Greetings…
First of all: please stay at home and help to stop Corona.
Regarding live TV and DVR, all of us agree, that accurate EPG data is crucial and I have respect for @sa2000 and others to clean up that mess.
I would like to emphasize that the almost never-ending energy of you guys to help stopping the problems of bad EPG data does not go unnoticed and is appreciated.
In times of Corona, TV stations are planning their program and swiftly respond to (mostly) Corona-related program changes. Extra news airings, amost no live sports are going to produce constant program changes.
In my current situation, I am paying a recording service on a monthly base (YouTV.de) to record shows of all kinds. Plex DVR is running simultaneously to record all shows that are getting recorded by YouTV. The reasons:
- YouTV EPG data is highly accurate for Germany.
- Easy interface
- keyword and genre recording possible
- 10-15 minutes extra recording after official run time (I am doind semi-automatic post-processing of all these recordings).
Why do I use Plex DVR:
- Backup
- Plex recordings can be configured with a flexible pre-time.
In these times, I regularly see last-minute EPG changes of programs in YouTV for shows I am recording. YouTV hardly ever generates recordings that don’t match their EPF slot.
Plex EPG is not responding well to such changes… recordings are being done, but the recorded show episode was not aired at all or was postponed by xy minutes…
That made me angry at first. Then it made me think on how proper EPG handling would need to be done.
First of all, it must be possible to identify each channel, each TV show or movie, each episode with an EPG provide unique ID.
That way, a table of airings can be easily achieved by Plex by their provider to check whether data which already has been loaded by PMS instances has been changed or replaced.
The unique identifier must not be a Plex universe ID if it is not based on their provider’s unique ID.
Such tables must be grabbed by Plex for all programs of all channels of all line-ups once per hour to check the changes and dependencies and what changed. Changed time slots, updates to shows, movies or episodes must be marked by Plex internally as “update necessary”. A PMS that updates its EPG is getting such a list of flagged slots and grabs those updates of existing EPG data.
Secondly… an evaluation of the provider data needs to be established not by users’ feedback, but by computing power and a secondary service (only interally used by Plex). It’s not easy to establish this, but a plex internal service could compare all differences between those line-ups, channels, EPG slots and NEW/REPEAT data…
This is a huge task with a lot of “notifications” in the beginning. But guys like sa2000 could evaluate those differences and why they popped up.
Without knowing details about a Plex EPG data update works internally, I cannot provide exact thoughts on how to optimize this… but observing two different EPG souces (YouTV.de and Plex) and observing the results and differences between those, brings up questions if the EPG source is accurate or if the EPG data update process is sub-level on Plex side.
Just to mention one example… crime documentation show “Snapped”… four episodes (two new, two repeated) were supposed to be aired on German television channel SuperRTL fourteen days ago.
At some point (less than one day before the intended airings) the TV channel organized Corona-related news shows and cancelled there airings of Snapped.
I did not know and I searched on YouTV for there airings, but could not find them there (YouTV got the program change and did not record any Snapped epsiode). I looked at Plex and found all four recordings. I checked them (suspicious as I am) and they did contain those news shows instead. Okay, I deleted the Plex recordings and lived my life. Next week, the TV channel provided the shows as they were intended to show (so they did not air the episodes they cancelled). YouTV recorded okay, Plex recorded okay. Tonight, the TV channel changed its programme (one week ahead) to air the episodes that were cancelled two weeks ago. I checked for them in YouTV, so I knew of that almost a week before).
To my surprise, Plex recorded totally different episodes of that TV show according to the EPG data. What the heck?
So, my conclusion is: either the EPG update mechanism of that channel of your provider is near to non-existant. Or the Plex EPG update mechanism does not grab those changes after EPG data has been grabbed by local PMS.
There is simply no way for users to help you correcting this. Establishing the two methods roughly scribbled down above would fix the root of the problem in the long-term.
You need an evaluation system for the EPG provider’s data.
You need to handle short-term updates of EPG data.
You need to automate both processes.
The alternative to this would be: become an EPG provider yourself. I doubt that you have the resources to do so world-wide.
