[mythtvnz] MHEG fix for freeview HD

[Aaron Whitehouse]

Steve Hodge wrote:
> That's why I mentioned season and episode numbers. But I don't think
> we'll get them any time soon. 

Yes. It is a shame that we don't have better detail, as that would make
the "no duplicates" setting work better. The most likely way that I can
see this working is if the EPG ends up using information from something
like tvdb. I can see someone like SchedulesDirect (or maybe a wiki-based
interface to epg.geek, or something) linking programs to episodes in
tvdb or imdb etc. While I can't see anyone sitting down and entering in
the season/episode numbers, subtitles and descriptions reliably enough
for this, I see it as more likely that someone would find the relevant
episode in the database and add a link, populating everything
automatically. It sounds far-fetched, but isn't far off how the likes of
MusicBrainz/SoundJuicer have resulted in my music collection being
perfectly tagged. With perfect data, you are right that recording the
next series of something that you recorded would be sensible (and a lot
easier).

>     As for missed season premieres, I feel this is a legitimate use of
>     bittorrent etc. You talk to friends, they tell you about a fantastic
>     new programme you missed and you download the first episode, then
>     record the rest (if you like it of course).
> Yes.

Haha... I'm guessing some lawyers/MPIAA types would disagree with that view.

>     Of course you can get myth to record every premiere - theres a feature
>     for that, but again it may depend on info we don't have in our
>     databases.

Again, it would probably require more information than we have in our
EPG currently.

> If your recording rule is based on series id (with or without
> the title) and the series id changes for the new season then you are
> going to miss it. 

True, I guess, and I have grown very fond of the fact that MythTV
catches new series, but it isn't something that bothered me on MySky. It
is also worth mentioning that this only happens now on two of the many
recording settings in MythTV -- those based on title matching at any
time on that channel/any time.  Series link would be at least preferable
to "this time slot every day/week" in nearly all cases.

> I suspect this isn't as big a problem for people with
> MySky or Freeview decoders because they are still watching the advertising.

Yes and no. I watch about the same number of ads on both (I FFwd through
ads on MySky as well). The only difference is that I tend to jump
forward on MythTV (right cursor) instead of FFwding, so on MySky I stop
if I see a trailer for something I am interested in.

Again, if it is the sole method that all MyFreeview boxes will be using,
it would be excellent if it made its way into MythTV. From a user's
point of view, I want to record a showing or record a series. The fact
that I can often achieve the result of recording a full series with some
clever rules and searches doesn't make it less useful to have a single
option to do that. It also adds some interesting ideas like separating
out the rerun series from the primetime series based on that ID (while I
may want both, I would usually want season 2 and 5 separate). With the
one exception of title-matching catching a new series (which I agree it
would be great if MythTV could implement), I would be more than happy
to replace all the current options with "Record", "Record series" and
the existing manual/custom records that are in other parts of the menu
(so you could still create a rule to record every episode of the
Simpsons if you didn't want to series link each season). If we had a
perfect EPG, I could be convinced to split the second option into
"Record this series" and "Record every series of this".

Title-based searches fail because the title can be wrong or there can be
multiple series with the same title (which you may or may not want).
Time-based searches fail because the time can change. One could merge
concepts to calculate likelihoods from the time and title (e.g., a
similar title starting half an hour late and ending 1 hour late should
likely be recorded), but mostly this is to get around the fact that a
series is not marked as such.

Usability and simplicity are important features too -- in my opinion
more so than catering for the corner cases in the main recording screen.

Just my thoughts.

Regards,

Aaron