Missing movie rating

[SwissCheese]

Hi

Starting about 6 months ago, the MPAA rating has been missing from
the Synopsis for some movies, but not always.

Recordings of the same movie titles last year had the correct ratings.

I've only noticed it on the TCM channel, but maybe because that's
the only movie channel I record.

Some movies show the rating correctly, some show no rating at all, and
some like this recent example have a copy of the 4-stars rating where
there should be a G, PG, R or a blank rating.

This screenshot is for a movie recorded from TCM 10/22/2022 using
EPG123 v1.7.1.12

[garyan2]

A lot of the movies on TCM don't have MPAA ratings since they were primarily made before the 70s, though some may. I do know that the data for 'The Dirty Dozen' and 'The Crowded Sky' you sent me in an email back in July do not have MPAA ratings. 'The Crowded Sky' didn't have any ratings at all.

For the '**+' showing up, I think this is going to have to do with the WTV file. Using '*' for stars and '+' for half stars does not exist in the WMC database, it is strictly used when populating the metadata of the WTV recording file, by WMC, that they are used in the star rating field. Do you do any post-processing of the WTV files that may jumble up the file metadata?

[SwissCheese]

Thank you for your reply.

No, I do not do any post-processing of the WTV files.

I thought maybe EPG123 was copying the "4-star rating" field into
the "MPAA rating" field.

That would explain why there are ***+ characters where there should be
rating letters such as G, PG or R, except that it only happens sometimes.

I don't recall ever seeing stars in the MPAA field until this year.
There used to be only letter ratings such as G, PG, R or a blank in
that field.

My guess is SD or TCM are omitting MPAA ratings this year for movies
that had ratings before.

If so, then maybe not an EPG123 issue, so I should ask instead why
are there ***+ characters showing up in the MPAA rating field that should
only have G, PG, R letters?


Thank you


Pic 1: A movie recorded in a previous year correctly displayed a 3-star rating and
a TV-G MPAA rating.

Pic 2: The same movie this year had a 3-star rating but no MPAA rating.
And, the 3-star rating data did not appear in the MPAA field this time.

[Space]

"TV-G" is not actually an MPAA rating, it is a "TV Parental Guidelines" rating. They are similar to the MPAA ratings, just for TV instead of for motion pictures.

It's possible that the two airings of the movie were different edits, and that one version did not have a TV Parental Guidelines rating (one airing does seem to be 3 minutes longer). Or it could just be that they didn't provide that information to Gracenote the second time.

I think TCM airs unedited movies (although they may edit them somewhat) but if a movie is edited, then the MPAA rating of the original movie may not match the "TV Parental Guidelines" rating. I'm not even sure if the two separate ratings systems use the same criteria, so even if the movie is completely unedited, it may be possible for the original movie to have been rated "PG" but the TV rating is "TV-G" just because of different criteria or changing criteria over time.

[SwissCheese]

Good point.

Still, it bothers me to see ***+ where there should be an MPAA rating or a blank area,
because it looks like an error.

[Space]

That I have no idea. I did a quick scan through a bunch of movies on TCM and none of them had the star ratings in area with the MPAA ratings.

[SwissCheese]

Yes, you're right.

Looking through the guide listings for TCM I don't see any movies with stars in the MPAA field either.

So I tried, an experiment...

I took a screenshot of the guide listing for a movie missing an MPAA rating
then scheduled that movie to record.

While the movie was recording, stars suddenly appeared in the MPAA field!

I think that means WMC itself is inserting stars when there is no MPAA rating.
So I guess this isn't an EPG123 issue after all, although I still wonder why this
only started happening recently. Movies used to have MPAA (or similar) ratings and
never had stars before this year.

Pic 1: Movie synopsis in the guide listing, missing MPAA rating.

Pic 2: Same movie while being recorded, stars appeared in the MPAA field

[SwissCheese]

Hi

I haven't given up on this topic yet...

In today's guide listings, an upcoming movie "The Plague of the Zombies" (1966)
is missing an MPAA rating in the WMC Synopsis.

But, the same movie listed at Zap2it does have a rating of TV-14.


A quick look in today's epg123.mxf file shows the entry for this movie

<Program id="35629" uid="!Program!MV00016596_0000" title="The Plague of the Zombies" description="..edited out.."
language="en" year="1966" keywords="k3,k3010,k3011" halfStars="5" isHorror="true" isScienceFiction="true" isMovie="true" guideImage="i4641">

Other movies that do have a rating also have a data field such as mpaaRating="2", which
is missing for this movie.


Since a rating exists at Zap2it, I'm guessing that means either SD is not providing the
rating data to EPG123 or it is providing the data but EPG123 is not using it.


As Space pointed out, TV-14 is not a standard MPAA rating, so is it possible SD is
providing a rating with a different data field name and is something EPG123 could pick up?

Or maybe SD is sometimes no longer filling the mpaaRating field for non-standard ratings?
Up until this year almost all TCM movies used to be getting those ratings in WMC.

What's weird though is that other movies on TCM and other channels still have non-standard MPAA ratings in WMC,
so I don't understand what's going on. =:-/

Pic 1: The Plague of the Zombies is missing an MPAA rating in WMC Synopsis

Pic 2: The Plague of the Zombies has a TV-14 rating at Zap2it (and also different poster art, don't know why)

[garyan2]

The TV rating is in the schedule entry, not the program. So you can have a movie with an mpaa rating of R, but it could be edited for tv and also have a tv rating of tv-pg.

Sent from my SM-G781U1 using Tapatalk

[garyan2]

Just to follow up, I took a look at the data coming from SD for movies and none of them have a TV rating... they should, and they did before. We would have the mpaa rating (if available) of the movie itself as well as the TV rating for broadcast/edited for tv movies. I'll inquire SD about that.

This isn't just TCM, but all movies (at least in my lineup).

[SwissCheese]

OK. Thank you for looking into it!