Any alternative to Atlas Metabroadcast for UK EPG?

[gEd]

Signed up for a trial but I'm not getting great series/episode number data for some things especially daily soaps/shows, for instance Neighbours (C5), Home and Away (C5), Eastenders (BBC1), Escape to the Country (BBC1), Flog IT! (BBC2), Antiques Road Trip (BBC2) are all blank.
Is this a general issue with these sorts of show, do they only have an episode number maybe, and maybe NPVR doesn't then import these numbers?

I'd never really looked at the EPG for soaps and daytime TV programs I never watch them but yes, it does seem that the episode/series numbering is erratic or non-existent for some of these shows. Eastenders has never actually stopped running AFAIK so it wont have a series number... Does Flog IT! also have separate series or is it just always on?

Evening series (i.e. shows that actually stop after say 8 episodes) such as Mock the week, Masterchef, Peaky Blinders, 24 Hours in A&E are all perfect as far as I can see. Even Antiques roadshow (but keep in mind that they show loads of older repeats as well).

[rkulagow]

Signed up for a trial but I'm not getting great series/episode number data for some things especially daily soaps/shows, for instance Neighbours (C5), Home and Away (C5), Eastenders (BBC1), Escape to the Country (BBC1), Flog IT! (BBC2), Antiques Road Trip (BBC2) are all blank.
Is this a general issue with these sorts of show, do they only have an episode number maybe, and maybe NPVR doesn't then import these numbers?

If NextPVR has a way of letting you know the programID (EP{foo}), then please open a ticket at the Schedules Direct website as an "Other" ticket and let me know your lineup name GBR-000{whatever} and the programIDs that were missing Season / Episode information. I can check the database, and escalate to Gracenote to determine if they can add S/E.

[daveslee]

Signed up for a trial but I'm not getting great series/episode number data for some things especially daily soaps/shows, for instance Neighbours (C5), Home and Away (C5), Eastenders (BBC1), Escape to the Country (BBC1), Flog IT! (BBC2), Antiques Road Trip (BBC2) are all blank.
Is this a general issue with these sorts of show, do they only have an episode number maybe, and maybe NPVR doesn't then import these numbers?

It's interesting to do a side by side comparison. The "block" at Atlas doesn't come in until Saturday 18:00, so still a chance to grab a reference sample of XML out to 14 days time, or use the live example EPG grid on the website that seems to work even without an API key.

Sampling later today:

BBC1

* Rip off Britain SD/NPVR=S02E07, Atlas=S02E07
* Homes under the hammer SD/NPVR=S19E47, Atlas=S19E47
* Oxford Street Revealed SD/NPVR=nothing, Atlas=S03E06
* Escape to the Country SD/NPVR=No S/E, but an episode name of "Northamptonshire", Atlas=S16E58 episode name="episode 58: Northamptonshire"
* EastEnders SD/NPVR=nothing, Atlas= no S/E but episode name="Episode 5284"

BBC2

* Flog It: Trade Secrets SD/NPVR=No S/E, but an episode name of "Life's Little Luxuries: Part 2", Atlas=No S/E but episode name "01/04/2015" on the EPG widget but "13/05/2016" in the XML I downloaded on Tuesday (so it seems to have changed during the week)
* Escape to the country SD/NPVR=No S/E, but an episode name of "Suffolk", Atlas=S16E57 episode name="episode 57: Suffolk"

So on this rather small sample, quite a mixed bag. The serial dramas (EastEnders, Coronation Street, Hollyoaks, Emerdale et al) don't seem to use E??S?? but instead on Atlas have a number somewhere in the thousands. Is this a production number or a true sequential serial number? Who knows.

The advice to contact SD with any problems seems sound to me. The SD service seems better than nothing to me right now though. We could see if Metabroadcast relent tomorrow at 18:00 - but I have this feeling after their follow up e-mail that they've made their bed and intend to lie in it.

The acid test for me is that for programmes that I just can't miss, not missing an episode is all I care about. I binge-watch in blocks so knowing that a recording failed and I can grab a copy from either another airing or a catch-up service like BBC iPlayer is good enough. So as long as I get every episode of the dramas and documentaries that I tag to record, even if they don't have e/s then just getting them in sequence to avoid spoilers will do me.

[macgyver]

The acid test for me is that for programmes that I just can't miss, not missing an episode is all I care about. I binge-watch in blocks so knowing that a recording failed and I can grab a copy from either another airing or a catch-up service like BBC iPlayer is good enough. So as long as I get every episode of the dramas and documentaries that I tag to record, even if they don't have e/s then just getting them in sequence to avoid spoilers will do me.

Pretty much my feelings too. She does NEED Neighbours but without the E/S data this records twice daily anyway so all OK, although we are currently running low on disk space.:mad:

There are other issues on Discovery, for instance, where the series numbering for some programmes, eg Fast 'n' Loud, is now different. In Atlas we had only 3 series, now we seem to have 6 which means they all get recorded as new, but again I can live with too many recordings. In terms of data comparison I ran SQL on 7 days of Discovery when loaded with Atlas and got 5 programme episodes (out of 258 total) without S/E data, after loading SD that had risen to 28, over 10%.

If NextPVR has a way of letting you know the programID (EP{foo}), then please open a ticket at the Schedules Direct website as an "Other" ticket and let me know your lineup name GBR-000{whatever} and the programIDs that were missing Season / Episode information. I can check the database, and escalate to Gracenote to determine if they can add S/E.

NPVR does have a 'Unique_ID' in EPx...x format (eg Fast 'n' Loud EP016119190025) - is that it? If so I'll pick some and log in SD forum.

[rkulagow]

NPVR does have a 'Unique_ID' in EPx...x format (eg Fast 'n' Loud EP016119190025) - is that it? If so I'll pick some and log in SD forum.

Yes, that's it; NextPVR calls it Unique_ID and the naming in the API is programID.

Please open a ticket at the Schedules Direct website (where you registered your account) under the "Lineup Issues" link.

[shaneypoopers]

So I've written an evil kludgy batch file for my NextPVR machine that runs under Windows that chops the requests up. Trying it out now before the Saturday 1800 deadline.

What it does is:

* Queries Atlas for the 24 hours of data for each channel I want, one at a time
* Queries Atlas for 24 hours of data for one channel at a time but offset 6 days into the future
* Queries Atlas for 24 hours of data for one channel at a time but offset 12 days into the future
* Each time the script is run, each "micro" batch of XML is shuffled along in a shift register, the effect being that after 6 days I will have all of the data for a 12 or 13 day EPG in the "shift register" queue chopped up day by day and channel by channel.
The individual XML files are then assembled together into the honking great big XML file I used to use.

I did this so that my EPG could look out into the future for 12 or 13 days for planning/setting timers purposes, and as schedules change, with less than a week to go I get an update and then the next 24 hours of data is always "fresh".

I have a fibre broadband connection and it is not the rate of data coming down from Atlas that is now the problem, but the time taken to sort through and assemble all those fragments. That gives a nice pause between each Atlas lookup which might keep their admins happy. I haven't done any clever optimisation or error checking - I just want to see if NextPVR will ignore all the duplication and dross in my new file (as programmes overlap from one day to another) or if it spits flame and I have to write something more clever. If this approach works then perhaps we can discuss with the keepers of XMLTV putting this type of code inside the existing downloader and changing the way that caching currently works.

Hi Dave,

Did you have any joy getting this to work ?

Shane

[daveslee]

Hi Shane,

I gave up and used Schedules Direct JSON instead. There were just too many "corner cases" to deal with like what would happen on a daylight savings change (either I would request 25 hours of data and get "banned", or my buffer might have a 1 hour gap in it). Plus with the time it took to grab (and that time not being a constant), I had buffer gaps. And the concatenate xml tools in xmltv did not tolerate some of the xml file fragments being gathered. In all the code become a right mess so I stopped.

Then Atlas/Metabroadcast sent out there next snot-o-gram refereeing to the Ts & Cs and "clarifying" (for want of better words) that the service was for developers and that you had 3 months as a reasonable period to develop a solution and then seek licensing. So I tried the free trial from SD and then invested $25 for a year subscription to their JSON service and have not looked back since.

It's a small price to pay compared with the time and heartache to home brew something that might stop working any day now...

[shaneypoopers]

Hi Shane,

I gave up and used Schedules Direct JSON instead. There were just too many "corner cases" to deal with like what would happen on a daylight savings change (either I would request 25 hours of data and get "banned", or my buffer might have a 1 hour gap in it). Plus with the time it took to grab (and that time not being a constant), I had buffer gaps. And the concatenate xml tools in xmltv did not tolerate some of the xml file fragments being gathered. In all the code become a right mess so I stopped.

Then Atlas/Metabroadcast sent out there next snot-o-gram refereeing to the Ts & Cs and "clarifying" (for want of better words) that the service was for developers and that you had 3 months as a reasonable period to develop a solution and then seek licensing. So I tried the free trial from SD and then invested $25 for a year subscription to their JSON service and have not looked back since.

It's a small price to pay compared with the time and heartache to home brew something that might stop working any day now...

Thanks Dave,

I'll look into SD, not sure the cover Irish channels but will give it a try.