Automatic recording of "series"

[AndyCherry]

It would be great to be able to have the ability to set up shows that would be recorded whenever they are on - e.g. I'm a bit of an addict for "Worlds Wildest Police Videos", and would like to record all episodes that are on the TV. This could be done through the config interface rather than the TV interface by linking it into the EPG upload function or as a "series record" button in the TV guide.

Cheers,
Andy

[sub]

This is on the list, but I'll need to get a few other things sorted first.

I'm intending to provide an option to 'record all episodes' in the TV guide screen. My local xmltv info doesn't contain any info about reruns etc which can make it a bit of a hassle. Often we have reruns in the morning, which you obviously dont want to record.

[colin]

As far as I know TiVo offers a feature like this. anyone got one/used one? Maybe some of the PVR forums would be useful in figuring out how other hardware/software does this? any of the competition do anything like this? myHTPC does not do this as far as I know (its a feature they wanted), but it could be a place to look in the forums.

I guess one possible way would be the check the description for reruns. Is the text the same for reruns?

MIght be worth contacting the author of XMLTV and see if there is anything that can be pulled into the xml file to help.

Colin.

[AndyCherry]

In the xmltv feed from ananova, they provide an episode number in the format

<table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE"><episode-num system="xmltv_ns">.5661.</episode-num>[/QUOTE]

This is from Coronation Street - I think that is the actual episode number - 3 times a week for 36 years!

Assuming your xmltv feed has this, you could look for the episode number against the recordings in the recordings schedule (future or past) - if it already exists, don't add again.

I think that if an episode is repeated and isn't in the recording schedule, then it would be reasonable to assume it needed recording.

Cheers,
Andy

[sub]

*Some* of the XMLTV files have this information. It largely seems to depend on where the programme information comes from. For example, our local XMLTV grabber takes it from a web site that doesn't list any rerun information, so in turn is not included in the xmltv file.

I could add a 'record all episodes - but only on this channel' option. Reruns here tend to be on other channels. I'm not sure about other areas?

[colin]

In the UK programs would be repeated on the same channel. Ie Coronation street would be shown on a Monday night, then repeated on Tuesday at lunch time, next Show on Wednesday night, repeated on Thursday lunchtime, etc. with an omnibus on Sunday. Actually that might be on 4 nights a week? But that would be one of the extreme cases, new shows, reruns, omnibus.

We (and I guess that means you Sub could implement a rules system whereby only record programs of this name if they are shown between the hours of x and y on z days. This may help cater for the numerous countries.

In the US on one channel Fraiser and Everybody Loves Raymond are shown twice a day, no reruns, just constantly going through all the series (quite cool if you are a fan).

On Fox they are showing the simple life (Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie). New episodes are on Tuesday and Wednesday and all other airings are reruns.

By doing a rules approach (or scoring system) you could probably catch 90% of the shows you want. I assume you are using a database backend so with C# it should be fairly straight forward to generate queries against the xmltv listing?

Cheers,

[AndyCherry]

Assuming the xmltv upload stays manual, this could be achieved also by presenting a dialogue on loading the xmltv file with the items to be &quot;series recorded&quot; - with a check box by the side of each item and the user selects whether they want to record that episode or not. Not as nice as automatic recording, and would require a different mechanism if xmltv uploading became automated, but would be much easier than trying to develop logic for it.

Cheers,
Andy

[gpupurs]

I wonder if some sort of fuzzy matching could be done on two recordings to identify if they are identical (and thus a repeat). Could start on a commercial break (black/slient). Just comparing audio might work better than video, less data, likely less noise. Of course, you'd also need to determine whether you're comparing a commercial or not...