Talking Pictures UK TV channel recording oddity - Cellar Club with Caroline Munro

[sub]

Unfortunately your logs don't go back that far.

[blobbyguts]

Unfortunately your logs don't go back that far.

OK

I have tried to setup up this week's recording (02/02/2024 @ 21:00 and 02/02/2024 @ 22:55) and here's what happened.
1. Initially setting up a "Record Once" for each does not show up as a pending recording.
2. Requesting "Record Series" does not show as a pending recording but does get listed as a recurring; thus I deleted the recurring.
3. Checking this morning I note all but one of my pending recordings are no longer listed BUT the 2 "Record Once" instances of Cellar Club with Caroline Munro are now listed as pending. I have several recurring recordings scheduled and none of these are now pending which they should be.
4. Removing the 2 "Cellar Club with Caroline Munro" pending recordings and stopping and restarting the NextPVR service fails to reload all previously pending recordings.
5. I can add new "Record Once" and "Record Series" items and these show up as pending.
6. Forcing a guide update re-instates all missing scheduled recurring recordings.

It is clear that attempting to schedule "Record Once" for this particular program on this channel messes with scheduling and scheduling a "Record Series" causes the "Failed recording" issue.
I can live with not recording this program but my good lady would like this to be recorded if possible. A sneaky way for me to record these programs is to set the start padding for the following program to begin 5 or 6 minutes early, thus catching this program, currently my default padding for all recordings is set to 3 minutes before and after to ensure overruns are catered for; I have enough tuners to allow this amount of padding.
My guide is scheduled to update at 06:00 every morning; this is populated using an XMLTV file generated by WebGrab++ which runs at 04:00

[mvallevand]

It appears you are scheduling during an EPG update which is going to give unpredictable results

[blobbyguts]

It appears you are scheduling during an EPG update which is going to give unpredictable results

Not strictly true; yes the logs may show this today but this has been an ongoing problem for several weeks and seems to be a potential problem with the database entries for this program only. It may be, during EPG update using the XMLTV file generated by WebGrab++, that the entries are not quite correct.
I have checked the generated XML in the EPG update file and this has no errors.

I have, at one point, completely de-installed, re-installed NextPVR and set up all "Record Once" and "Record Series" again from scratch with no change to this behaviour for this program.
This may be a unique, dare I say it, bug or something unique to my system, thus me reaching out for help. Either way it has me stumped!

[sub]

It looks the issue is that WebGrab++ is generating garbage in the listings for these shows. Specifically, the <Rating> field contains bits of javascript code etc and it breaks the xml parsing.

Code:

<Event>
  <OID>2526784</OID>
  <Title>Cellar Club with Caroline Munro</Title>
  <SubTitle></SubTitle>
  <Description>The cult movie star introduces They Live.(n)</Description>
  <ChannelOID>7221</ChannelOID>
  <StartTime>2024-02-02T21:00:00.0000000Z</StartTime>
  <EndTime>2024-02-02T21:05:00.0000000Z</EndTime>
  <FirstRun>true</FirstRun>
  <Rating>PG"}</script><div><script>(window.adq = window.adq || []).push((api) => api.setContext({"unitName":"/176986657/radiotimes.com/shows/tv</Rating>
  <Quality>Colour/SUB</Quality>
  <Genres>
    <Genre>Arts And Culture</Genre>
  </Genres>
  <DeferredArtwork>https://images.immediate.co.uk/remote/images.atlas.metabroadcast.com/api.pressassociation.com/content/f2213f35-ac7c-5677-b9a5-8a5a0f4e1093.jpg</DeferredArtwork>
</Event>

[blobbyguts]

Can you post the logs?

It looks the issue is that WebGrab++ is generating garbage in the listings for these shows. Specifically, the <Rating> field contains bits of javascript code etc and it breaks the xml parsing.

Code:

<Event>
  <OID>2526784</OID>
  <Title>Cellar Club with Caroline Munro</Title>
  <SubTitle></SubTitle>
  <Description>The cult movie star introduces They Live.(n)</Description>
  <ChannelOID>7221</ChannelOID>
  <StartTime>2024-02-02T21:00:00.0000000Z</StartTime>
  <EndTime>2024-02-02T21:05:00.0000000Z</EndTime>
  <FirstRun>true</FirstRun>
  <Rating>PG"}</script><div><script>(window.adq = window.adq || []).push((api) => api.setContext({"unitName":"/176986657/radiotimes.com/shows/tv</Rating>
  <Quality>Colour/SUB</Quality>
  <Genres>
    <Genre>Arts And Culture</Genre>
  </Genres>
  <DeferredArtwork>https://images.immediate.co.uk/remote/images.atlas.metabroadcast.com/api.pressassociation.com/content/f2213f35-ac7c-5677-b9a5-8a5a0f4e1093.jpg</DeferredArtwork>
</Event>

Funnily enough I was reviewing the XMLTV file and wondered the same when I saw this earlier today.
Although the XML is tagged correctly, like you say the contents of the "Rating" tag is garbage.
I'll raise a query in the WebGrab++ forum.
I'll also remove this garbage from the XMLTV input file and re-import into the guide and see if this fixes.
I'll give an update in a day or two when I have time as the file averages 18MB in size and will take a while to thoroughly check.
Thanks for your help

I have raised a bug entry on the WebGrab++ forum as this is a bug in the radiotimes.com.ini file processing...

[mvallevand]

Is it possible that NextPVR isn't xml encoding the rating field?

[blobbyguts]

Is it possible that NextPVR isn't xml encoding the rating field?

No
I have used a different site to generate the XML for Talking Pictures TV and it is now allowing me to set up scheduled recordings.
There is a bug in the WebGrab++ ini file for radiotimes.com which quite often generates garbage in the <ratings><value></value></ratings> field but ONLY for this channel; all other guide data extracted for any other channel on this site is correctly formatted.

I have raised a query in the WebGrab++ forum to assist with fixing the ini file which is used to access the website and extract the guide data.

[sub]

Is it possible that NextPVR isn't xml encoding the rating field?

Yes, but that field is still full of garbage anyway.

I'll make a change to try a sanity check on it, and encode it, but his quickest path to a fix is going to be getting rid of the garbage in this field (because my build is no longer compatible with 6.1.5, so I can't provide a patch for it)

[mvallevand]

I was just thinking maybe in some countries the & might be used.

@blobbyguts why do you not use the ota guide? Just curious since many in the UK say it is quite good

Martin