On Sun, 27 Oct 2002, Pyroman[FO] wrote:
Can you explain what a station number is?
What I meant by station number is the number that you would
physically turn the TV to in order to watch that channel, or the
numbers you would punch on the remote. i.e. 129, 3 or 45.
Ah right, that's far too simple for me to have worked it out by
myself :-(.
I think from this point we can have a useful discussion about what
_could_ be done with station numbers, and I'll take it into account
when making the new version of the DTD (which should happen within the
next few months), but I don't think you'll get an immediate answer to
your problem. With that proviso, let's continue to discuss.
Maybe have a station number attribute with some sort of provider ID
attribute, like zap2it or any other online listings provider uses.
For instance, if Dish Networks provider ID is 23141 then
<channel id="3sat.de">
<station provider="23141">154</station>
<display-name lang="de">3SAT</display-name>
</channel>
That would work. I assume that there is only one channel that can be
number 154 on this particular provider.
A current favourite idea of mine is to push these things into the
channel-id namespace. Any globally unique system of naming a channel
can become an 'id'. So for example
<channel>
<channel-id id="3sat.de" />
<channel-id id="154.dish-networks.com" />
...
</channel>
I originally proposed this to handle TMSIDs - another channel
classification system - but it can deal with these channel numbers as
well. A feature which is cute (if not earth-shatteringly useful) is
that XML validation will check that these station numbers are unique,
ie no two channels can have the same number.
That would mean in order to get the TV to go to the station
"3sat.de" using Dish Networks you would go to the channel "154".
Or in my example, that the two ways of referring to the channel are
equivalent (although 3sat.de is perhaps more 'official').
I cant think of any TV stations that don't use some sort of small
number to refer to every individual channel, but Ive never really
used anything but broadcast, cable or satellite in the US.
The trouble is that grabbers don't always know what the small numbers
are. But we can certainly allow for it in the file format when the
data is available.
Also I guess the provider ID could be alphanumeric or whatever, Im
not sure which way would be easier for everybody to use.
If we follow the existing pattern then pick the DNS name of the
provider company (or make one up), with perhaps subdivisions under
that. It's all nice and hierarchical, if a little bit pompous.
However the channel ids are supposed to be fairly permanent and to be
matched up automatically, so you could have a table mapping XMLTV
channel id to station number.
That would be great, however like I said tv_grab_na uses
"stationnumber stationname" format, which doesn't really seem
universal.
If the data source used by tv_grab_na has some way of globally
identifying channels then perhaps the grabber could use that in the
ids it generates. Otherwise, you're out of luck.
(to other developers) Hang on, what happened about putting TMSIDs in
the tv_grab_na output? Aren't those a suitable global channel
identifier that could be converted to station ids?
Since theres no guidelines for the id format, it really cant be
counted on to be fairly permanent or matched up automatically,
Well you can maybe do it just for the _na grabber, for the time being.
