Re: New XMLTV ID allocations for epgdata.com

On Sun, 29 Mar 2020 at 14:18, Philipp Hahn <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> epgdata.com has some new channels, which I need to add to
> grab/eu_epgdata/channel_ids. I tried to lookup the channels in other
> grabbers, but did not find them, so I created them myself.
>
> > +12132;thrillerhd.cinema.sky.de;Sky Cinema Thriller HD (SKYCT)
> > +12042;familyhd.cinema.sky.de;Sky Cinema Family HD
> > +12121;specialhd.cinema.sky.de;Sky Cinema Special HD
> > +12046;sky1.sky.de:;Sky 1
>
> Should I include the "HD" or not?

When I was maintaining tv_grab_uk_rt I used the following conventions:

i) for HD channels that also had an SD version:

family.cinema.sky.de;Sky Cinema Family
hd.family.cinema.sky.de;Sky Cinema Family HD

For HD-only channels I used (IIRC) the channel's regular name without
the separate "hd." 'subdomain'. You can find the uk_rt channel_ids in
the repo history before it was deleted.

ii) for timeshifted versions of a channel:

family.cinema.sky.de;Sky Cinema Family
plus-1.family.cinema.sky.de;Sky Cinema Family +1


There is no hard and fast rule about how to encode the _channel_ name
in the ID - using one convention consistently for a grabber would seem
to be the best idea.

If there are multiple grabbers offering the same channels in the same
country (or a new grabber takes over from an old one), having them use
the same XMLTV IDs for the same channels would significantly reduce
the effort required for end users to switch.

The ESPO1 and VOXUP ID formats seem fine to me.

Thanks,
Nick