[benoire]

Hi

The official Sky Boxes support both series linking as well as reminding users that something is going to be on. They do this by extracting the seriesID for each programme and ensuring that each episode to be recorded has a different ID, as well as utilising this for series remind. Does the plugin interface with TVH in this manner and do series recording and series reminding? I am used to MediaPortal with the Sky plugin which does this.

I appreciate that Kodi uses 'Timers' in place of series recording or scheduling as a name but if this is linked to the seriesID that would be great!

Thanks in advance.

Chris

[kluc55]

The tvheadend Web GUI supports series linking. When you click on a programme in the EPG you can either record programme or record series.

But I haven't seen the functionality exposed in the Kodi UI.

What you would normally say is "record every episode if subtitle differs" to record all the unique episodes. This can be better than series link, which is often linked by the broadcaster at a recording time such as "Tuesday's showing" versus "Thursday's repeat showing", but can be worse than series link since it's difficult to limit to a specific season for channels that are showing multiple seasons.

I'm assuming the reminder is the green button reminder for setting a timer from an advert? I've not seen that implemented on any clients. I'm interested why you're switching from MP?

[benoire]

The reminder is generally set by clicking the 'ok' or select button on a future tv show and it reminds you it will be on. The Sky NZ box does this as either a single or series remind, with record handled by the red record button on the remote. I've raised a feature request with TVH to deal with this like MP does, as a centralised management based on client request.

For me leaving MP, Sky EPG and channel numbers is not native to the tvengine and requires the custom build with plugins. Due to its coding, it doesn't handle changes in where these details are stored in the stream very well, and as a result the NZ plugin no longer does channel numbers and some programs have the titles or summary information missing. TVH does this as a default and so any changes to TVH do not require a custom build and it can do the automatic add/delete of channels too.

The MP TV client is far superior to Kodi in my opinion still, although Kodi 17 is now at the point where I can use it every day with the right skin, but the lack of improvements to MPs TVEngine and code freeze means its hard to deal with Sky the way I want.

[jahutchi]

I was about to post myself about the Series Link functionality not being available in the Kodi UI, when I saw this thread.

I am a UK Freeview user, and would love it if the Series Link functionality that's available in the Backend could also be used directly in Kodi.

My problem with a normal Auto Record timer is that for many of the shows I record, none of the duplicate detection methods work.

The reason being, that in the Freeview EPG data the broadcaster adds abbreviations to the end of the description -

Subtitling – S
Signing – SL
Audio description – AD

See here: https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/p...tement.pdf

Here is an example of a running show at the moment:

On the original broadcast, the data in the EPG was as follows:

Title: The Handmaid's Tale
Subtitle: The Bridge: Offred embarks on a dangerous mission for the resistance, while Janine moves to a new posting. And Serena Joy suspects the Commander of infidelity. (Ep9/10) [AD,S]
Description: The Bridge: Offred embarks on a dangerous mission for the resistance, while Janine moves to a new posting. And Serena Joy suspects the Commander of infidelity. (Ep9/10) [AD,S]
Episode Info: (blank - as it always the case for Freeview EPG)

The repeat which is aired on the same channel is also signed, and so the Subtitle and Description are slightly different

Title: The Handmaid's Tale
Subtitle: The Bridge: Offred embarks on a dangerous mission for the resistance, while Janine moves to a new posting. And Serena Joy suspects the Commander of infidelity. (Ep9/10) [AD,S,SL]
Description: The Bridge: Offred embarks on a dangerous mission for the resistance, while Janine moves to a new posting. And Serena Joy suspects the Commander of infidelity. (Ep9/10) [AD,S,SL]
Episode Info: (blank - as it always the case for Freeview EPG)

As you'll see, SL has been added to the description in the square brackets, and so this re-run gets recorded.

It works sweet if I use the Series Link functionality in the Back-End, but often my wife who's not technically savvy is adding these timers !

So really, for Freeview the only reliable method of duplicate episode detection is Series Link.

I've tried matching on the Subtitle, Description and Episode number, but as shown in the example above none of these will do the trick. The only thing that works for Freeview shows where the repeats are Signed is to use Series Link which is only available in the Back-End: https://tvheadend.readthedocs.io/en/late...-recording

Other than this, I have to say that TVHeadend is awesome. And with just this one minor improvement, it would be reliable as my Freeview HD+ box for Series Linking.

[ksooo]

I was about to post myself about the Series Link functionality not being available in the Kodi UI, when I saw this thread.

I am a UK Freeview user, and would love it if the Series Link functionality that's available in the Backend could also be used directly in Kodi.

My problem with a normal Auto Record timer is that for many of the shows I record, none of the duplicate detection methods work.

The reason being, that in the Freeview EPG data the broadcaster adds abbreviations to the end of the description -

Subtitling – S
Signing – SL
Audio description – AD

See here: https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/p...tement.pdf

Here is an example of a running show at the moment:

On the original broadcast, the data in the EPG was as follows:

Title: The Handmaid's Tale
Subtitle: The Bridge: Offred embarks on a dangerous mission for the resistance, while Janine moves to a new posting. And Serena Joy suspects the Commander of infidelity. (Ep9/10) [AD,S]
Description: The Bridge: Offred embarks on a dangerous mission for the resistance, while Janine moves to a new posting. And Serena Joy suspects the Commander of infidelity. (Ep9/10) [AD,S]
Episode Info: (blank - as it always the case for Freeview EPG)

The repeat which is aired on the same channel is also signed, and so the Subtitle and Description are slightly different

Title: The Handmaid's Tale
Subtitle: The Bridge: Offred embarks on a dangerous mission for the resistance, while Janine moves to a new posting. And Serena Joy suspects the Commander of infidelity. (Ep9/10) [AD,S,SL]
Description: The Bridge: Offred embarks on a dangerous mission for the resistance, while Janine moves to a new posting. And Serena Joy suspects the Commander of infidelity. (Ep9/10) [AD,S,SL]
Episode Info: (blank - as it always the case for Freeview EPG)

As you'll see, SL has been added to the description in the square brackets, and so this re-run gets recorded.

It works sweet if I use the Series Link functionality in the Back-End, but often my wife who's not technically savvy is adding these timers !

So really, for Freeview the only reliable method of duplicate episode detection is Series Link.

I've tried matching on the Subtitle, Description and Episode number, but as shown in the example above none of these will do the trick. The only thing that works for Freeview shows where the repeats are Signed is to use Series Link which is only available in the Back-End: https://tvheadend.readthedocs.io/en/late...-recording

Other than this, I have to say that TVHeadend is awesome. And with just this one minor improvement, it would be reliable as my Freeview HD+ box for Series Linking.

Looking at the related tvheadend and Kodi source code I cannot see why it should not work for autorecs spawned via the Kodi UI.

Maybe it is a special combination of parameters assembled by Kodi that causes the trouble. Unfortunately, I cannot debug this, because I have no access to any tvheadend instance that provides epg data containing series links. Otherwise I would be happy to investigate.

[jahutchi]

Looking at the related tvheadend and Kodi source code I cannot see why it should not work for autorecs spawned via the Kodi UI.

Maybe it is a special combination of parameters assembled by Kodi that causes the trouble. Unfortunately, I cannot debug this, because I have no access to any tvheadend instance that provides epg data containing series links. Otherwise I would be happy to investigate.

If it helps, here are some screenshots...

When I create a "Series Link" via the TVHeadend back-end (not via Kodi) then the recording looks like this:


Whereas one created via the EPG in Kodi looks like this:


When scheduling a Timer (Autorec) in Kodi you need to select one of the following Duplicate Detection options:
Record all episodes
Record if episode number differs
Record if episode name differs
Record if description differs
Record max once per week
etc.

And when you schedule a Series Link via the backend it seems to do something special...
...Looking under the hood, I can see that in the autorec entry it populates the serieslink field with the CRID (crid://onid-2/C4HD0170528162124266 in the example below)

Code:

~/.kodi/userdata/addon_data/service.tvheadend42/dvr/autorec # cat 00ce46ea312a9c7ed6ce86d6e7d6a1a1
{
        "enabled": true,
        "title": "The Handmaid's Tale",
        "fulltext": false,
        "channel": "1ffc2052f50e3093b3a578a96839e1b7",
        "tag": "",
        "btype": 0,
        "content_type": 0,
        "start": "Any",
        "start_window": "Any",
        "start_extra": 0,
        "stop_extra": 0,
        "weekdays": [
                1,
                2,
                3,
                4,
                5,
                6,
                7
        ],
        "minduration": 0,
        "maxduration": 0,
        "pri": 2,
        "record": 0,
        "retention": 0,
        "removal": 0,
        "maxcount": 0,
        "maxsched": 0,
        "config_name": "bf5e722c91829d5d414f1113754a6e0c",
        "brand": "",
        "season": "",
        "serieslink": "crid://onid-2/C4HD0170528162124266",
        "owner": "kodi",
        "creator": "kodi",
        "comment": "Created from EPG query"
}

As far as I can tell, there is no way to schedule a recording this way through the kodi addon.

As it's documented here: https://tvheadend.readthedocs.io/en/late...-recording

"If you click on a single event, a popup will display detailed information about the event. It also allows you to schedule the event for recording by clicking on the [Record program] button.

For EPG providers that supply series link information there will also be a [Record series] button that will record all entries in the series.

For events without any series link information, an [Autorec] button will be provided to create a pseudo-series link using the autorec feature."

It looks to me like the special "Record series" button is not available via the Add-on, which adds a Special kind of Auto-rec entry with the CRID embedded. The only type of auto-rec you can add is the same as that triggered when using the "Autorec" button in the back-end. For Freeview, that type of timer does not work well for the reasons I've described above - i.e. none of the fields you can match on actually stay the same between the original broadcast and the repeat. I guess this isn't an issue for standalone Freeview+ PVR boxes since they all just use the series link information (CRID).

Should I log an enhancement request in github, or am I missing something.

[ksooo]

I was about to post myself about the Series Link functionality not being available in the Kodi UI, when I saw this thread.

I am a UK Freeview user, and would love it if the Series Link functionality that's available in the Backend could also be used directly in Kodi.

My problem with a normal Auto Record timer is that for many of the shows I record, none of the duplicate detection methods work.

The reason being, that in the Freeview EPG data the broadcaster adds abbreviations to the end of the description -

Subtitling – S
Signing – SL
Audio description – AD

See here: https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/p...tement.pdf

Here is an example of a running show at the moment:

On the original broadcast, the data in the EPG was as follows:

Title: The Handmaid's Tale
Subtitle: The Bridge: Offred embarks on a dangerous mission for the resistance, while Janine moves to a new posting. And Serena Joy suspects the Commander of infidelity. (Ep9/10) [AD,S]
Description: The Bridge: Offred embarks on a dangerous mission for the resistance, while Janine moves to a new posting. And Serena Joy suspects the Commander of infidelity. (Ep9/10) [AD,S]
Episode Info: (blank - as it always the case for Freeview EPG)

The repeat which is aired on the same channel is also signed, and so the Subtitle and Description are slightly different

Title: The Handmaid's Tale
Subtitle: The Bridge: Offred embarks on a dangerous mission for the resistance, while Janine moves to a new posting. And Serena Joy suspects the Commander of infidelity. (Ep9/10) [AD,S,SL]
Description: The Bridge: Offred embarks on a dangerous mission for the resistance, while Janine moves to a new posting. And Serena Joy suspects the Commander of infidelity. (Ep9/10) [AD,S,SL]
Episode Info: (blank - as it always the case for Freeview EPG)

As you'll see, SL has been added to the description in the square brackets, and so this re-run gets recorded.

It works sweet if I use the Series Link functionality in the Back-End, but often my wife who's not technically savvy is adding these timers !

So really, for Freeview the only reliable method of duplicate episode detection is Series Link.

I've tried matching on the Subtitle, Description and Episode number, but as shown in the example above none of these will do the trick. The only thing that works for Freeview shows where the repeats are Signed is to use Series Link which is only available in the Back-End: https://tvheadend.readthedocs.io/en/late...-recording

Other than this, I have to say that TVHeadend is awesome. And with just this one minor improvement, it would be reliable as my Freeview HD+ box for Series Linking.

Looking at the related tvheadend and Kodi source code I cannot see why it should not work for autorecs spawned via the Kodi UI.

Maybe it is a special combination of parameters assembled by Kodi that causes the trouble. Unfortunately, I cannot debug this, because I have no access to any tvheadend instance that provides epg data containing series links. Otherwise I would be happy to investigate.

If it helps, here are some screenshots...

When I create a "Series Link" via the TVHeadend back-end (not via Kodi) then the recording looks like this:


Whereas one created via the EPG in Kodi looks like this:


When scheduling a Timer (Autorec) in Kodi you need to select one of the following Duplicate Detection options:
Record all episodes
Record if episode number differs
Record if episode name differs
Record if description differs
Record max once per week
etc.

And when you schedule a Series Link via the backend it seems to do something special...
...Looking under the hood, I can see that in the autorec entry it populates the serieslink field with the CRID (crid://onid-2/C4HD0170528162124266 in the example below)

Code:

~/.kodi/userdata/addon_data/service.tvheadend42/dvr/autorec # cat 00ce46ea312a9c7ed6ce86d6e7d6a1a1
{
        "enabled": true,
        "title": "The Handmaid's Tale",
        "fulltext": false,
        "channel": "1ffc2052f50e3093b3a578a96839e1b7",
        "tag": "",
        "btype": 0,
        "content_type": 0,
        "start": "Any",
        "start_window": "Any",
        "start_extra": 0,
        "stop_extra": 0,
        "weekdays": [
                1,
                2,
                3,
                4,
                5,
                6,
                7
        ],
        "minduration": 0,
        "maxduration": 0,
        "pri": 2,
        "record": 0,
        "retention": 0,
        "removal": 0,
        "maxcount": 0,
        "maxsched": 0,
        "config_name": "bf5e722c91829d5d414f1113754a6e0c",
        "brand": "",
        "season": "",
        "serieslink": "crid://onid-2/C4HD0170528162124266",
        "owner": "kodi",
        "creator": "kodi",
        "comment": "Created from EPG query"
}

As far as I can tell, there is no way to schedule a recording this way through the kodi addon.

As it's documented here: https://tvheadend.readthedocs.io/en/late...-recording

"If you click on a single event, a popup will display detailed information about the event. It also allows you to schedule the event for recording by clicking on the [Record program] button.

For EPG providers that supply series link information there will also be a [Record series] button that will record all entries in the series.

For events without any series link information, an [Autorec] button will be provided to create a pseudo-series link using the autorec feature."

It looks to me like the special "Record series" button is not available via the Add-on, which adds a Special kind of Auto-rec entry with the CRID embedded. The only type of auto-rec you can add is the same as that triggered when using the "Autorec" button in the back-end. For Freeview, that type of timer does not work well for the reasons I've described above - i.e. none of the fields you can match on actually stay the same between the original broadcast and the repeat. I guess this isn't an issue for standalone Freeview+ PVR boxes since they all just use the series link information.

Should I log an enhancement request in github, or am I missing something.

Thanks for the information. I well see how far I can get with this.

[kluc55]

I happened to have a dvbsnoop that contained that programme. So this seems to confirm the broadcaster is adding the text [AD,S,SL] (rather than being added internally by tvheadend).

The way mythtv handles it is to always dup-filter by crid first.

Code:

Event_ID: 33391 (0x826f)                                                                                                                                      
Start_time: 0xe265220000 [= 2017-07-23 22:00:00 (UTC)] [= 2017-07-23 22:00:00 (UTC)]                                                                          
....                                                                                                                                                          
DVB-DescriptorTag: 77 (0x4d)  [= short_event_descriptor]                                                                                                      
descriptor_length: 192 (0xc0)                                                                                                                                
ISO639_2_language_code:  eng                                                                                                                                  
event_name_length: 19 (0x13)                                                                                                                                  
event_name: "The Handmaid's Tale"  -- Charset: Latin alphabet                                                                                                
text_length: 168 (0xa8)                                                                                                                                      
text_char: "The Bridge: Offred embarks on a dangerous mission for the resistance, while Janine moves to a new posting. And Serena Joy suspects the Commander of infidelity. (Ep9/10)"  -- Charset: Latin alphabet                                                                                                          
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
Event_ID: 33599 (0x833f)                                                                                                                                      
Start_time: 0xe264025500 [= 2017-07-22 02:55:00 (UTC)]                                                                                                        
...                                                                                                                                                          
DVB-DescriptorTag: 77 (0x4d)  [= short_event_descriptor]                                                                                                      
descriptor_length: 187 (0xbb)                                                                                                                                
ISO639_2_language_code:  eng                                                                                                                                  
event_name_length: 19 (0x13)                                                                                                                                  
event_name: "The Handmaid's Tale"  -- Charset: Latin alphabet                                                                                                
text_length: 163 (0xa3)                                                                                                                                      
text_char: "Jezebels: The Commander surprises Offred with a secret adventure in Gilead. Nick's troubled past leads to his recruitment by the Sons of Jacob. (Ep8/10)  [AD,S,SL]"  -- Charset: Latin alphabet

[benoire]

I think if the add-on could utilise this CRID method first, that would be fab, would allow those with CRID links to make use of them!

[jahutchi]

I think if the add-on could utilise this CRID method first, that would be fab, would allow those with CRID links to make use of them!

Agreed.

@ksooo were you able to find any way through the add-on to trigger the Series Link (i.e. [Record Series]) button in the backend?

I'm happy to file an enhancement request for this, with a few thoughts I've got on how it could be reasonably implemented. Seems to be functionality available in the back-end but missing from the addon, so I guess I would raise a request via the pvr.hts github project?

I think this would be a great enhancement - especially for UK Freeview users. Since the functionality is available in the backend I have a workaround, but would really love to see this in a future version. I'm a little surprised many other Freeview users haven't raised it, but maybe they are living with deleting the duplicates as they appear.

[ksooo]

I think if the add-on could utilise this CRID method first, that would be fab, would allow those with CRID links to make use of them!

Agreed.

@ksooo were you able to find any way through the add-on to trigger the Series Link (i.e. [Record Series]) button in the backend?

I'm happy to file an enhancement request for this, with a few thoughts I've got on how it could be reasonably implemented. Seems to be functionality available in the back-end but missing from the addon, so I guess I would raise a request via the pvr.hts github project?

I think this would be a great enhancement - especially for UK Freeview users. Since the functionality is available in the backend I have a workaround, but would really love to see this in a future version. I'm a little surprised many other Freeview users haven't raised it, but maybe they are living with deleting the duplicates as they appear.

I will take care as soon as my time permits.

A quick check indicates that currently there is no way to create series link auto recordings via tvh htsp API. So, this (imo very useful) feature requires some more work - extending tvheadend htsp API, extending Kodi PVR add-on API, providing respective implementation in tvh, tvh Kodi pvr add-on and Kodi pvr core.

[jahutchi]

I will take care as soon as my time permits.

A quick check indicates that currently there is no way to create series link auto recordings via tvh htsp API. So, this (imo very useful) feature requires some more work - extending tvheadend htsp API, extending Kodi PVR add-on API, providing respective implementation in tvh, tvh Kodi pvr add-on and Kodi pvr core.

Thanks for taking a look - good to know that the function simply isn't available and it's not just me going mad.
I shall look forward to seeing this extremely useful enhancement in a future version.

One thought I had, was that when using the "Add Timer" button in the EPG it could make an initial API call to see whether Series Link is available. If it is, then it could popup some sort of Yes/No prompt along the lines of "Series Link information exists for this show, would you like to use this for scheduling future episodes".

Following this it could goto the usual Series Timer popup. If the user answered yes, then it could set the "Duplicate Detection" drop down to a new "Series Link" option - whereas if they answer No then it can give them the options it always has, with their default Duplicate Detection option selected.

If the API call does not find any Series Link information then it would behave as it always has, and the Series Link option would not be available from the Duplicate Detection drop down.

Maybe the Yes/No prompt isn't even needed - i.e. if it finds Series Link information then just go straight to the ususal Add Timer prompt with the new "Series Link" option added and selected by default. Not sure if this would be confusing though, or even annoying for users who would prefer to use the normal duplicate detection options.

Hopefully others can chime in with their opinions of how this might work....

[ksooo]

... if it finds Series Link information then just go straight to the ususal Add Timer prompt with the new "Series Link" option added and selected by default. ...

Yep, this is exactly what I have in mind. ;-)

[ksooo]

I found some spare time and I'm almost done with the implementation (actually, tvheadend, pvr.hts addon and kodi core are affected). It should work already, but due to a lack of suitable epg data source I cannot runtime test myself.

Here is, how it currently looks like:





The timer type for "series link" will be only present if an epg event with a series link is selected in Kodi, and in this case the "series link" timer type is preselected in timer settings dialog.

Question: Which of the following settings make sense for series link autorecs?

- Channel
- Days of week
- Start time / start any time
- End time / end any time

[jahutchi]

In my opinion from those four probably only the channel setting makes sense. I would probably just leave that setting to the currently selected channel, but some might change it to 'any channel'. On my dedicated freeview+ box a nice feature was that if u missed a recording it would pickup via series link a showing on another channel e.g. itv/itv+1.

I think the other three options are irrelevant for series link. I never use these options currently but i guess they are there as a method of capturing the correct showing when a show plays at the same time every day/week.