[mythtv-users] 6.6 Short Schedule

[Mike Perkins]

On 13/04/2021 18:17, Gary Buhrmaster wrote:
> 
> Note that while one might fantasize EIT data
> would be more current, and there are probably
> cases where it could be(**), in practice most stations
> get the EIT data from another company to feed
> to their transmitters (there are a couple (four?)
> of companies that take guide data and transform
> it to the EIT format(***)), so you are back to the
> accuracy of the guide provider (whomever that
> is for the company doing the transformation
> that the station has contracted with for the data),
> and you have the ability to be getting your
> Schedules Direct updates a few times a day
> as long as you are using the JSON feed, so the
> accuracy would be expected to be equivalent.
> 
> (**) Stations may pull data from their PSIP
> Data Service Provider on various schedules
> (once a day, a few times a day, etc.) but those
> providers still depend on the underlying guide
> data providers updates, which have their own
> update schedules.
> 
We had a graphic illustration of this last weekend in the UK when the Duke of Edinburgh died.

The traditional terrestrial channels promptly went into headless chicken mode. BBC4 was turned off 
completely and BBC1 and BBC2 just showed what was on the BBC News channel, which of course was all 
DofE's history, etc. ITV1, Channel 4 and Channel 5 had different programming but they had still 
stopped showing the 'normal' schedules.

For various reasons I discovered this mid-afternoon. Since I had five programs set to record that 
evening I wanted to see if an update was available and so hand-ran mythfilldatabase. Nope, still the 
same. So, the following morning I had to hit 'delete and re-record' on all those recordings, which 
would have been wall-to-wall DofE.

I think that this kind of event represents one of the few limitations of mythtv, something dramatic 
like a major death (think JFK) or, say, a terrorist event (think 9/11). There's really no way to get 
up-to-date schedule information, since even the EIT can get left behind. The best that can be done 
is to re-record what was wanted at a later date.

-- 

Mike Perkins