[mythtv-users] Last night's 30 Rock...

[Michael T. Dean]

On 02/03/2012 06:08 PM, Joey Morris wrote:
> Jay Ashworth wrote on Fri, Feb 03, 2012 at 05:53:06PM -0500:
>> http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2012/02/03/thursday-final-ratings-american-idol-big-bang-theory-greys-anatomy-office-mentalist-adjusted-up-rob-adjusted-down/118569/
> This is the relevant quote from the article:
>
>> Ratings for the February 2 telecast of "30 Rock" were apparently
>> impacted by an episode description that matched the description of the
>> prior week's 9 p.m. telecast, resulting in some DVRs failing to record
>> the program though it was correctly listed as an original.
> I noticed on Sunday that 30 Rock wasn't scheduled to record Thursday,
> and I saw that it was because the episode ID was identical to last
> week's. I meant to check on it a couple days later to see if my lineup
> info was corrected, but I forgot about it until about 8:20 last night.

Right, it wasn't "just" an episode description that matched.  TMS 
actually provided different subtitles for the 2 episodes, but the 
description--and, importantly for MythTV--the programid for last night's 
episode ("Today You Are a Man") were provided for last week's episode 
("The Ballad of Kenneth Parcell").  They couldn't retro-actively correct 
the information for last week's episode, which meant that any MythTV 
user who didn't notice (me included) missed the episode.

(Though I did notice that the description for last week's episode was 
completely wrong, I didn't think to check this week's episode for 
"residual" effects.)

> Had I remembered in time, my plan was to set an override to force it
> to record, and report the error to Schedules Direct. Is this the
> correct approach to handling such a situation?

The override would have worked properly.

Alternatively, you could have gone into mythfrontend's Manage 
Recordings|Previously Recorded, found last week's showing of 30 Rock 
("The Ballad of Kenneth Parcell"), hit SELECT (Space/Enter), then 
selected, "Allow this episode to re-record."

However, if you still had last week's showing ("The Ballad of Kenneth 
Parcell") in your "current recordings' (meaning you hadn't deleted last 
week's recording), you would have had to go into Watch Recordings, found 
last week's showing, and then hit MENU|Scheduling Options|Allow this 
program to re-record.

Meaning that the override is probably the easiest approach (that doesn't 
require deep understanding of the problem--duplicate programid--and the 
duplicate matching system in MythTV).

>   What are the chances
> that my reporting the error to Schedules Direct would have gotten the
> problem fixed on their end?

I think in this case--since they provided the wrong programid for last 
week's episode--it wouldn't have helped unless you noticed it at least a 
day or more before last week's episode aired.  In other words, last 
night's data was correct.  It was the data from a week ago that was 
incorrect.

That said, TTBOMK, this is the first time anything like this has 
happened since we started using DataDirect (even before Schedules Direct 
existed).

Mike