AltEPG

This is the first in a likely series of topics to discuss handling of particular programmes in the guide. We have some flexibility in how programmes are mapped to series and episodes. So, for programmes where it isn't obvious, I would like to get input from people on how they should be mapped, so I am not just making decisions by myself! This will become particularly important for programmes I am not personally interested in

Currently all Formula 1 programmes are being mapped to a single series (called Formula 1). There are then episodes in that for each programme so, for example, there are three episodes for this weekend's race: "The Turkish Grand Prix - Qualifying", "The Turkish Grand Prix Live" and "The Turkish Grand Prix Highlights". It so happens, this week, that they are on different channels, although that is not always the case, I think.

It would be possible to map these to three different series. For example, "Formula 1 - Qualifying", "Formula 1 - Live", "Formula 1 - Highlights". My current plan is not to do that, but does anyone have any strong views?

The advantages of a single series are:

• An F1 fan just needs to set up 3 SPs (for "Formula 1" on each of BBC1, BBC2 and BBC3) in order to record all the F1 programmes. If there are three series, you may need to set up up to 9 SPs to capture all the combinations of progamme and channel!
• As it stands today, the BBC only show the highlights on BBC3 so if you only ever want to watch the highlights then you just set up the "Formula 1" SP on BBC3.

The advantages of three series are:

• People who are not major fans can just record the race itself (or the highlights) without the other programmes and are not dependent on the BBC putting the different programme types on different channels.
• People can set up different keeping rules for the different types of programme: for example, keep until space needed for qualifying and the live race and keep until I delete for the highlights.

Bottom line: it seems easier to keep it as one series. Anything I have missed?

gcobb wrote:Bottom line: it seems easier to keep it as one series. Anything I have missed?

That would be my gut instinct too. If I only want highlights, which is generally what I want for football or cricket, I could presumably create a wishlist?

Thinking about other sports as well, I suppose having separate series would allow us to set specific genres depending on whether it's a live sports event, highlights or just general chat.

I keep meaning to check my existing SPs for F1. However, my strong preference would be to separate out, at least, Highlights so that a "normal" season pass would pick up qualifying and live race, but not highlights. Slightly more complex in the case of a repeated, time-shifted race (most "away" races).

As the highlights are always on BBC Three and the qualifying/race on BBC One (or BBC Two occasionally) then a single season pass isn't going to get anything anyway.

I personally have a wishlist that picks everything up, I then manually cancel what I don't want.

Strong preference for a single SP from me too in these cases please!

People who don't want the qualifying can delete it from their ToDo lists easily, not make me set up multiple SPs and have to cross my fingers and hope that two SPs work instead of just hope that one SP works.

In general my opinion is that having series put too many episodes in the ToDo list (which can be deleted easily, especially with a purge todo script I vaguely remember) is infinitely preferable to series not putting episodes in the ToDo list that the user was expecting to get recorded.

gcobb wrote:The advantages of three series are:

• People who are not major fans can just record the race itself (or the highlights) without the other programmes and are not dependent on the BBC putting the different programme types on different channels.
• People can set up different keeping rules for the different types of programme: for example, keep until space needed for qualifying and the live race and keep until I delete for the highlights.

Bottom line: it seems easier to keep it as one series. Anything I have missed?

My strong preference is for three separate series as I only want to record the actual full race program on Sunday and will only ever watch the Qualifying program live if I happen to be around at the time. I will only ever watch the Highlights if I don't manage to watch the race and/or my recording of the race fails.

For those who like to record absolutely everything they can just set up three different Season Passes but for those of us who just want the race we only set up the one Season Pass.

Predictably those who like everything have been completely selfish and are trying to deny those of us who like to only record the race the opportunity to do this because as total F1holics they seem totally unable to conceive why anyone would not have another three hours a week to give to the cause.

The BBC has just gone to the trouble from the start of this season of splitting the race in to a different program from the qualifying after originally only having had one program name for everything. In my view it would be an extremely retrograde step if the AltEPG tried to circumvent this.

Pete77 wrote:
Predictably those who like everything have been completely selfish and are trying to deny those of us who like to only record the race the opportunity to do this because as total F1holics they seem totally unable to conceive why anyone would not have another three hours a week to give to the cause.

The BBC has just gone to the trouble from the start of this season of splitting the race in to a different program from the qualifying after originally only having had one program name for everything. In my view it would be an extremely retrograde step if the AltEPG tried to circumvent this.

I think you are being totally unfair in your criticism here. Graham went to some length to solicit opinion on this topic and until your post no one had expressed any preference for keeping the three series separate. You are of course welcome to your opinion but please don't accuse those who are investing considerable time in getting the altepg service up and running of being selfish or evil.

millsb wrote:I think you are being totally unfair in your criticism here. Graham went to some length to solicit opinion on this topic and until your post no one had expressed any preference for keeping the three series separate. You are of course welcome to your opinion but please don't accuse those who are investing considerable time in getting the altepg service up and running of being selfish or evil.

I was not criticising those who are developing the AltEPG but merely suggesting that the very few (there was only a handful of posts) near religious like F1 devotees who seem to watch every single minute of the BBC's weekend F1 footage are not representative of the wider Formula 1 viewing audience. The vast majority of the audience only watches the race and does not watch the qualifying program.

And as I tried to explain splitting the race, from the qualifying from the highlights as series does not impede those who want to do so from recording and viewing everything but stops those of us who only want to record and watch the race from filling our Tivos up with programs that we do not watch. Those who want to record everything can just have three Seasons Passes or set up a Title Wishlist for Formula 1.

I agree with Pete (!), although not with his hyperbolic aggressive language.

Being able to set the highlights without also getting the qualifying seems a very normal desire.

As a someone who religiously watches Quali and the race, three IDs would make sense. Those who are "obsessed" have a wishlist to pick up the programmes - and the switches to other channels too.

I like to watch every F1 prog so a single season pass would suit my needs, however since others may have different preferences I reckon separate season passes is the way to go. No great hardship having to set a few extra season passes...

How should races such as Australia/Malaysia/Japan be handled where an early morning 'live' race can be re-shown later 'as live'. Not strictly a repeat, since extra material and/or cuts may be made between the showings. Is this worth split season passes for Race (live) and Race (replay)? Or just treat as repeated episodes of the same SP, even if it's not strictly true?

BobBlueUK wrote:How should races such as Australia/Malaysia/Japan be handled where an early morning 'live' race can be re-shown later 'as live'. Not strictly a repeat, since extra material and/or cuts may be made between the showings. Is this worth split season passes for Race (live) and Race (replay)? Or just treat as repeated episodes of the same SP, even if it's not strictly true?

I think that the full early morning genuinely live Sunday race showings ought to be caught by the normal Sunday Race Live Season Pass whilst the replay races really should have their own Season Pass for anyone who actually wants to ever record those (I can't see why anyone would given that there are no longer adverts to skip on the BBC coverage and this showing is normally always inferior to the full version with its only point being for those who do not have access to a full length recording although I suppose they might be useful insurance for the F1 obsessed in case the main live race was delayed by bad weather or a crash beyond the scheduled recording time for the live race or if a race participant was disqualified by the stewards long after the race was over although these days there is always the Iplayer as backup for such a situation).

However thinking about it further what would also work even better would be if a Race Live program had a consistent name that was used regardless of channel so it could be caught by a Wishlist even if a mid evening race (eg Brazil) was shown on BBC Two rather than BBC One (or for that matter BBC Three or BBC Four even though that seems unlikely to happen with the BBC's current ratings obsessed strategy but it could conceivably happen during say the Olympics next year). So as belt braces I could then have both a BBC One Race Live Season Pass and a Race Live Title Wishlist set up as I obviously can't create a BBC Two Race Live Season Pass until a Race Live is actually ever shown on BBC Two.

I would note that there is precedent for this kind of thing even with the current Tribune EPG as the 15 minute and 45 minute showings of Doctor Who Confidential (the long one reshows massive amounts of the episode it is about as well as some other peripheral new footage like the recent feature on the on site catering van) each have their own separate BBC Three Season Passes (both unhelpfully just called Doctor Who Confidential).

Not F1 but maybe similar.

We have a tennis nut in the house and setting all the various tennis tournaments as one series would be fine.

Tennis is shown on EuroSport, EuroSport2, all the SkySports channels and Beeb1 and Beeb2.

If I set a series link for "Tennis" for each of those channels, the tennis nut would be happy.

If there was a possible way for putting the "Tennis Highlight" programmes in a different series ID then that would be preferable but I imagine this would be quite a bit of work to get 100% accurate.

It is better to err on the side of caution ( i.e. record everything and let the user delete the highlight programmes from the todo list ) than miss a live programme from recording because it was given the "Highlight" series ID by mistake.

There are a few "tennis review/discussion" programmes - e.g. one on EuroSport ( "Game, Set and Mats" ) and one on CNN ( "Open Court" ) - these should not be included in either the live tennis series ID nor the tennis highlight series ID. They need to have their own IDs.

groovyclam wrote:It is better to err on the side of caution ( i.e. record everything and let the user delete the highlight programmes from the todo list ) than miss a live programme from recording because it was given the "Highlight" series ID by mistake.

In principle you may well be right but I would say in practice only if you have a substantially enlarged hard drive capacity and the ability to be able to quickly cary out multiple deletions of unwanted recordings through Tivoweb.

There are a few "tennis review/discussion" programmes - e.g. one on EuroSport ( "Game, Set and Mats" ) and one on CNN ( "Open Court" ) - these should not be included in either the live tennis series ID nor the tennis highlight series ID. They need to have their own IDs.

It sounds like you are very well acquainted indeed with the habits of this particular tennis nut.

Speaking personally a lesson I learned the hard way after I upgraded my recording capacity from 40 hours to 613 hours in 2005 was that it actually doesn't normally make sense to record Formula 1 programs and then try and watch them that evening or the next day as (a) some inconsiderate news program, relative or music station announcer will always manage to tell you the result of the race before you watch and (b) I find that Formula One makes me fall asleep if I try to watch it in the evening. As a result of this I ended up not properly watching quite a lot of races over the next two or three years before going back to my old habit of always treating Formula 1 as something you had to watch live and only using the Tivo to rewind a couple of minutes and rewatch some particularly exciting action or controversial pre or post race item of discussion.

pete77 wrote
".. Formula One makes me fall asleep .."

yeah, me too!