Tvheadend

Series link has never worked for me.
You can't set it by yourself. It needs to figure that out by itself.

I can't se the problem why. The data is there.
Just look at the data. Create some hash from the name of the program, the episode number and season = unique ID for every episode/show whatever. If the number and season is missing, just use the name..
MythTV is open source. The developes could look there how it's done because it works great with my data.
The same data that my tvheadend uses.

This is my data for The Simpsons.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7983553/series_link.png
All the data is there. Why can't it identify it as a series and skip already recorded episodes?
Why not let the user choose the way the dublicate identification tvheadend uses when creating the recording? You can do that in mythtv.
In my case i could use title, subtitle and/or episode. All together or just title + subtitle or title + episode. Or even title + season + episode and so on.

Series Link, as opposed to Auto-recording etc... Is a feature that is only possible if the necessary information is provided by the upstream EPG provider. Currently this is limited to only Freesat (UK) and OpenTV and a couple of specific XMLTV feeds.

There are FR's in for improving the DVR, it's really not a question of "know how" (though there are lots of gotcha's to be careful of) it's a matter of time. And I'll assume you've never read the Myth code, anyone that's ever had the misfortune of doing so would never make such a suggestion

Adam

I have looked in the code but only ,ythfilldatabase. ;)
I wrote my own grabber to push data straight in to the mythconverg database.

So, I don't fully understand the problem here. Please explain if you find time.
What is missing in the data that you need from the provider?
Is it unusual to have E and S-numbers?
Could you in some way let me as a user select how it should check for re runs? Like "use title, episode and season" and so on? If the data is there, then let us use it. ;)
This would fix one big problem for the Swedish people at least. We have quite good XMLTV-data. http://xmltv.xmltv.se/
I have talked about this before. It is a showstopper for me (and probably others) that i get the same recordings. The Simsons can give me 4 of the same episode in 1 (ONE!) day and I'm just sitting there and looks at good EPG-data that could be used. I like tvheadend for the speed I get when zapping and it is more stable compared to Myth.

SeriesLink is current used just for things that are explicitly linked via the data provided. Title+EpNum matching does not count, it must have a unique series identifier provided by upstream (some XMLTV, inc SchedulesDirect in US and OpenTV/Freesat OTA). The Swedish XMLTV is one example where such information is provided. Admittedly that's somewhat generated from Title+EpNum (rather than explicit tags as available in the UK, via Atlas), but the currnet philosophy is that if "something" is provided then how it's generated is someone else problem etc.. And I have to admit I'm not even sure if the Swedish stuff is in master or not...

And it's not a question of whether it can or can't be done, there was a rudimentary version when I first rewrote the EPG code, but it was flaky and a hack, it's a question of time. If you're happy with hacking C code and you've read the Myth code (I feel for you!) then by all means feel free to hack away.

If it's a show stopper for enough people than eventually 1 (it only takes 1) will actually step forward and do something about it. I do my best to try and cater to what people want, even when it provides no personal benefit. But ultimately if I tried to fix every issue that was a show stopper to at least a small group of people, I'd first have to solve the problem of cloning myself umpteen times.

Adam

I understand that you have limited time and that you do this for free. I thank you and the other devs for that!
I don't know C. I just have the ability to find out stuff by looking on how it is done in code. I did it in PHP :)
The Swedish data has no unique identifier per se but yeah, it has the E and S data that could be used for that. Often subtitle too.
I have also used http://timefor.tv/ that has data for many many countries. It's not free but EUR 15/year is ok. They use xmltv_ns when available too (as xmltv.se).
Data here: http://timefor.tv/xmltv/c81e728d9d4c2f636f067f89cc14862c

I just think that this would be a big problem for people. Why do you want the server and space cluttered with unnecessary data? :)
If usage of tvheadend should be feasible in my family we need to delete many recordings every day.

Ah interesting, that's a diff XMLTV source than the one I've seen for Sweden. THe other uses a non-standard URI element to provide a unique ID for episodes and series based on tvdb entries I think.

I'm not doubting it's a problem. But so far it's not been big enough for people to sort out. It doesn't affect me, I have access to EPG sources that provide proper series link (albeit horribly simplistic) information OTA. I also have access (should I bother to ever update my scripts) to a really good Internet EPG source (UK only).

I'd LOVE for people to step forward and help with various bits, but until then I will pick things that I feel affect the majority of people (higher weighting always given to myself, sorry, that's life) or are particularly interesting. Updating/Improving the DVR code was always high on my agenda, then other stuff got in the way. It's still the next thing I'd like to look at, but with everything else going on I'd be a fool to try and put a time on that.

Adam

I think that the XMLTV.se source have better data. I just had to switch when the man behind xmltv.se (known as TVZon in tvheadend) was talking about stop providing data (but he changed his mind and people stepped in to help). Then I came across timefor.tv.

So, I maybe have to process the XMLTV-data before I push it to tvheadend (I don't know how..). What do I need to add to the data if I want series link to work?
If people choose to not use tvheadend because of the lack of working series link you'll never know if no one contacts you. ;-)

I've had a quick look at the code, I don't think it actually processes that field. I think John Tornblom did hack something together, but presumably it never made it back into master.

So you'd need to hack the XMLTV code as well. Unless you try and bodge into the ddprog format used by schedules direct.

Adam

What field?

Do you know how they form the dd_progid-tag?

The thing is that series link do work on some channels and some series here but I can't se any difference in the data.

A bit late,
Adam, if you know the way dd_progid is generated I can add it to our data for the 600 channels I provide for.
We don't have a unique id built into our system, but we do provide Episode for most of them with the corresponding tvdb and tmdb ids.