Movie length

[lloyd]

The only shortcoming in my mind with the excellant new EPG, is the lack of movie duration data. With the old EPG this was invaluable for giving the true length of a film (without ads), and allowing me to decide if I have the time to view a film. Is there any possibility of this returning (and many apologies if it is there, and I just can't see it)?

Thanks again for the great work

Lloyd

[mrtickle]

There's two reasons it's not currently there -
a) It's not supplied by our data source. Tribune must have maintained this data and they may well have used it to differentiate between movies with the same title when the broadcasters don't indicate which they are showing - this is a constant headache.
b) It's not supported by the TVguide database currently. This means it would be a schema change to add it to the Db, the listings importer and the TiVo slice generator. Not something that can be done quickly I'm afraid, besides there is a big queue of changes ahead of it .

In the meantime if you want to know the lengths of films to air your viewing decision - don't forget the IMBb has this info which you can look at (although it varies by country according to censorship). LJ's changes to tivoweb include a link to the IMDb from programme details pages to get to that info quickly - not sure if you have/use TiVoweb?

It could be added in the future if both those were solved. (a) is actually the bigger problem, as the broadcasters never indicate this in their data we'd just have to manually add it each and every time a new film was created in our database. Auto-lookups to IMDb are potentially possible as long as there are enough people jumping on errors - otherwise you just create an impossibly daunting backlog of fixes to do!

[lloyd]

Thanks for the reply. I knew there would be a good reason. I do use tivoweb, but I'm not aware of the functionality you mention. Is there a link to LJ's changes?

Lloyd

[mrtickle]

Yep - here and here - nb there were some other patches/changes since then. I'm, hoping to document the different changes to 1.9.4 at some point to come up with a "good" AltEPG baseline.

[spitfires]

Yep - here and here - nb there were some other patches/changes since then. I'm, hoping to document the different changes to 1.9.4 at some point to come up with a "good" AltEPG baseline.

I think you should just bin 1.9.4 altogether - this and everything else you could possibly want already exists in TivoWebPlus 2.1

Customisable colours; user-alterable menus (using drag & drop!); customisable row layouts (without getting your hands dirty or even restarting tivoweb!). Eezy-peezy SP re-ordering; network configuration via TWP; themes; css colours - it's all there!

Running tivoweb 1.9.4 is the TiVo equivalent of running Windows 95 ! - it works but needs a lot of hand-holding and why would you use it when there's Windows XP available?

Celebrating Ten years of TiVo ownership 23rd Aug 2001-23rd Aug 2011!

"Happy birthday to your TiVo, Happy birthday to your TiVo...etc."

[mrtickle]

Thanks! The reason I use 1.9.4 is my other heavy customisations - to reimplement them in a different version would be a huge amount of work (and wasted time) just to get back where I am now. Just to document them is a task in itself. I see no reason to change version to end up with less functionality

[spitfires]

I don't know why we are actively promoting 1.9.4 to new tivoweb users though (it is the default install on the AltEPG iso)!

Parody:
"Here's your brand new state-of-the-art computer with the latest bells and whistles, and it comes with Windows 95."

[mrtickle]

Well, a lot of the TW/TW+ etc code was USA Series2/3/4 only stuff, that combined with the requirement to re-write a load of code just to stand still put a lot of people off. Not sure about the promotion accusation, I'm not in marketing but we all share a desire to make things work if possible.

[Tcm2007]

The UK user base largely stuck with 1.9.4, as all the old stuff worked, all our UK modules were written for it, and the advantages seemed (seem?) slim.

BTW, the "easy-peasy season pass reorder" was written by me, for TW 1.9.4..

[healeydave]

......Windows 95 ! - it works but needs a lot of hand-holding and why would you use it when there's Windows XP available?

I ask myself the same question every day, only with a slightly different slant on it, why would anyone use Windows these days period......(any version)

[spitfires]

combined with the requirement to re-write a load of code just to stand still put a lot of people off.

That may have been true with earlier versions but I've converted the few modules which were missing so now TWP 2.1 works on UK S1s straight out of the box. (Dailymail_jazz, DigiGuide, GDChecker, all there now). No need to start hunting around for extra bits of code to add like you have to do with 1.9.4 ...

and the advantages seemed (seem?) slim.

Well to me the user-customisable menus and browser-alterable display layouts are worth their weight in gold. No more scratching around in sub-menus hunting for the module I want to run... just drag-n-drop it onto the top level menu! If I want to add a display column for "End Padding" or "Director's Name"... 5 seconds and it's done! Column in the wrong place... 3 seconds to move it. And all done in the browser - no code changes required.

ISTM that 1.9.4 is fine for techies but isn't very friendly for all the new converts to "network your TiVo" we are trying to encourage (I.e. getting people off dial-up). The first thing you have to do with 1.9.4 is start editing files to add in other bits of code that people have written to do this or that...! In 2.1 it's all there at the start. A (poor) analogy would be like buying a brand new car and then finding out you need to add yourself 2 more seats, and an exhaust system, and side windows, and...

Perhaps another way to look at it is, how many people running 2.1 (either in the US or UK) have actually made *any* changes to the code? Probably zero. Whereas I can bet you that nearly everyone running 1.9.4 has made at least one if not numerous code changes to it.

we all share a desire to make things work if possible.

We need to get away from this pre- and mis-conceived idea that (some) people (not nec. you MrT!) have that TWP is "buggy" or "unstable" - this was true with 1.3 and 2.0 but I can assure you is NOT the case with 2.1. The people who claim TWP 2.1 is buggy or deficient turn out to never have even tried using it! I've been using 2.0 for about 3 years and 2.1 for about 6 months and other than the occasional DB lock conflict (which is to be expected), I have NEVER seen a bug (other than one I've put there myself!).

BTW, the "easy-peasy season pass reorder" was written by me, for TW 1.9.4..

True (and mucho thanks!) - but it's not included in the AltEPG version of 1.9.4 though See comment above about having to hunt around for extra bits of code...

[healeydave]

@spitfires,

If your interested in compiling a set of files that you've noticed omitted, we can make sure the next version of AltEPG has them incorporated.

[spitfires]

My focus is on 2.1 now - I haven't used 1.9.4 in about 6 years so I have no idea what is or isn't available in terms of updated code/modules etc. (I only checked the "reorder" module because Stuart mentioned it ). I think MrT was already looking at this anyway.

I'm hoping in the next week or so to produce a new version of 2.1 that will roll-up all the changes made in the other thread, as well as recent mods from dealdatabase, plus a few more I'm just making (I'm currently working on the Title/Pattern Blocklist module for 2.1). I won't be doing any more work on 1.9.4 though.

[mrtickle]

I think MrT was already looking at this anyway.

@healeydave, I was intending to, to clarify, at least document what's needed/what changes have been made over the years to "out of the box" 1.9.4 to get to "bare bones working now" 1.9.4. Ie what lightn would have released if there had been interim "keep UK tivos working" patches.

Off the top of my head this is
* Cumulative updates to the genres javascript
* Sky radio channels support; adding 1000 to the channums in the UI and index modules
* others I can't recall

In addition there are some recent bugfixes to the core code, eg single-name Actors being missed off the list which spitfires has been helping us all with.

In addition there are some patches to keep 1.9.4 ticking along during this testing period, whilst our Guide Data isn't yet pukka - eg the actors names being "firstname lastname" currently instead of the "lastname, firstname" that tivo expects. These aren't strictly true TiVoweb but I believe should be in any 1.9.4-AltEpg version for those who select 1.9.4 for whatever reason.

In separate development branches to the release TiVoweb 1.9.4, there are also
a) LJ's patches to the UI module, conflict checking, etc which are really useful but do change quite a lot of files.
b) My own UI2 module and change-set with extra data-checking stuff which is a branch off (a) and is quite hard to de-couple. But I think it's only me who cares about it

It may well be that the 1.9.4-AltEpg tarball version is a fully up-to-date (a), probably with things like EndPad, SP reorder added, in which case it's a case of checking they have spitfire's recent patches too. I have several directories at home including at least pukka 1.9.4; I have to perform several comparisons to get a handle on what changed.

Both millsb and gcobb are interested in the progress of this AIUI.

In addition, I've been working on an updated Tracker for 1.9.4 and have posted it in another thread; there is one bug I've had reported and I've had time to document where the problem lies (in that thread) but not had time to look at it yet.

[spitfires]

an updated Tracker for 1.9.4

also works with 2.1