Is there any way to retain series when switching to EPG123?

An evolving, supported alternative to Rovi
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William the Pleaser

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#21

Post by William the Pleaser » Sun Jul 09, 2017 6:59 pm

Yeah... I dodged a bullet on some of these simply because I've never cleaned up my schedule before in... oh, about a decade. So I already had entries for multiple variations of some titles.

But I still had to go through and manually clean up a handful of entries that ended up as keyword searches that didn't (and wouldn't) match anything. I suppose a clever implementation might try to do some sort of fuzzy matching.

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garyan2

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#22

Post by garyan2 » Sun Jul 09, 2017 10:16 pm

There is an attribute in each SeriesRequest called "complete". If that is true, then that request is no longer active / has been deleted. You can skip over those as part of the recovery and be left with only the current active requests.
- Gary
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Space

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#23

Post by Space » Mon Jul 10, 2017 1:52 am

Interesting little program. If I understand this correctly, the "click to record" files that are generated will create a "keyword" Series in WMC, not a regular show-based Series, correct?

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DavidinCT

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#24

Post by DavidinCT » Mon Jul 10, 2017 2:44 am

William the Pleaser wrote:I put together a little script to generate click-to-record files from the schedule backup: https://superuser.com/questions/1226882 ... ide-to-epg

Not a perfect solution by any means, but saved me a few hours of typing.
Wow, nice option. Not a best option but, if you can pull out the "rovi data" and import them in as a search, they SHOULD work in WMC. Click 2 Record is a nifty feature, there is a few commands (I'd have to look up my notes) to export all your recorded shows via a mxf command to c2r files. I tried it once on a rebuld, it did work....

Just a general question on this issue. The data is available someplace. IS it possible for someone to create (I am NOT a programmer), a converter ? For Example, pull down a ROVI Guide data and pull a SD data for your line up and compare them, then convert with the option of asking... Hey this show looks like "law and order:SVU" is this correct ?

This really should be possible for someone who is mores more about the format than I do !
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garyan2

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#25

Post by garyan2 » Mon Jul 10, 2017 2:57 am

I'm actually working on that right now. It looks like what I will be doing is have 2 virtual machines. One will be a west coast DirecTV lineup and the other an east coast Dish lineup. Both will have Rovi and EPG123 to do exactly like you are saying, and I have done it... developed a cross-reference table to convert a Rovi ID to a Gracenote ID. Of course it's only going to be for shows that are currently in the guide and will require iterative updates to continue building the table. I'll have the table reside on my website that the program will download to get the latest/greatest.

I just need to develop something a little more user friendly and William the Pleaser gave me some ideas on how to make it iterative for the user. I'm obviously not going to be able to convert everything at once.

Still working on it, but family came first today.
- Gary
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DavidinCT

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#26

Post by DavidinCT » Wed Jul 12, 2017 2:40 am

garyan2 wrote:I'm actually working on that right now. It looks like what I will be doing is have 2 virtual machines. One will be a west coast DirecTV lineup and the other an east coast Dish lineup. Both will have Rovi and EPG123 to do exactly like you are saying, and I have done it... developed a cross-reference table to convert a Rovi ID to a Gracenote ID. Of course it's only going to be for shows that are currently in the guide and will require iterative updates to continue building the table. I'll have the table reside on my website that the program will download to get the latest/greatest.

I just need to develop something a little more user friendly and William the Pleaser gave me some ideas on how to make it iterative for the user. I'm obviously not going to be able to convert everything at once..
Very cool, Thanks for the update. I'm still on ROVI this is one of my bigger worries but, pretty freaking close with the issues going on now... and I have a lot of custom channels that takes over an hour to get setup, not looking forward to that.
garyan2 wrote:Still working on it, but family came first today.
Family comes first on anything, Completely understand and agree.
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TheOsburnFamil

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#27

Post by TheOsburnFamil » Fri Jul 14, 2017 9:19 pm

So as like many others, I'm in the "It's time to switch" camp. I've held off this long due to the series stuff myself but I've kept watch on this thread (and others like it) for a while. With Game of Thrones starting this weekend, Wife will KILL me if Media Center doesn't record it (not sure why tbh, HBOGO will have it all the same)... anyway, assuming Rovi isn't working by tomorrow, tomorrow will be "the day" I switch to EPG123.

Any progress on a decent conversion method for the series? We aren't as bad as some I know, but we still have a good 70+ series setup that I'd hate to wait/recreate. I'll live with losing the History-- it is what it is. But the series themselves will be a big bummer.
Matt O. ...tivo what? ...dish dvr--uh... huh? ...cable dvr fees--you're kidding, right?

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#28

Post by Space » Fri Jul 14, 2017 10:00 pm

In my opinion, losing the "history of recorded episodes" is not that big a deal when transitioning from Rovi to EPG123 (Gracenote), assuming you will be staying with EPG123 and not going back to Rovi.

Why?

With Rovi data, the OAD can be wrong quite often, because of this, a NEW episode may be marked as a repeat. To counter this, you set the Series to "New & Rerun" and rely on the "history of recorded episodes" to not record the same episode twice. By setting it to "New & Rerun" instead of "New", it will still record any new episode, even if the OAD is incorrect (and will not record any episodes that you already recorded, but may still record older repeats that you may not have previously recorded with this Series).

With EPG123 and Gracenote data (through Schedules Direct), the OAD is almost never wrong so there is no need to worry about this, you can set your Series to "New" and the "history of recorded episodes" never comes in to play.

The only time there may be an issue with Gracenote data is when the show has an OAD for when the episode originally aired in another country. The episode may be new in your country, but the OAD reflects the date it first aired in the other country.

Normally you would have to set the series for these foreign shows to "New & Rerun" so even if the OAD is more than 7 days from the air date (the indicator to WMC that it is a repeat), it will still be scheduled to record.

However, EPG123 has a fix for this! If you enable this option in the EPG123 settings (I don't know the exact name of the option, but it should be obvious), it will override the OAD if an airing of that episode has the "NEW" flag in the source data. All instances of that episode will have their OAD changed to the airing date of that NEW-flagged episode.

For instance, let's say an episode of "Doctor Who" originally aired in the UK on 7/1/2017, and it is now airing in the USA (for the first time) on 7/14/2017. Normally it would have an OAD of 7/1/2017 and because it is airing on 7/14/2017, and it's more than 7 days after the OAD, it would be marked as a repeat. However, with this option enabled, EPG123 will change the OAD of that episode to 7/14/2017 and now WMC will see that episode as NEW.

So with EPG123, you can pretty safely set all your Series to "New" and never have to use "New & Rerun" for all current series!

The only time you would need to use "New & Rerun" is if you wanted to record older episodes of a show that are not NEW (which I believe was the original intent of the option).

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garyan2

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#29

Post by garyan2 » Fri Jul 14, 2017 10:09 pm

TheOsburnFamil wrote:So as like many others, I'm in the "It's time to switch" camp. I've held off this long due to the series stuff myself but I've kept watch on this thread (and others like it) for a while. With Game of Thrones starting this weekend, Wife will KILL me if Media Center doesn't record it (not sure why tbh, HBOGO will have it all the same)... anyway, assuming Rovi isn't working by tomorrow, tomorrow will be "the day" I switch to EPG123.

Any progress on a decent conversion method for the series? We aren't as bad as some I know, but we still have a good 70+ series setup that I'd hate to wait/recreate. I'll live with losing the History-- it is what it is. But the series themselves will be a big bummer.
Disappointingly slow right now on my end ... life intrudes sometimes. That being said, during the installation of EPG123 using Step 1, all your current backups are backed up which will include your current scheduled series recordings. Though we don't have a production worthy solution yet, you can still make the switch and manually enter the series you need right now. When the tool is ready, you can then pull out the backup and complete the rest.

I know I'm just throwing that out there with no ECD for the tool, but creating the lookup table for Rovi and Gracenote IDs is proving difficult due to unavailability and inaccuracies of the Rovi data.

If you wish to manually backup the scheduled recordings for added measure, they are located in C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\ehome\mcepgX-Y\backup\recordings\ .
- Gary
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#30

Post by garyan2 » Sat Jul 15, 2017 3:42 am

Okay, now that MS/Rovi appears to be back, I have some code to generate series matches automatically and am getting around 90% success rate without human intervention. I'll see if I can bump that up a little and then start on the user interface.
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garyan2

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#31

Post by garyan2 » Sat Jul 15, 2017 3:50 am

Could somebody send me a current/recent copy of their recordings backup file with Rovi data for me to work with? I'd like to take a lot of guess work out of my code and actually exercise it when it is ready. The more the better.

Thank you,
- Gary
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TheOsburnFamil

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#32

Post by TheOsburnFamil » Sun Jul 16, 2017 1:28 pm

garyan2 wrote:Could somebody send me a current/recent copy of their recordings backup file with Rovi data for me to work with? I'd like to take a lot of guess work out of my code and actually exercise it when it is ready. The more the better.

Thank you,
PMd you an attachment that has Rovi guide. Included ZIP and provider info. Hope it helps you! Even though data came back, I decided to complete the switch anyway.

Great work for the community. Good luck with the upkeep!
Matt O. ...tivo what? ...dish dvr--uh... huh? ...cable dvr fees--you're kidding, right?

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#33

Post by garyan2 » Sun Jul 16, 2017 2:46 pm

Awesome, thanks! You have quite a number of examples for me.
- Gary
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#34

Post by TheOsburnFamil » Sun Jul 16, 2017 7:06 pm

garyan2 wrote:Awesome, thanks! You have quite a number of examples for me.
Lol yeah-- after ten or so years of media center and a family of six with multiple extenders, we have amassed quit a list of series recordings.
Matt O. ...tivo what? ...dish dvr--uh... huh? ...cable dvr fees--you're kidding, right?

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#35

Post by garyan2 » Mon Jul 17, 2017 2:15 pm

Progress report ...

The below is just a lash up (obviously), but the left panel is the contents of the backup recordings file from a MS/Rovi setup. The pink rows are series that I don't have conversions for yet. The green rows are series that I have conversions for and can be imported into the WMC database. The right panel is what is currently in the WMC scheduled recordings.
2017-07-17.png
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#36

Post by TheOsburnFamil » Mon Jul 17, 2017 4:39 pm

Nice. I'm sure you're already thinking of this but I'm fairly sure you'll also run into spelling & character differences that'll throw off your mappings. I believe Pokiemon as an example has different characters in the SchedulesDirect guide from the Rovi guide...

Let me know if you wan't other types of sample data. I used that form tool when converting originally to generate keyword series recordings and have a decent number already... I could send you a current copy of the mxf file if it helps.
Matt O. ...tivo what? ...dish dvr--uh... huh? ...cable dvr fees--you're kidding, right?

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#37

Post by Space » Mon Jul 17, 2017 8:06 pm

Excellent! Out of curiosity, what method are you using to match the old Series to the new one?

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DavidinCT

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#38

Post by DavidinCT » Tue Jul 18, 2017 8:02 pm

Do you still need line up copies/recoding ? What exactly do you need, I want to move but, not intil I can import my shows...
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#39

Post by TheOsburnFamil » Tue Jul 18, 2017 9:48 pm

DavidinCT wrote:Do you still need line up copies/recoding ? What exactly do you need, I want to move but, not intil I can import my shows...
FWIW is used post 17 from this thread last Friday and made my leap. It uses keyword to generate a series recording. It managed to successfully set all the series that are active right now in the guide (like game of thrones for example) and for series that aren't in the guide yet (like the fall lineups) it set a generic keyword. It's not perfect but it got me quite a ways and next fall I'll clean up the rest when the guide starts containing new shows again. That is, until the full migration tool is ready for prime time. (I kept a backup of my rovi series).

I am sooo glad I did this too. Solid good guide date 21 days out consistently each day since last Friday.

viewtopic.php?p=119427#p119427
Matt O. ...tivo what? ...dish dvr--uh... huh? ...cable dvr fees--you're kidding, right?

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garyan2

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#40

Post by garyan2 » Wed Jul 19, 2017 3:33 am

DavidinCT wrote:Do you still need line up copies/recoding ? What exactly do you need, I want to move but, not intil I can import my shows...
It certainly can't hurt. I need a copy of any file, preferably the latest, located in C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\eHome\mcepgX-Y\backup\recordings\ . This is the file where all your recording requests are located.

Thank you,
- Gary
Keeping WMC alive beyond January 2020. https://garyan2.github.io

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