Autotimers and series link info

[flyferrari]

Hi All. I'm new to VIX and this forum so please be gentle! :sofahide:

Like many I have come to my Xtrend 10000 from a venerable Topfield 5800 running a MyStuff GUI. I've had that for the best part of 15yrs and have only changed now to get HD and extra tuners. The Toppy was brilliant!

The fantastic thing about the Toppy/Mystuff combo was that it had virtually all of the features of AutoTimers but used the series link info in an intelligent way. MyStuff used "power search" to search the EPG and find all repeats of a series but would only record one version at a time when one of the tuners was free to record. With VIX, if you give Autotimers the flexibility to guarantee not missing the episode shown on an odd day or even pick up when the next series starts, you get multiple recordings of the same episode per week. This, apart from the ball ache of having to delete all the duplicates, also ties up the tuners so increases the possibility of timer clash. The Xtrend has the happy facility of having more tuners so this is rare but if Mystuff could do this a decade ago is there a good reason why VIX can't do the same today?

Other than this I love the VIX image and sorting this issue would be the icing on the cake.

Kevin

[adm]

Have you tried some of the other filters available in the autotimers

"Require description to be unique" .....
and when this is set to anything other than no you get
"Check for uniqueness in" .....

You can also restrict to one or couple of channels.

(Also ex-toppy/mystuff user with an Extrend 10K)

[flyferrari]

Thanks for the reply. I have looked at all the filters but I'm concerned that if I restrict the autotimer too much I'll end up missing episodes. The Toppy used to dart all over the time and channel options to record any given series. To be fair though, I've now got three tuners in the Xtrend and so far I've not had much in the way of conflicts. I imagine the bigger test will be when I let the missus loose on it (she's still using the Toppy!) and it tries to record all her shit as well as my stuff.

[DaMacFunkin]

Like ADM says you can choose to only record from certain channels and at certain times of the day, so for instance i could set the x factor to record only from ITV HD between 18:45 and 23:45, that way i wouldn't get any of the repeats from a saturday or sunday afternoon.

[ccs]

I've not missed any recordings since moving to an et10k (freeview only) from a toppy.
Even time changes/reshedules get picked up if the autotimer is run frequently enough (I use 25 minutes).

The question of series links has been asked plenty of times before.
I've never understood why the SL data is being ignored when it surely can't be too difficult to add this extra attribute to a programme's details.
Maybe there is a copyright issue?

[EMJB]

I've never understood why the SL data is being ignored when it surely can't be too difficult to add this extra attribute to a programme's details.
Maybe there is a copyright issue?

Is the series-linking a UK-only feature?

EMJB

[flyferrari]

That's the funny thing. MyStuff on the Toppy was written, I believe, by a German (clearly a very talented bloke). However altruistic he is, I can't see him coding software that could only be used to its fullest performance in a country that wasn't where he lives! As for copywriting, I can't see that either as the series link info is broadcast on Freeview where the whole point is "free".

Still holding out hope for one of the talented VIX team picking up this batton and running with it!

[ccs]

The author of MyStuff lives in Nottingham, and I believe that "series link" was copyrighted by sky many years ago, but I might well be wrong with that one.

[Joe_90]

Perhaps the term "series link" has some level of copyright protection, but the mechanism used for linking programme and series information is embedded in the DVB data stream. It's called the Content Reference IDentifier or CRID. There are CRIDs for identifying the programme and the series it belongs to. In some cases the content of the CRID is just a simple string of digits but the standard allows for complex content such as URLs. In a simple case Coronation Street might have a series CRID of "ABCDE" which will remain unchanged for the normal Mon-Fri showings. Overnight repeats would have a different series CRID as would the weekend omnibus editions. Each episode would have a programme CRID - say "99123", "99124", "99125" etc. which would identify that specific episode and would be the same for that episode in repeat showings. A combination of series and programme CRIDs would be unique and allow the autotimer to follow and record each episode without also recording repeats. This is how my Humax Freesat box works and I would assume SKY boxes are similar. Further extensions of the CRID allow for linking to similar/related programmes.

I would imagine the issue with using CRIDs in ViX or any other E2 image is that the construction of the CRID content is not standardised. I'm sure the developers have looked at this before but it's probably worth another look.

[flyferrari]

Sometimes I amaze myself by how far wrong I can be! Thanks for the correction CCS.....I have no idea where I got the idea BobDS/Mystuff was German. Oh well.

Thanks Fat-Tony for your, clearly well informed, input. As a beta tester, does this mean you can raise the profile of this facility with the VIX team?

[Joe_90]

Will do. It may have been discussed before.

[EMJB]

To get the best out of the CRID data, I suspect a fairly fundamental change would be needed to the AutoTimer logic, namely to save a list of episodes recorded (or set for recording) for each autotimer rather than searching the EPG and recordings. Such a change could usefully be made with the present search logic, but the storing the whole description rather than just the CRID episode might be a pain.

EMJB

[Joe_90]

I think you're probably right that to "shoehorn" it into Autotimers might be too fundamental a change. If CRID episode and series following was to be implemented it would need a table of programmes to be held, together with their scheduled start times. Specific episodes which were recorded successfully could be "ticked off" and those missed for whatever reason could be picked out of repeats. My Humax Foxsat used to do that pretty well. About the only thing that threw it off was when BBC moved particular episodes of Formula 1 from BBC1 to BBC2 with limited notice...

[EMJB]

I think you're probably right that to "shoehorn" it into Autotimers might be too fundamental a change. If CRID episode and series following was to be implemented it would need a table of programmes to be held, together with their scheduled start times. Specific episodes which were recorded successfully could be "ticked off" and those missed for whatever reason could be picked out of repeats. My Humax Foxsat used to do that pretty well. About the only thing that threw it off was when BBC moved particular episodes of Formula 1 from BBC1 to BBC2 with limited notice...

But don't let this stop anyone amending enigma to make the data available to a new (or extended AutoTimer) plug-in!! In the case of the Toppy the firmware was patched to put the CRID data at the end of the description, avoiding the need for data structure changes and that would seem a reasonable approach here too. Once the data is available the plug-in can follow, and as a half-way house I suspect AutoTimer could be amended fairly easily to compare the just the CRID info rather than whole description to identify repeats among other timers and among recordings .

EMJB

[birdman]

I suspect AutoTimer could be amended fairly easily to compare the just the CRID info rather than whole description to identify repeats among other timers and among recordings .Possibly not, as Vix doesn't store a list of what has been recorded. When AutoTimers are set to check against any previous recording they actually scan the ts.meta file of all existing recordings (including those in .Trash, IIRC). If you were doing a series link you'd probably want to know what has been recorded in the last <n> months, even if you've now deleted it (as was done on the Toppy). A sqlite database, perhaps...

[abu baniaz]

I would have thought first step would be to make E2 recognise the data. Once this happens, you can use it for other features. Same applies to the EPG ID that OpenTV EPG uses.

[EMJB]

Possibly not, as Vix doesn't store a list of what has been recorded. When AutoTimers are set to check against any previous recording they actually scan the ts.meta file of all existing recordings (including those in .Trash, IIRC). If you were doing a series link you'd probably want to know what has been recorded in the last <n> months, even if you've now deleted it (as was done on the Toppy). A sqlite database, perhaps...

I was only suggesting that as a half-way house.

For the "full" solution, I envisaged holding the list of episodes recorded as part of an auto-timer, which would result in re-recording episodes transmitted prior to the setting up the autotimer which I agree may not be ideal but certainly an improvement on the present situation.

EMJB

[abu baniaz]

I'm guessing the episode numbers are incremental. Would you have to register all recorded episodes or just recent ones?

[birdman]

I'm guessing the episode numbers are incremental. Would you have to register all recorded episodes or just recent ones?Take a look at how episodes of The Big Bang Theory or Horizon are broadcast. Whether they are sequential within a series doesn't really make any difference.

[Joe_90]

The episode numbers may not be monotonic. It's not material in any case as they just need to be unique. We are not trying to "guess" the next episode. Just need to keep a list of recorded episodes (maybe last 10/20?).
But abu - you are right, we first need to determine if E2 can identify and scan episode and series CRIDs.

[chumley]

I missed the first half of Great British Bake Off because they changed the bast*rd title by adding final! so my autotimer didn't work :(

I would be more than happy to contribute (say £20) to a developer fund to get series link recording capability, there is certainly interest in this area :)

[ccs]

... it nearly caught me out as well, but I spotted it in time.

[Valiant]

I missed the first half of Great British Bake Off because they changed the bast*rd title by adding final! so my autotimer didn't work :(

I would be more than happy to contribute (say £20) to a developer fund to get series link recording capability, there is certainly interest in this area :)

Prefix titles with "New:" , swapping "and" with "&" and other lazy editing means that exact matching will miss a timer now and then.

Better to do "partial match" for most timers and set "case insensitive search".

Set "require description to be unique" maybe though I have not yet.

[DaMacFunkin]

One of our boxes recorded Bake off the other didn't, one was set to exact match, the other was set to start's with, although if they had changed it to - 'New - The Great British Bake Off' it still wouldn't have recorded.
i think this crid implementation would be great if it works.

[EMJB]

Prefix titles with "New:" , swapping "and" with "&" and other lazy editing means that exact matching will miss a timer now and then.

Better to do "partial match" for most timers and set "case insensitive search".

Set "require description to be unique" maybe though I have not yet.

Not sure that the partial match does quite what you expect - I suspect the whole of the AutoTimer name has to appear somewhere in the programme name to get a "hit", so doesn't cope with the "and/&" problem, or "New:" or "!" in the AutoTimer name but not in the programme name (but would be more than happy to be put right!). It would be nice if "New" ( as us ex-Toppy users are used to) and all the odd characters were stripped out of each before the "partial" comparison.

EMJB

[Stanman]

Partial match works perfectly and I have all my AT set to PT, across 3 boxes and probably 50 AT I have few failures. To make doubly sure description is not set to unique, for me it's not a problem as enough tuners but can see would be issue on single twin tuner with lots of AT's

Sent from my SM-N9005 using Tapatalk

[birdman]

Not sure that the partial match does quite what you expect - I suspect the whole of the AutoTimer name has to appear somewhere in the programme name to get a "hit", so doesn't cope with the "and/&" problem, or "New:" or "!" in the AutoTimer name but not in the programme name (but would be more than happy to be put right!).You're right.
However, to record "Now and Then" or "Now & Then" (say) you could add a partial match for Now, then add a Filter to only include things with Then in the title.
I do this to with the Big Bang Theory to only get the latest series episode. It currently has a filter for S10 on ShortDescription (was S9 when I first set it up).

[EMJB]

You're right.
However, to record "Now and Then" or "Now & Then" (say) you could add a partial match for Now, then add a Filter to only include things with Then in the title.
I do this to with the Big Bang Theory to only get the latest series episode. It currently has a filter for S10 on ShortDescription (was S9 when I first set it up).

With my viewing habits, this sort of complication is getting near the point where it is easier to sit down once a week and set up the short/medium length series timers manually (with VPS selected), which I do anyway in order to find/record the one-off programmes, and restrict AutoTimers to the very long series such as Coronation Street. Perhaps, however, it is just that on my Toppy I have been spoiled by one button set up of AutoTimer-equivalents from the EPG which have a very high hit, very low miss, and very low duplicate rates without any further tweaking.

EMJB

[Joe_90]

@EMJB - I've had similar good experience in the past with the Humax Foxsat series link and "exact record" - no ad padding so no need to step through 2-3 minutes of filler beforehand - 99.9% success rate. That being said, the autotimer on the ViX image is pretty darn good and very flexible. My only issues with it have been where I've used the default "exact match" and been caught out with "New:" or similar. So "operator error" mostly :p

[birdman]

That being said, the autotimer on the ViX image is pretty darn good and very flexible. Whereas I'd agree, I did have one circumstance where it failed: Channel5's broadcast of The Championship and Goal Rush which used to produce tuner conflicts with other Saturday night broadcasts. It was repeated several times, but each one had a slightly different description (which differed by more than the difference between successive different broadcasts). In the end I added my own extensions to be able to classify all EPG matches within a configurable time-frame (<n> hours from hh:mm on DoW) as the same programme. (Then the channel showed up on an HD mux and the tuner clashes went away).

There are things like "The Fall". Which you set up to record on a Thursday night, but the last episode gets broadcast on a Friday. With a Series Link you wouldn't need to remember.

[Joe_90]

The Fall is that odd exception that Series Link would cover. Which is why I opened the thread on the developer forum to see if it is possible to extract that CRID data from the EPG table and use it to schedule recordings...

[ccs]

There are things like "The Fall". Which you set up to record on a Thursday night, but the last episode gets broadcast on a Friday. With a Series Link you wouldn't need to remember.Thanks for that! (And tonight's the Friday.)

[birdman]

Thanks for that! (And tonight's the Friday.)Which was the only reason I remembered about it...I missed it on series 2 and had to get a copy from the iPlayer.

[abu baniaz]

The BeyonWiz team are looking at implementing the CRID system. Anybody with experience/knowledge in this field should consider assisting.

http://www.beyonwiz.com.au/forum/viewtopic.php?p=160144#p160144

If you get an IP blocked message, please PM ISOz

[IanSav]

Hi,

The link to the first post in the thread is http://beyonwiz.com.au/forum/viewtopic.php?f=54&t=10773 . ;) I don't think you need an account to read the thread but I am not sure (as I am a local ;)). As Abu noted, if you want to contribute then try and create an account. If you are geo-blocked let me know your IP address and I will try and get you in. (Things will be difficult if you have a dynamic IP. ;)) On the Beyonwiz forum I am IanSav here I am ISOz.

Our initial investigations indicate that the data Abu provided for UK stations is similar to / compatible with the Australian data. If anyone has an INI based box they may even be able to run the test code posted in the Beyonwiz forum thread. If you want to build the test code on another box ask Prl (on the Beyonwiz forum) and he should be able to make the source code available.

Regards,
Ian.

[Joe_90]

@Ian - just seeing this now. I'll give the thread a look and possibly set up an account, but not until Wednesday GMT - so in about 24 hours from this post. The UK and IE CRID systems are similar but subtly different in how the CRIDs are identified in the tables. I can get dumps of example CRIDs from UK DVB-S (SKY/Freesat) and Irish DVB-T (Saorview) systems.

ps - just tried the link and got a "permanent ban" on my IP. :fart2: