[mythtvnz] Schedules Direct trial for NZ

[Stephen Worthington]

On Tue, 30 Aug 2016 22:10:33 +1200, you wrote:

>On 30 August 2016 at 14:05, Robert Fisher <robert at fisher.net.nz> wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 30 August 2016 at 10:02, Tony Sauri <hoiho.nz at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> Sorry
>>> I left the following links out of my prior messages
>>>
>>> https://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Migrating_to_Schedules_Direct_in_the_UK
>>> https://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Setup_Video_Sources
>>>
>>> As I said before these links will probably be helpful and provide clues
>>> about what to do next to people who have some development experience.
>>
>>
>> It would be great (for people like me without the development experience) if
>> someone could test and confirm that those Wiki posts are appropriate for us.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Robert Fisher

>
>N00b question perhaps - but what is the advantage (practical, legal,
>moral etc) of using Schedules Direct over tv_grab_nz.py?
>
>I'm trying to work out if it is worth the learning curve /
>reconfiguration over my current working setup which is missing EPG
>data for some channels (Bravo +1, Te Reo et al).

Generally SchedulesDirect is considered to produce better quality EPG.
I have yet to sign up and find out if that is the case for NZ though.
The standard NZ EPG is rather hit and miss, with not all channels
providing proper programid data so that you can avoid recording
repeats and things like that.  Some channels here have even gone and
changed how they do programid data, resulting in recording of repeats
for any programme aired before the change.  And the stupid "All New"
or "New: " or "Prime Presents" on the front of the title messes up
recording rules so you miss a new season of a programme when they do
that.  Some of that is now stripped out in the downloaded EPG that we
have, but that is the sort of thing that SD is supposed to not have.

The Sky EPG is much worse than the Freeview EPG - the Freeview
channels have been gradually improving their EPG over the years, but
Sky has lots of channels with pretty hopeless EPG.  So I am hoping
that SD may eventually also do the Sky channels, but as demand for
that is likely to be low, I think it is unlikely.

On the legal front, I would presume that SchedulesDirect or whoever
they get their EPG data (Tribune?) from will have made appropriate
arrangements with the original sources for NZ EPG and will have the
appropriate rights to provide it to us.

The problem I have with changing over to SD is that it is very likely
that their programid data will not match what I have in my database
from many years of recordings.  So I will once again be getting lots
of repeats recording themselves.  So I am intending (when I find a
spare moment) to use SD EPG on my test PC first, to see if the SD EPG
is sufficiently better that it is worth putting up with that problem.

I have already made myself a workaround for missing channels, where my
EPG script runs local mhepgsnoop EPG collection and also gets the
downloaded EPG.  Where it finds a channel present in the MHEG5 data
and not in the downloaded EPG, it merges the MHEG5 data into the
downloaded data.  It seems to be working well now, and if a missing
channel turns up in the downloaded EPG, I do not have to change
anything as the processing is all automatic.  It does make my EPG
collection take a bit longer though.