TiVo Community Forums Archives - Missing programme details

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Missing programme details - why?
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Posted by: ozsat

Several people have posted, across different threads, comments about some channels that only carry a generic programme title on TiVo – normally the name of the channel. For example – NASN or Life TV.

Some seem to believe that all channels publish schedules, and so Tribune should be providing full schedules.

I have not spoken to Tribune about my comments in this post, but having been involved with the collation and publication of schedule information, I’m sure their experiences are the same as mine.

I can also tell your that Digiguide has published a similar comment on their own website about their own problems receiving programme schedules for some channels.

A problem faced by Tribune, and other listings providers, is that some channels simply do not provide programme schedules for publications. Note that channels are contractually obliged to provide programme listings for the Sky EPG if they active in that EPG.

There are several companies that provide listings services to listings publishers (such as Tribune). So a publisher (such as Tribune) would pay this listings supplier for their service. They would then receive the data in an agreed format.

But these listings suppliers also have to agree terms with the channels themselves – these arrangements are often chargeable. It is possible that a channel may decide that they will only deal with one listing company – while another channel chooses to only deal with another single listings company.

This means that publishers (such as Tribune) may have to have deals with two or more listings agencies to even receive a good proportion of the available channels.

A further complication is that some channels will only deal with listings publishers direct and will not deal with the middleman.

I think it would be true to say that Tribune is not providing some listings for ‘minority’ channels, even where listings are available. But in most cases with the ‘major interest’ channels, the problem is not down to Tribune.

If you can provide evidence that a channel is providing a regular source of accurate programme information for at least seven days in advance – then please post a comment detailing the source of the data in SPECIAL THREAD: TiVo Programme Listings/Schedule Errors. This listings thread is monitored by Tribine - but remember that your are not allowed to reproduce any schedules with permission.

Note also that there are two types of schedule release – one is weekly and the other is monthly.

Those channels that provide schedules monthly are obviously able to be listed in the TiVo 20/21 days EPG. Virtually all non-terrestrial channels do this.

Some channels only provide weekly schedules – these include BBC1, BBC2, ITV, C4 and Five. These are normally only published about 10 days in advance of the first day of the week’s transmissions. So for programmes for the week beginning Sat 28th – the schedules would not be available until Thur 19th. So in this cases it is not possible to have 20/21 days worth of data on TiVo - TiVo will then simply list the channel name.

An unrelated problem seems to be that some users find that they are missing bits of programme schedule. For example, they have several hours of ‘BBC One’ listed but with correct information both before and afterwards.

This seems to be a TiVo problem and is not usually a fault with the programme data from Tribune.

Posted by: sjp

this seems to be as good a place as any to ask why DigiGuide can now (in v6) provide a rolling 14 day schedule for the terrestrial channels (i know we are receiving listings for more then the usual "up to 14 days" due to xmas but this isn't the norm).

if digiguide are getting the data in on a daily basis (at least what looks like a daily basis) why can't tribune?

stuart

Posted by: ozsat

The earlier version of the schedules that Digiguide are not the version which broadcasters recommended for listings - you will see lots of gaps and changes with them as they are mainly generic.

Tribune (and myself) use the version released by broadcasters as 'confirmed' which are released about 9-10 days before the start of the week. Even these change!

Posted by: Modan

This is all well and good, but doesn't explain the ommission of sensible data for radio stations. We still aren't getting Radio 1Xtra listings, and the other day I got a program titled Radio Scotland recorded as a suggestion, so presumably iut doesn't have listings either.

BTW How did my TiVo know I was Scottish when I live in Cambridge? ;)

Posted by: digital_S

quote:
Originally posted by Modan
BTW How did my TiVo know I was Scottish when I live in Cambridge? ;)

Ahh haa ;) ;) TiVo knows alot of things, even some unanswerable things!

Posted by: sjp

modan: do you still have an accent? perhaps there's a microphone in there somewhere. ;)

Posted by: Modan

Maybe it gets it from when I use my X-Box Live then. They are on the same network after all ;)

Anyway, to get back on topic, does anyone know why certain radio stations listings are not available. I would have thougth these were among the easiest to provide, since the have fairly static schedules.

I guess I also wonder how the suggestions algorithm could possibly select a program that has no data? Perhaps it's because I recently cleared my suggestions (I'm trying to see if I can teach it better this time), so no data is a good match for the data it has on my preferences :)

Posted by: bignoise

It doesn't explain the situation where some channels have had episodic listings in TiVo in the past, and then suddenly went completely generic..

Posted by: ozsat

Something else to remember about Digiguide is that they don't need to do much with the data. The tv channel publishes a broadcast time, programme name and synopsis all together. Digiguide publish it.

For TiVo the episodes have to have unique identifiers which will also link to other episodes in the series - and have other flags set.

This processing may take a bit of time - especially for new channels and a new batch of programmes.

Radio listings were never meant to be available on TiVo - until recently they were not. It was mainly forum pressure that got whats available now.

In regards to the BBCR7 episodes - there are addition problems that may arise.

Eg: Dad's Army - exact same episode titles and synopsis for the tv series - but different OADs and cast!

Posted by: mrtickle

quote:
Originally posted by ozsat

Radio listings were never meant to be available on TiVo - until recently they were not. It was mainly forum pressure that got whats available now.

Indeed. It's too easy to take the listings for granted - being able to set SPs for radio programmes is very cool. It would be nice if they were episodic with descriptions etc, but just having the listings with programmes linked into series is a big leap above manual recordings.

quote:

In regards to the BBCR7 episodes - there are addition problems that may arise.

Eg: Dad's Army - exact same episode titles and synopsis for the tv series - but different OADs and cast!

I think/hope that it is done by the TmsID/episode number - so episode titles and descriptions wouldn't matter at all. As long as the tv and radio version of each episode have different episode numbers, (and different TmsIDs if they are shown in the same month) then it should still work?

Posted by: Russ Freeman

quote:
Something else to remember about Digiguide is that they don't need to do much with the data. The tv channel publishes a broadcast time, programme name and synopsis all together. Digiguide publish it.

Not so. We have our own unique database of episode details and movie cast lists, ratings, etc. In fact, our data is far more detailed than anything else I've seen. We don't rely on a listings supplier or a broadcaster to give us detailed schedules - which is why our USA listings have the same high quality episode descriptions as our UK listings.

We start off with the basic details supplied by the broadcasters and major listings suppliers but we then further process the raw data so it has far more info. We focus on episode and series details (and we share our findings on http://library.digiguide.com) and movies. We have built up a fairly large database in the 4 years we have been doing this.

There are some shows we do not modify, same as every other TV guide and the same as tivo. It's my guess that tivo just take the data they get from their supplier and then do nothing with it - which probably explains why changes take so long to filter through.

quote:
For TiVo the episodes have to have unique identifiers which will also link to other episodes in the series - and have other flags set.

Indeed, and so do ours. It would be difficult for us to *add* episode and series numbers (are we the only ones that do this?) as well as add our own episode details...if we couldn't uniquely identify the episode.

DigiGuide could *easily* adds series links (season pass). It's not hard to do, in fact anyone could add it now using a little bit of Javascript - if they wished. You can even get DigiGuide to highlight (or remind) next time an individual episode is scheduled.

Many channels provide data very far in advance. This is why at the end of november DigiGuide had listings for many channels up to the end of January. For the remainder of the channels DigiGuide normally provides 14 days rolling listings with listings being corrected at least once per day. DigiGuide was the first to publish *complete* (not littered with TBA) schedules for the holiday season - I think around 5 days before anyone else.

Posted by: ozsat

DigiGuide is an excellent piece of software (and data) - and I think the price does not do it justice.

But Digiguide does not suffer the same space restrictions which can cause problems for TiVo.

I suspect an awful lot of TiVo data is indexes linking into programme/data tables.

It is quite easy to have search links matching cast members etc. - but remember on TiVo that space is a problem.

If every TiVo was sold with 240Gb disk space - then they too could provide all data available - and list all cast members - and full synopsis.

But TiVo will never be able to do this - neither will Sky - hence no radio listings on Sky.

But I think Digiguide would agree with my original point - that it is sometimes the channels own choice that no listings are available - and channel sometimes seem to have no intention of releasing advance schedules ??

Posted by: scoopuk

quote:
Originally posted by Russ Freeman
DigiGuide could *easily* adds series links (season pass). It's not hard to do, in fact anyone could add it now using a little bit of Javascript - if they wished. You can even get DigiGuide to highlight (or remind) next time an individual episode is scheduled.

Hi Russ welcome to the Tivo forum.

So the big question is: are you talking to Tivo and if not, would digiguide consider putting together a product for us PVR owners, if the Tivo listings service were ever to stop.

I appreciate you may not be able to answer these questions directly in a public forum, but the odd hint would be useful !

Posted by: timjon

quote:
Originally posted by ozsat
But Digiguide does not suffer the same space restrictions which can cause problems for TiVo.

I suspect an awful lot of TiVo data is indexes linking into programme/data tables.

It is quite easy to have search links matching cast members etc. - but remember on TiVo that space is a problem.

If every TiVo was sold with 240Gb disk space - then they too could provide all data available - and list all cast members - and full synopsis.

I think you're exaggerating the problem - if digiguide required gigabytes of storage space then people would complain! At the moment, my digiguide directory is 80 Mb (which is huge) - but that's because I've configured it to store an entire year of archive data. So if Digiguide's enhanced data only runs to under 2 Mb per week, surely TiVo's month or so of data shouldn't be more than 10 Mb or so. That's hardly going to make a perceptible dent, even in a 40 Gb TiVo.

There may be other limits - memory size, processor speed - which prevent TiVo from providing more detailed listings, but personally I suspect the real reason is simply the cost of obtaining or generating those listings, and not a technical limit at all.

Cheers,

Tim.

Posted by: mrtickle

quote:
Originally posted by scoopuk
Hi Russ welcome to the Tivo forum.

So the big question is: are you talking to Tivo and if not, would digiguide consider putting together a product for us PVR owners, if the Tivo listings service were ever to stop.

It doesn't have to be "if" - at the moment Tribune is TiVo's sole supplier of listings. TiVo don't want to rely on one company and they have a long-term aim to have multiple listings suppliers. I hope that DG's success in the US will raise their profile enough for TiVo to approach them.

Posted by: reddle

Russ, great to have you onboard :D

I take it from your posting that you work for Digiguide. It is nice to hear from someone with the knowledge to challenge the crap that is given out on this forum in Tribune’s defence. All I know is that when there is no program data, description or episode information available on Tivo, it can usually be found on Digiguide.

If you have a search around on the forum you will find many posts supporting Digiguide and questioning Tribune, plenty of ammunition for a proposal to Tivo I think. ;)

Many on this forum would love to see Digiguide providing data for Tivo so get talking to them ASAP. In all seriousness though, there must be a business opportunity for Digiguide to provide data to Tivo. Has anyone from Digiguide approached Tivo to date? We understand if you can’t give details.

Cheers!

Roy….

Posted by: ozsat

quote:
Originally posted by timjon
I think you're exaggerating the problem - if digiguide required gigabytes of storage space then people would complain! At the moment, my digiguide directory is 80 Mb (which is huge) - but that's because I've configured it to store an entire year of archive data. So if Digiguide's enhanced data only runs to under 2 Mb per week, surely TiVo's month or so of data shouldn't be more than 10 Mb or so. That's hardly going to make a perceptible dent, even in a 40 Gb TiVo.

There may be other limits - memory size, processor speed - which prevent TiVo from providing more detailed listings, but personally I suspect the real reason is simply the cost of obtaining or generating those listings, and not a technical limit at all.

Cheers,

Tim.

My Digiguide data file is 65Mb - that doesn't include all the xtras which may put it up to around 80-90Mb.

But my history keep is set to one week and scrolling back is working at that level - the space taken will all be line-up dependent.

Some tv viewers have four channels max - others may have nearer 800 or so (if you have both Sky and NTL on a dual system.)

Anyway - my original point seems to have gone off into an already existing decussion in another thread - Poor Programme Details

This thread was to explain the issue of missing schedules for some channels!

Posted by: Russ Freeman

I do read these forums but not often. The only ones I read and actively participate in are our own. I lurk everywhere though, and if I see something I can help with, something that's plain wrong or an opportunity to sing our praises I'll post ;)

We're very greatful for the support we get in all of the places I visit, inluding here. We think we create great products but it's *always* nice to see that others think so too. Thanks to everyone that uses and supports our services!

The data for 4 weeks with schedules and channel lineups for UK, Ireland and USA isn't that large, it would be lost even on a small 20GB disk. I would imagine that if Tivo doesn't supply decent synopsis (and cast etc.) then it's because of the method used to trasfer data. Maybe they wish to reduce the duration of the call by way of reducing the size of the data.

If Tivo dropped off the map would we step in? Gee, I guess the real question is whether we could make money from it. If we could then we'd be willing to take a look at the problem at least - but if tivo did go bust, or did decide to pul out of a region, then I think someone much larger than us would step in and take over. I cannot accept the idea that nothing would be done. Tivo subscribers have already demonstrated willingness to pay for a service they value and those potential subscribers would represent a substantial captive market. The biggest problem with that 'business' is that it would be servicing a dwindling market. As each day passed Tivo customers would leave and there would be no new ones arriving...that would be a big problem for anyone taking over the service.

Would we be willing to supply Tivo with it's data now? I don't think so. Data supply isn't our business and there are other providers Tivo could use who are setup in that business.

We're a small team (just 3 of us full time) of software developers who dearly love their products. We have no plans nor desire to get involved in the supply of listings. If the opportunity (tivo going bust) presented itself then we'd have to be mad not to consider it - but until that time we see that side of the business as a pain in the posterior...there's simply no fun in it for us ;)

Channels can be very-very good at providing data or they can be very-very bad, and some give no schedules at all.

I cannot understand why channels give poor schedules. With tools like DigiGuide and Tivo providing advanced interactive TV guides a half decent synopsis can mean the difference between viewers and no-viewers. We know that one of the most useful tools is searching - if I can't find your programme using a then I'll never watch it.

This is even more important for obscure channels. When searching in DigiGuide or Tivo every channel has an equal opportunity to grab a viewer - yet some fail to take advantage of it. The same opportunity does not exist in paper guides and think a lot of channels are stuck in the paper mentatilty.

Posted by: force9

Sorry to bring this down to earth but I am really keen to get listings for Classics TV. Its quite a good channel rather like TCM. TIVO/Tribune do not provide listings and neither do DG.

Does anybody know of a website for this channel or another listings agency.

Posted by: ozsat

This is one of the channels that doesn't seem to want to provide details to anybody.

Posted by: sjp

oz, you're more "in the know" so maybe you can shine some light on this... what's the thinking behind a channel NOT wanting to give listings? surely if they sell advertising (never watched classics) they need viewers, wouldn't a no listings policy lead to a no viewers situation?

this sounds rather odd to me

tia for any thoughts

stuart

Posted by: ozsat

There are agencies that do listings for channels - but the agencies charge for their services. So, for example, OzSat TV pays OzSat Listings to distribute the listings to publications.

Some smaller channels simply feel that paying an agency for their services is simply not worth the expense - considering the amount of outlets that will actually use the data. Why pay £100's (or £1000's) to get listings sent around to companies who will never use them?

For some channels, the agencies will charge the user of the schedules a fee - in some cases the channels may charge a fee for formatted information.

Forgeting TiVo and Digiguide - who else would would actually carry the listings?

Would you be willing to pay an extra subscription charge to TiVo for a couple of extra minority listings?

Other channels simply do not have schedules as such - or they are nothing more then hand written details.

Have a look at smaller channels such as Life TV, BEN etc. (channels named as examples only) - make a note of their advertised schedules for 4-5 days time - and a see how many changes to the schedules have taken place by the time of transmission.

NASN have now provided schedules now for publication on TiVo - but even the Sky EPG carried wrong listings for some programmes on NASN this weekend.

Posted by: sjp

this sounds like a slow suicidal route to me... don't want to pay for listings to be published (no problem with that, that's their perogative) so nobody knows what's on, nobody watches so nobody sees the adverts that keeps the channel afloat so the channel sinks.

i'm more than happy paying tivo for the service they provide, not sure i'd be that eager to pay more for the "little" channels though.

suppose i've never really given the tv listings biz any real thought, i thought everything appeared in Radio Times by magic :)

thanks for the insight

stuart

Posted by: ozsat

quote:
Originally posted by sjp
this sounds like a slow suicidal route to me... don't want to pay for listings to be published (no problem with that, that's their perogative) so nobody knows what's on, nobody watches so nobody sees the adverts that keeps the channel afloat so the channel sinks.

Even channels that supply listings, half-decent programmes and can be seen by millions of subscribers - seem to fail :(

Studio, Carlton Select, L!ve TV, Sky Two, Carlton Cinema, U>Direct, ....

I don't know why some bother to launch at all. :rolleyes:

However, many of these newer lower-quality programme channels carry Teleshopping - and for some reason - that seems to pay!

Posted by: sjp

not more shopping!!! please don't tell the wife :)

Posted by: gregh

Is it worth me posting about Xtreme? I know they provide more detail then appears in the Tivo listings, as smart searches for skiing in Digiguide provide lots of into that doesn't appear in the Tivo listings. Often the Tivo listings have no description.

Posted by: ozsat

For synopsis issues it is best to provide a report in the programme errors thread.

My point in this thread was to explain why some channels have no listings at all.