[mythtv-users] Radio Times XML Feed

[mythtv at phipps-hutton.freeserve.co.uk]

Quoting John Veness <John.Veness.mythtv at pelago.org.uk>:

> 1, Does duplicate matching work OK? Or will I find previous episodes  
> that I've already watched being re-recorded? I guess this comes down  
> to whether the program IDs match, but I've never really understood  
> where those IDs come from.
>
> 2, What about radio programs - I understand the Atlas grabber  
> supports radio stations too, which I currently use EIT to populate.  
> If I move radio stations to Atlas, will duplicate matching work for  
> those too?

ProgramIDs are set if the listing source supplies series and episode  
information. The programid is a hash of the tiles + ascii-encoded  
series and episode. So whether duplicate matching works depends on if  
the RT data has that information and if the Atlas does.  Duplicate  
matching will break if a listing source changes whether it has  
series/episode or not.

Another point is that the RT grabber has an extensive set of title  
fix-ups (things like removing 'New: ' from titles etc.) and the Atlas  
grabber does not. That will affect programids and duplicate matching  
so you should expect so duplicates.

I don't know what will happen when the RT feed is switched off. It  
would be a shame to lose that fix-up knowledge so hopefully either it  
will move into the xmltv atlas grabber or the RT grabber will  
assimilate the atlas feed.

The Atlas radio data is a good as EIT if not better but again  
duplicate matching may fail if the titles etc are not exactly as in  
previous recordings


> 3, I have a hand-crafted configuration file for the RT grabber, with  
> lines like:
>
> channel south.bbc1.bbc.co.uk
> channel south.bbc2.bbc.co.uk
>
> with just the channels I want. Can I just copy the same file for the  
> Atlas grabber? I thought I read somewhere that the Atlas grabber  
> uses completely different channel IDs, four digit numbers I think. I  
> don't mind setting up a new config file if necessary, just wondering.

Atlas does us weird strings for the channel id by default but you can  
use human readable ones if you want. They may not be the same as the  
RT grabber so best to check each one in the file  
~/.xmltv/supplement/tv_grab_uk_atlas/tv_grab_uk_atlas.map.channels.conf

Run 'tv_grab_uk_atlas --list-channels | less' and look for ITVBe, it  
isn't in the RT listing so it has the weird name 'cbYy', channels that  
are in the R listings have the 'normal' names.

Cheers,
Tim.