: “Sat…” (should be Sat
> 1/3), “Fri 1/2” fits but – well, that’s the only one: anything recorded in
> December or before is truncated to the day of the week.
>
>
> I did try a version or two ago to make the font smaller – works, but also
> shrinks the Closed Caption text.
>

The Playback OSD fonts are defined separately from the "frontend" fonts.
Does that mean you are talking about Playback OSD for the date? Either way,
you can create a *new* font definition that is used only for a specific
use-case instead of modifying an existing font definition.
<fontdef name="mydate" from="small">
     <pixelsize>25</pixelsize>
</fontdef>

Then

<textarea name="originalairdate">
     <font>mydate</font>
     <area>720,3,350,35</area>
     <align>left,top</align>
     <template>(%1)</template>
 </textarea>


> So the “would be nice” for the Themes: add Season-Episode to the
> information display, widen the recorded date column, maybe the ability to
> set the font size for Closed Captions separately from the other text.
>
>
> (For us having the DOW plus date is very useful: set a recording for a
> show advertised as next Friday [so what date?], or sometimes we have the
> date – able to find easily.)
>
>
> Overall fantastic job! My Mother has a cable system (nationwide) and their
> look-up is horrible: almost need to know the information one is looking up
> to find the show! Start or end a minute or two off of :00, :30 – you missed
> it! Special showing on a different day? You missed it! So great job to
> MythTV and SchedulesDirect!
>

I designed Steppes-large for my mom. It is Steppes but with much larger
fonts, which required some tricks to get everything to fit on the screen. I
then did Steppes-small for those with large TVs. In all of those cases, a
design goal was to allow the user to specify whatever date format they
wanted to use, and for it to display correctly.

John
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