[mythtv-users] Is SeriesID field of program used for anything?

[Michael T. Dean]

On 05/22/2012 04:08 AM, Xander wrote:
> I'm messing with a custom made XMLTV grabber, and was wondering if the seriesid column in the program table is used for anything?

The seriesid is automatically generated using an ELF hash of the title 
when importing XMLTV data.  It must be a unique value for a given title, 
or--if possible--unique for a given series.

Note that it's generally not used for scheduling, though, because it 
actually does more harm than good.  Matching on the title will always 
record wanted episodes, even if it records some extra, unrelated shows 
with the same title.  Matching solely on seriesid would mean that you'd 
get the episodes of the series M*A*S*H, but you wouldn't get the movie 
M*A*S*H (which is, in fact, related, though it's a completely different 
seriesid; however, most users who want to record every episode of 
M*A*S*H would also like to get the movies).

> Currently I've patched my mythfilldatabase to use the seriesid when present in the xml (set to a CRID from the data source).
>
> I want to know if I can play with the seriesid field so that it would be different for all titles, even of the same series - e.g. seriesid="crid://something/series_crid/program_crid"
>
> The reason I want to do this is so that duplicate matching using the generated programid works across networks

Note that seriesid is not used for duplicate matching.  Instead 
programid is used.  See  http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Duplicate_matching

>   (sometimes different crids are used by the same network, for series with season/episode info I let mythfilldatabase generate an EPxxxxx id for duplicate matching).

That's a programid, not a series id.  Granted, for XMLTV data, the 
programid is based on seriesid and season and episode information.

> I currently use a slightly modified version of http://code.mythtv.org/trac/ticket/10101 and fall back to title matching for season/episode info programs, which doesnt work well with double showings; hence wanting to be able to match a crid regardless.
>
>
> Hope that made sense.

I'm not exactly sure what you're trying to do, but chances are the 
following will help answer your question (or at least get you started 
down the path to finding the right answer):

The programid is used for duplicate matching and is considered a unique 
identifier of episodes.

For XMLTV users, a programid is created by concatenating a category-type 
indicator with seriesid and season and episode information, only when 
both season and episode numbers are specified.  When either or both 
season number and episode number are missing, no programid is generated 
for the given showing (in which case, duplicate matching will be 
performed using the user-specified duplicate-matching method).

For EIT users, the programid and seriesid are specified by the EIT data 
and may have default_authority prepended.

For Schedules Direct users, the programid and seriesid are specified by 
the DataDirect data.

(You should probably also see EITFixUp::AddDVBEITAuthority().)

Mike