[mythtv-users] Long films and news breaks

[Alexander Fisher]

On 3/23/06, Robert Johnston <anaerin at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/23/06, Alexander Fisher <alexjfisher at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Some random thoughts ...
> > Could we use IMDB to look up the run times of all scheduled movies?
> > Is the offending mid-movie show always news?  Why would it be anything else!?
> > Two halves of a split showing are often similar lengths.
> > A repeat showing isn't always exactly the the same length as the first
> > showing (Jaws 3 is 1hr55 the first time round but only 1hr50 later on)
>
> The main problem there is that films are cut and time compressed for
> TV showing. So what would be a 2hour film is chopped down to 1:30 (Or
> less) to fit into schedules.

I'm not sure the situation is that bad in the UK at least, but I'm
becoming less and less convinced that using IMDB would be reliable. 
For instance, I wouldn't be surprised if the first 'half' of a film +
commercials is occasionally greater than the total run time advertised
by IMDB.
Out of interest, does anybody here use the xmltv tv_imdb script to
augment the radio times data?

Altering the programme data before is enters the database and before
the scheduler sees it seems the easiest approach to me.  Of course,
this could never work for EIT listings.

Alex