New Australian TV guide source (1 Viewer)

[PhilMcCavity]

Hi all. Happy new year.

<rant>
I'm posting now to make a request to all users about requests for support. I'm pretty sure that most of the folks here would agree that I do my best to sort out whatever problems they might have with the program, and I respond fairly quickly.

But I'm getting frustrated.

I counted it up, and on average only 1 in 6 people who PM me with a problem ever reply again. The typical thing is I get a PM saying "I ran your app and got an error." I then reply, saying "Please tell me your setup, and what the error message was." And like I said, I only hear back again from 1 in 6 people.

Case in point .. lazlong reported a problem here a month ago. I saw the report, did a whole lot of testing and could not find a problem. So I asked for more information. I never heard back again, so the testing was a waste of time and as far as I can tell the problem never existed.

I'm more than willing to give support for the program. I normally reply in less than 48 hours, and bug fixes rarely take more than a day or two. But if you're going to ask for help please have the courtesy to see my reply. I have a notebook with a page devoted to "open issues" and I'm throwing it away because there are 17 error reports going back more than a year that I can't go further into because the original person has not provided the details I asked for.

</rant>

That would get my back up too.

Count me as one very happy user. I'd almost forgotten that I use this program - which is why I think it's so good!

 

[Caudron13]

Hi Angus

Yes I would like to test your new EPG

Cheers
Caudron13

 

[angusmann]

Check your PM's

Hi Angus
Yes I would like to test your new EPG
Cheers
Caudron13

 

[liquidlime]

Hey Angus,

Would love to test the new epg as my current one fails horribly...

Thanks,

Ben

 

[RodB]

Hi
I have tested guidedigger RC5.8 and I see something which I am not sure if it is a bug or an error in my setup. If there is a TV program which spans midnight (eg starts at 11:30pm and finishes 12:30am) the program appears in the EPG on both the correct night and also the next night. When it appears in the EPG the next night, it over-writes the correct TV program entry in the EPG.
If I look in the web site where you scrape the data from, the TV program only shows on the correct night.
If I look in the .txt files in the DATA folder or in the resulting XML file, the TV program which spans midnight appears twice - once for the correct day and once for the following day.

This problem appears on all channels which have TV programs which span midnight.

I dont have this problem if I use the WebEPG function in MP, but it has other issues which annoy me.

Any ideas ??

Regards
RodB

 

[Taipan]

If there is a TV program which spans midnight (eg starts at 11:30pm and finishes 12:30am) the program appears in the EPG on both the correct night and also the next night. When it appears in the EPG the next night, it over-writes the correct TV program entry in the EPG.

Yes, I have observed that problem, too - but assumed that it was the web-site's bad data. However, your thorough research suggests that it is a bug in GuideDigger ....

 

[angusmann]

Hmmmm....How did this go un-noticed for so long?
Looking into it now.


EDIT - OK, problem found and corrected. Auto-update should kick in with the revision.

NOTE - people who do NOT update will continue to create the faulty data, which means that people with the new version will continue to get bad data. This sort or problem was anticipated, and it means that users with the update will have to do a complete new "scrape" of the data until a full library is built and available for download. This means the program will take longer to run for a few days until the library is complete. After that it should be back to normal.

Thanks RodB and Taipan for noticing this.

Hi
I have tested guidedigger RC5.8 and I see something which I am not sure if it is a bug or an error in my setup. If there is a TV program which spans midnight (eg starts at 11:30pm and finishes 12:30am) the program appears in the EPG on both the correct night and also the next night. When it appears in the EPG the next night, it over-writes the correct TV program entry in the EPG.
If I look in the web site where you scrape the data from, the TV program only shows on the correct night.
If I look in the .txt files in the DATA folder or in the resulting XML file, the TV program which spans midnight appears twice - once for the correct day and once for the following day.

This problem appears on all channels which have TV programs which span midnight.

I dont have this problem if I use the WebEPG function in MP, but it has other issues which annoy me.

Any ideas ??

Regards
RodB

 

[Taipan]

Thanks for the prompt response, angusmann,

it means that users with the update will have to do a complete new "scrape" of the data until a full library is built and available for download.

I assume that this means that we should delete the data folder and disable FTP downloads (but leave FTP uploads active) for a week or so untill only new good data is available via FTP?

Cheers,

Taipan

 

[angusmann]

Not really....There will now be 2 sets of data.

The first set will be seen by anybody running GuideDigger PRIOR to this update, and will contain the error you identified.
The second set will be seen only by people running this, or subsequent versions.

GuideDigger is smart enough to download and deal with the data appropriate for its particular version. So it will ignore any data from the previous version, hence it will ignore the faulty data. It will also ignore the faulty data already in the "data" folder.

Disabling FTP download would not achieve anything, since the program would have ignored the faulty data anyway. It will just slow down the running of the program since it would have to scrape it every time rather than getting it quickly by FTP.

Of course at some point "SOMEONE" has to scrape the data, and if you're the very first person to run the new version, this person will be you. But averaged over time, if there are 100 users, you will only have to scrape it every 100 days.

I put this functionality into the program because I anticipated that at some future time, an error might cause it to generate faulty data. Since the data is shared, someone running a very old version might continue to upload faulty data and mess it up for other people running the latest version. Obviously this situation has occurred now, and it was a relatively simple task to activate this protection. If another similar problem comes up next week, and again the week afer it can be activated again and again and the program will always be able to know which data to download. I think that's pretty clever .

Thanks for the prompt response, angusmann,

it means that users with the update will have to do a complete new "scrape" of the data until a full library is built and available for download.

I assume that this means that we should delete the data folder and disable FTP downloads (but leave FTP uploads active) for a week or so untill only new good data is available via FTP?

Cheers,

Taipan

 

[gusangora]

I think that is very clever!
Well done and thanks again.
Steve