Tvheadend

$.$e should be probably $.e ? $. is nothing for tvh... This explains $. in output. $e is probably empty (no episode available).

I should have included this before, sorry. Yes there was episode info in the XMLTV data.

{
    "enabled": true,
    "start": 1458853200,
    "start_extra": 0,
    "stop": 1458856800,
    "stop_extra": 0,
    "channel": "3b267603c76e7c6fea60dbff179644a8",
    "channelname": "More4",
    "title": {
        "eng": "New: The Good Wife" 
    },
    "subtitle": {
        "eng": "Brand new series - Discovery: Alicia and Lucca help Louis Canning to defend a website against
 an accusation of racial profiling. Alicia's relationship with Jason causes concern. (S7 Ep9/22)  [AD,S]" 
    },
    "description": {
        "eng": "Brand new series - Discovery: Alicia and Lucca help Louis Canning to defend a website against
 an accusation of racial profiling. Alicia's relationship with Jason causes concern. (S7 Ep9/22)  [AD,S]" 
    },
    "pri": 0,
    "retention": 0,
    "removal": 0,
    "config_name": "19b92fccc121e7d0caa86ffc23ddabc2",
    "creator": "10.29.1.47",
    "directory": "The Good Wife",
    "errorcode": 0,
    "errors": 0,
    "data_errors": 0,
    "dvb_eid": 0,
    "noresched": true,
    "norerecord": false,
    "autorec": "5683989733dbe3974759daa37aecb353",
    "timerec": "",
    "parent": "",
    "child": "",
    "content_type": 1,
    "broadcast": 0,
    "episode": "Season 7.Episode 9/22",
    "comment": "Auto recording: Created from EPG query",
    "files": [
        {
            "filename": "/data/tv/recordings/The Good Wife/More4-New_ The Good Wife.2016-03-24.22-00$..ts
",
            "info": [
                {
                    "type": "MPEG2VIDEO",
                    "width": 704,
                    "height": 576,
                    "duration": 3600,
                    "aspect_num": 0,
                    "aspect_den": 0
                },
                {
                    "type": "MPEG2AUDIO",
                    "language": "eng",
                    "audio_type": 0
                },
                {
                    "type": "MPEG2AUDIO",
                    "language": "nar",
                    "audio_type": 0
                },
                {
                    "type": "TELETEXT",
                    "language": "nar" 
                },
                {
                    "type": "DVBSUB",
                    "language": "eng",
                    "composition_id": 2,
                    "ancillary_id": 2
                },
                {
                    "type": "TEXTSUB",
                    "language": "eng",
                    "composition_id": 0,
                    "ancillary_id": 0
                }
            ]
        }
    ]
}

I will fix the format string and try again.

Here's another one that was ignored by the $e formatter:

"content_type": 1,
    "broadcast": 0,
    "episode": "Season 1.Episode 8/8",
    "comment": "Auto recording",
    "files": [
        {
            "filename": "/data/tv/recordings/South of Hell/Pick TV-South Of Hell.2016-03-26.01-00.ts",

I did testing here and the DVR code works. The episode might be empty if the broadcast has no episode info when the file is created. Could you check if the episode info is available before recording in EPG info dialog ?

I see an interesting discrepancy:
In the "Upcoming/current recording" display, Episode is filled in OK.
In the EPG display, Episode is blank for the same program.

I use XMLTV from TVGUIDE.UK.CO and also receive EIT of freesat.

Here is the dvr/log entry

{
"enabled": true,
"start": 1459126500,
"start_extra": 0,
"stop": 1459129200,
"stop_extra": 0,
"channel": "2f87a4760eb3b449e7eeabcdd1e15347",
"channelname": "E4",
"title": {
"eng": "The 100"
},
"subtitle": {
"eng": "Brand new series - Bitter Harvest: Clarke is torn between vengeance and mercy. Kane and Octavia w
ork together in order to avert a disaster. Abby continues to worry about Raven. (S3 Ep6/16) [AD,S]"
},
"description": {
"eng": "Brand new series - Bitter Harvest: Clarke is torn between vengeance and mercy. Kane and Octavia w
ork together in order to avert a disaster. Abby continues to worry about Raven. (S3 Ep6/16) [AD,S]"
},
"pri": 0,
"retention": 0,
"removal": 0,
"config_name": "19b92fccc121e7d0caa86ffc23ddabc2",
"creator": "10.29.1.69",
"directory": "The 100",
"errorcode": 0,
"errors": 0,
"data_errors": 0,
"dvb_eid": 11181,
"noresched": false,
"norerecord": false,
"autorec": "be8890da3fba9ddabe8dea1764ee8325",
"timerec": "",
"parent": "",
"child": "",
"content_type": 1,
"broadcast": 72897756,
"episode": "Season 3.Episode 6/16",
"comment": "Auto recording"
}

This is the recording: /The 100/E4-The 100.2016-03-28.02-55.ts
The episode of the dvr/log entry was ignored.
Here is the format string: $t/$c$-t.%F.%R$.e$n.$x

FWIW. I see the same behaviour using XMLTV tv_grab_uk_rt in conjunction with Freeview OTA EIT data.

If I disable Freeview EIT, episode numbers behave as expected and $E yields the episode name in S01E01 format. Enabling EIT reverts back to episode data being removed from EPG and not being recorded in filenames. This seems to happen regardless of the priority of the grabbers. Ideally I would like to use xmltv and override with more recent data from EIT ...

Priority settings should work, but you must reimport / rescan for new data - only data from the prioritized grabber are stored in the EPG database. Note that higher priority value means precedence.

And it's generally a bad idea to combine two EPG sources - it's not possible to decide which information is correct in this case.

I'll fix the EPG episode info / DVR episode info inconsistency.

@Jaroslav - just to be clear, when you say the higher priority value do you mean the greatest value? i.e 10 is greater than / higher than 5 so would take precedence?

Yes 10 is prefered over 5. The grabber priorities allows to have an EPG backup.

The EPG information is not merged in the current implementation (but it was before). The merging does not allow complete event replacements / updates.

I have setup XMLTV grabber with a priority 10 and OTA: Freeview grabber has priority 5. I use XMLTV as it contains episode numbers, whereas the OTA does not; and I use OTA as XMLTV does not cover radio channels, or all TV channels.

What I see is:-

1) xmltv runs, populates EPG title & episode values (subtitle is blank)
2) OTA runs and overwrites title and subtitle and blanks the episode
3) xmltv runs and it overwrites title, blanks the subtitle and writes episode values

and so on....

Given my settings I expected that OTA would provide base information for all channels and individual EPG entries would be udpated for those channels that have XMLTV data ... I didn't expect OTA to overwite EPG entries created by XMLTV..

Is this "working as designed" ?

There should be a case for merging EIT and XMLTV. If a program's start time is shifted due to an unexpected event, would you not want to use this to shift the recording time?
From my point of view, the merge functionality that we had 6 months ago was almost perfect: XMTVL from tvguide.co.uk and EIT from freesat complemented each other nicely: episode numbers were kept from tvguide.co.uk, changes to the recording schedule from EIT came through.

And with 4.1-1943~g10f1326 I still see recording that have proper episode numbers in dvr/log NOT having their filename set accordingly. Should I expect this to be fixed? If so, I will collect debug logs.