[mythtv-users] Recording The Daily Show

[Bruce Markey]

 Derek Battams wrote:
> The reason I started tackling this was that I needed a rather complicated 
> search rule for Jon Stewart and realized that power search would be nice 
> to have via the web.  This is the rule I need:
> 
> program.title = "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart" AND 
> ((DAYOFWEEK(program.starttime) >= 2 AND DAYOFWEEK(program.starttime) <= 
> 5 AND (HOUR(program.starttime) = 23 OR HOUR(program.starttime) = 0)) OR 
> (DAYOFWEEK(program.starttime) = 6 AND HOUR(program.starttime) = 0))

TDS has always presented some interesting challenges.

- New episodes are shown Mon-Thur at 11pm.

- Repeated at 1am, 10am and 7 or 8pm the next day.

- Specific episodes have the guest listed in the subtitle with
a unique programid and an originalairdate.

- "Generic episodes" have:

    description: A humorous slant on top news stories.
      programid: SH2930530000
originalairdate: 1999-01-11

- Often the day's episode is followed by a repeat of the previous
day's episode on the half hour.

- On any given day, the second week away has all generic episodes
listed but the guest and programid will be filled in by the day
the show airs.

- Often they do not have the guest list in place by the time data
is grabbed for Monday but the data for the week will be available
by Tuesday.

- Therefore Monday's generic episode may be a new show but other
than that, generics are usually repeats.

I have 25 kPowerSearch rules but none are for TDS. First, I know
that I will never have enough shows higher in priority than TDS
to fill all my cards so I know that TDS will always 'win' the 11pm
time slot. I know I want to record even generics on Monday but
only new episodes for the rest of the week.

So, I have a kWeekslotRecord on Monday with normal duplicate matching.
This will record a new or generic episode but will not record a
specific episode that was previously recorded. I then add another
rule that is a kTimeslotRecord with "Record new episodes only". This
will not record generics or anything more than 14 days old. If Monday
is generic and turns out to be a repeat, the rest of the week's
generics will be repeats.

This has worked well every since they started including episode info
about the time that John Edwards announced his candidacy on the show.

Some notes on your rule that you may want to consider or discard.

> program.title = "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart"

Obviously okay but they sometimes have things like "Indecision 2008:
A Daily Show Report"

program.title LIKE "%Daily Show%" might catch these.

> AND ((DAYOFWEEK(program.starttime) >= 2
> AND DAYOFWEEK(program.starttime) <= 5

TDS is only shown at 11pm on Mon-Thurs and never on Fri, Sat or Sun
so this doesn't buy you much.

> AND (HOUR(program.starttime) = 23 OR HOUR(program.starttime) = 0)) OR 
> (DAYOFWEEK(program.starttime) = 6 AND HOUR(program.starttime) = 0))

In the Pacific timezone, the first rerun is at 1am. I've never seem TDS
at 12:00 or 12:30. HOUR == 23 matches any start time from 11:00 thru
11:59 and will therefore match the 11:30 showing of the previous day's
show. However, "MINUTE(program.starttime) = 0" would only match the
showings at the top of the hour and exclude the repeats at half past(!).

One might think that kFindDailyRecord was invented for TDS but it was
for NewsNight with Aaron Brown and a daily NASCAR show with multiple
generic repeats. TDS is not a good find daily because of the half past
repeats and the Friday thru Sunday repeats.

So, here is a complicated ;-) rule to grab either the first or second
showing accepting generics on Mon evening but not the rest of the week.

program.title LIKE "%Daily Show%"
AND MINUTE(program.starttime) = 0
AND HOUR(DATE_SUB(program.starttime, INTERVAL 2 HOUR)) > 20
AND WEEKDAY(DATE_SUB(program.starttime, INTERVAL 2 HOUR)) < 4
AND (WEEKDAY(DATE_SUB(program.starttime, INTERVAL 2 HOUR)) = 0
     OR program.previouslyshown = 0)

Any "Daily Show" title, on the hour, whose start time minus two is
in the evening of Monday through Thursday with generics accepted on
Monday but must be new episodes for the rest of the week.

Way too complicated =) but definitive.

+---------------------+---------------------------------+---------------+
| starttime           | title                           | subtitle      |
+---------------------+---------------------------------+---------------+
| 2005-10-10 23:00:00 | The Daily Show With Jon Stewart |               |
| 2005-10-11 01:00:00 | The Daily Show With Jon Stewart |               |
| 2005-10-17 23:00:00 | The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Dolly Parton  |
| 2005-10-18 01:00:00 | The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Dolly Parton  |
| 2005-10-18 23:00:00 | The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Bill O'Reilly |
| 2005-10-19 01:00:00 | The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Bill O'Reilly |
| 2005-10-19 23:00:00 | The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Louis Freeh   |
| 2005-10-20 01:00:00 | The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Louis Freeh   |
+---------------------+---------------------------------+---------------+

I'm sticking with a a weekslot 11pm Mon and a timeslot for 11pm with
new episodes only.

--  bjm