I’ve been investigating some alternative data sources for my NZ XMLTV and I’ve come across one that supplies descriptions about the shows themselves, rather than just episode descriptions.
Currently Plex has these descriptions, but they are augmented on top of XMLTV data from places like TheTVDB (when enhanced guide is enabled), however not only is this a slow process, it can also lead to inaccuracies when shows have the same / similar names, hence why I want to supply my own data.
Looking at the XMLTV spec there doesn’t seem to be any official way of doing it, but I was wondering if Plex implements some sort of custom tag, or if it is possible for one to be added (I am happy to make a separate feature request if that is the case)
I’ve got a few follow up questions which I’ll add here as well:
What does Plex use to determine if a show is new or a repeat airing, is it the new tag? Premiere? Previously shown? Answer: Previously shown tag is what is used
Does Plex have some sort of way of dealing with shows with incremental episode numbers, rather than the traditional season/episode configuration? (e.g. Coronation Street) Add it as season 1?
Are star ratings, reviews or part numbers used anywhere?
What is the best way to deal with programs that are interrupted by another? The example I can think of is we often have programs interrupted by the weekly lottery draw, would this be an appropriate time to use part numbers?
It’s my understanding that episode descriptions should be set up as follows:
Generic series descriptions go in description tags.
Episode specific descriptions go in subtitle tags (not to be confused with sub-title).
Sorry, I wasn’t at my PC to verify that…The subtitle is for the episode title. and the description tag is for episode description.
I don’t believe the generic series description would be used anywhere in anywhere anyway. I believe that info gets pulled from the metadata provider for your TV Shows library (not your EPG data).
I believe it’s used in two places - when going into a specific show, for example from searching, but also when shows that lack metadata matches are recorded (which is very common with local shows in NZ). This obviously isn’t a very big deal, but if I have the metadata anyway, I would quite like to display it somewhere!
