What, exactly, is Schedules Direct and what is the best line up for me?

[elsmandino]

Hi there,

Have just got NPVR up and running for the first time and it is working fantastically.

I have set up a SD account and importing EPG is perfect.

Only one thing is really confusing me though - what is Schedules Direct and where does it get its information from?

The reason I ask is that I have a Freesat (DVB-S2) and Freeview (DVB-T) tuner.

I get loads of channels which exist on both, which I have combined.

I also have channels that exist only on Freeview (e.g. Dave) or Freesat (e.g. Challenge +1).

I assumed that I would simply download the EPG for, say, ITV 1 London and it would just provide the information but I have the option to have ITV from either Virgin, Freesat, Freeview or Sky.

I have just tested and the Freeview version is much better than the Sky one - it provides details of the Season and Episode.

I though Schedules Direct was a standardised set of information for all channels, but this must be wrong. Where does the information come from?

[p37307]

Schedules Direct is a third party provider of EPG data. It might be better to ask them at http://schedulesdirect.org/ although there is a gentlemen on here that does respond from them sometimes. Their FAQ at http://schedulesdirect.org/faq states:

What do I do if my listings are incorrect?

Because we are now paying customers of DataDirect, we have account representatives that will deal with these issues. If your listings are incorrect, please let us know (lineup support) so that we can get them involved.

[elsmandino]

Thanks for that - will pop over there in a sec.

The reason I was asking: Don't I want a single EPG source for all my channels to make sure that NPVR has the best opportunity to reschedule where necessary?

If I start different sets of information, whereby Channel 4 might have a slightly different data set to Channel 4+1, is there a risk that the scheduler might think it is a different episode and record it as well rather than instead of?

One other quick thing - I was messing around with the lineup to compare the date on each and it has suddenly informed me that I have exceeded the limit for lineup changes for today (typical). Do you know how long that might last? No problem if not as I can always ask on the SD forum.

[sub]

If you've got a channel available on two different types of sources, like DVB-S and DVB-T, on the Settings->Channels screen you can highlight two channels, right click and select 'merge'. Recordings for those channels can then be done from either the DVB-S or DVB-T source.

[scJohn]

Unless you are a developer, I think SD limits you to 4 update per day. Not 100% sure on the 4 as I read that a long time ago on there developer forum. They could have changed it to another number like 6. Take away, you are limited to the number of times a subscriber can hit their servers requesting an EPG update.

[elsmandino]

If you've got a channel available on two different types of sources, like DVB-S and DVB-T, on the Settings->Channels screen you can highlight two channels, right click and select 'merge'. Recordings for those channels can then be done from either the DVB-S or DVB-T source.

Unfortunately, it is the fact that I have both DVB-S and DVB-T channels that is making me wonder what I should do.

Basically - I have three sets of channels:

1. On DVB-T only (freeview)
2. On DVB-S only (freesat)
3. Combined DVB-T and DVB-S channels (available on both freeview and freesat)

I need to know which source (e.g. freeview, freesat or other), from Schedules Direct, to use for each group of channels, considering that (as far as I can see) Channel 4, for example, on freeview's EPG seems to provide different information to channel 4 on freesat.

[johnsonx42]

use whichever source seems to give you better information. nextpvr doesn't care which you use; as long as the program names and times are right, everything will work the same regardless.

[rkulagow]

If a channel is identical across all providers, it will have the same stationID, and that means that all of the data is identical, because the cross-reference map for your Freeview lineup may have Dave on channel 123, stationID 98765. And on Freesat it would be channel 456, stationID 98765.

Since the stationID is the same on both, by definition it has the same data, because on the server there is only one 98765 schedule.

The best way to handle this is to open a ticket at the Schedules Direct website so that I can check your account.

[elsmandino]

Thanks very much for that.

Your explanation of having a single stationID is exactly how I had imagined SD to work (and indeed makes perfect sense), which is why I cannot work out how I managed two sets of EPG data for the same channel.

From memory, I attached Freeview BBC1 to BBC1 on my DVB-T tuner and Sky BBC1 to BBC1 on my DVB-S tuner, just so I could make a comparison.

The Freeview channel had details of the Season and Episode in the subtitle, whereas the Freesat channel did not.

I shall have another check tonight and report back on here.

Thanks again, everyone, for your help with this.

[jcjefferies]

I also have tuners for Freesat and Freeview channels. I use EPG Collector to generate Freeview and Freesat xml EPGs to import into NextPVR using the broadcast EPG which has always been adequate for my needs. I can map any channel to use either source and no reason why you cannot if you wanted to map the SD EPG data to a HD channel. There is at least one minor channel which has a different name on the two platforms so cannot be merged in NextPVR. An added complication for me is that I live in the "West" region but the local Freeview transmitter broadcasts "West Midlands" so cannot combine the two BBC1 channel sources.

Chris