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Re: Stations with No Data Available

Posted: Sat Jun 29, 2019 5:45 pm
by garyan2
glorp wrote: Sat Jun 29, 2019 5:28 pm If you want to get fancy, add a fill message option string for all channels on missing data.
:?: Not sure I follow. A fill message where?

Re: Stations with No Data Available

Posted: Sat Jun 29, 2019 6:08 pm
by glorp
Something to replace "No Data Available" in the schedule. Isn't that all SD would do too? Instead of a fixed message from SD in the data itself, a custom message set by user and added to the mxf when data aren't in the feed from SD.

Re: Stations with No Data Available

Posted: Sat Jun 29, 2019 6:30 pm
by garyan2
Where there is truly no guide listings for a channel, it is WMC that generates the "No data available" message string which I am sure is based on the OS language and cultural settings. What SD is offering is to create dummy programs to fill up the guide... could be a single 24 hour long program each day, or 48 30-minute programs each day. The question they are asking is what should the program(s) look like?

The only way I can think to change that string is to modify a resource file in a dll... Mike does that with MMUI+. He changes the "No data available" to the station callsign and name.

I don't think there is any way I would support the idea that EPG123 will generate dummy programs. There is too much risk for my liking.

Re: Stations with No Data Available

Posted: Sat Jun 29, 2019 7:09 pm
by stuartm
If SD is willing to fill the empty data I would prefer probably 4 hour blocks titled something like "Unspecified Programming" The advantage of this approach is that lazy people like me :D don't need to upgrade their EPG123 and Gary doesn't have to make another EPG123 version.

Re: Stations with No Data Available

Posted: Sat Jun 29, 2019 7:54 pm
by garyan2
As far as changes to EPG123, the coding is already done and checked out. I had committed to giving SD our thoughts on how to handle these Warnings this weekend, which by the way, only WMC users have reported these empty data issues. :P

The main goal of all this work by myself and rkulagow at SD is to change everyone's status bug back to green. :D The question is, without a Yellow status bug to tell users that something is missing, would they still submit tickets to SD for no guide data on LOOR1234, or will they decide they don't really care about that station. Will they even notice? Looking at the trace.log file will give an indication of the cause.

The work I've done on EPG123 can stay regardless of what SD does.

A scenario I want to avoid is:
  • Current and accurate guide listings on station QXYZ
  • SD's upstream has a hiccup and does not provide any listings for station QXYZ
  • SD provides fake/dummy program(s) for station QXYZ
  • EPG123 imports the fake/dummy program(s) and you no longer have current or accurate guide listings on station QXYZ
The impact of the above is reduced since our discussion right now is limited to those stations that can be expected to have no data (i.e. the local community or in-house stations).

The really, really lazy path would be to ask SD to provide a single 1-second long program in the response for the first day requested. No risk to current guide listings, and since EPG123 has a response it will be happy and there will be no warnings.

Re: Stations with No Data Available

Posted: Sun Jun 30, 2019 9:33 am
by Space
As long as you are able to do manual recordings on these channels, I don't think it matters if they have any (dummy) guide data. I think making 1hr, 4hr, etc. blocks of "fake" programming is of little to no use, as if you use those blocks to record "episodes" on that channel, they will all be named the same thing, which can be very confusing if you record multiple programs on that channel (or similar channels). If you set up manual recordings, you have the option to give them a unique name to reflect what they are actually recording.

Of course, setting up these "fake" blocks of programming do give users an option to easily set up a recording on these channels (if they don't care about the naming of the program) which is much easier then using the manual record option and I am always in favor of giving more options.

Re: Stations with No Data Available

Posted: Tue Jul 16, 2019 1:37 am
by garyan2
I'm going to bump this thread for some more discussion. I had released v1.2.14 to suppress the warnings for stations that have no guide data, and still believe having no data is better than having fake programs in WMC, but there are some users of the XMLTV function that need something in the guide in order to actually record anything on those stations.

So I am thinking of adding the option to fill dummy programs for XMLTV only.

Re: Stations with No Data Available

Posted: Tue Jul 16, 2019 1:32 pm
by kanipek
I am an Emby user and yes Emby is one of those DVR/PVR packages that requires a channel to have guide data in order for a user to record.

I have been super busy in recent weeks and had not gotten around to finding out why this data was missing. Not a huge issue, but high school football season will be starting here shortly and it is always on one of these "local" channels.

For the local CATV company naming conventions - LOOR### and EDAC### are the only "names" being used here.

I can't be the only Emby user here being affected, can I?

I will give the latest version a try, many thanks Gary for all your work!

Re: Stations with No Data Available

Posted: Tue Jul 16, 2019 3:27 pm
by stuartm
I simply unchecked those channels since I don't care about them anyway. XMLTV users should be the ones to drive what gets done for the empty channels.

Re: Stations with No Data Available

Posted: Wed Jul 17, 2019 4:52 pm
by kanipek
garyan2 wrote: Tue Jul 16, 2019 1:37 am I'm going to bump this thread for some more discussion. I had released v1.2.14 to suppress the warnings for stations that have no guide data, and still believe having no data is better than having fake programs in WMC, but there are some users of the XMLTV function that need something in the guide in order to actually record anything on those stations.

So I am thinking of adding the option to fill dummy programs for XMLTV only.
The 4 hour blocks seem good to me. I also like the naming convention you have chosen - to include the channel name in the filler entries "Local Origination - LOOR010".

I am one of those that need program data in order to record, no manual recording possible.

What are others thoughts?