A bit disappointed with the "Transfer Tool"

[foxwood]

I knew that the process of changing to SchedulesDirect and EPG123 would involve a bit of pain, which is why I have put it off until now. But I was particularly disappointed at the process of transferring the existing recording database. I know that it involves matching disparate databases, so it will never be perfect, but when series recordings like Modern Family have to be manually matched (right-click and select match), and series like House Hunters International have to be manually added as a completely new series (so no record of which episodes have been seen before), as well as brand new series like 68 Whiskey and Deputy. I don't now why the "Schedules Direct" column of the Transfer tool doesn't see them, because WMC can find them and schedule them. Only about 2/3rds of my series transferred automatically.

I have a list of over a dozen series that aren't on-air at the moment, so they can't be added as series requests, only wishlist entries. Some of them have probably been cancelled, but not all of them.

There's no obvious reason why you couldn't run the Transfer Tool before setting up EPG123, to at least see what series would need additional care and attention. Though that's probably a bit of a moot pint this late in the game, as the Rovi data is going away, so EPG123 isn't as optional as it has been up t now.

[Gripweed]

Some of them have probably been cancelled, but not all of them.

Just as a point of reference, the two best websites I've found to tell whether a show has been cancelled or not are:

TV Series Finale https://tvseriesfinale.com/cancelled-tv-shows-lists/
Is My Show Cancelled? http://www.ismyshowcancelled.com/home/

I have a fantasy that someone will write a program that automatically compares the WMC series recording list with one of these website's lists and at the least spit out a list of shows to either keep or remove from the WMC list. I'm in the process of cleaning out the WMC list manually this way (searching on one show at a time) with shows that go back to 2010 or so and it's no fun. The shows are all my wife's so I have no idea whether they are on the air or not still.

[garyan2]

I'm debating with myself on how to respond to this, but here goes.

The Transfer Tool was created to lessen the burden of changing from a Rovi guide to a Gracenote guide. I created a program for myself that would build a database that could provide a Gracenote series ID for a given Rovi series ID. This was accomplished by having a Virtual Machine set up for a specific lineup using a MS/Rovi guide. I would then download the equivalent Schedules Direct lineup and import into the WMC database. Now that both sources are in the database, I would then scan and compare each individual channel and each individual program and date/time from both sources and compare the program title. If the title was close enough to a match, the series ID for Rovi would be matched to the series ID for Gracenote and put in my transfer database. So to summarize all that, if the title of a program at 1PM on Rovi channel A matches the title of a program at 1PM on Gracenote channel A within 85% or more confidence, then the series IDs were matched.

Originally, I did this for 5 lineups on 3 VMs; DISH Satellite USA, Verizon FiOS + OTA in New York (10001), and AT&T UVerse + OTA in L.A. (90210). The process would take a couple hours and I did this every 2 weeks from July 2017 until December 2019. Towards the end, I just limited it to the L.A. lineups. So, in order for a series request to get transferred automatically, it would have had to have been aired within the last 2 1/2 years with titles that closely matched each other.

For the manual match, you are missing some understanding on what is going on there. The left pane shows what is in your recording request (the series name with a description if available). There is no searching involved of WMC/Rovi. The match form will query theTVDB for the title and provide results in the pull-down in the middle pane. A picture and description will be shown of the selected TVDB series to compare. Part of the response from TVDB is the 'Zap2it ID'... if that has been populated at some point by a contributor to theTVDB, then the tool will query Schedules Direct for the series information and provide the picture and description. There is no ability to query a series title from Schedules Direct. So a failure to find a Schedules Direct series is due to the TVDB series response not having the Zap2it ID.

To describe some of the series that did not transfer over automatically for you.
1) Modern Family - the only thing I can think of is if Rovi changed the series ID after you setup the request, and before I started gathering data. Modern Family is in my database as Rovi 218237259 to SD 01158124.
2) House Hunters International - same thing, but also no Zap2it ID in the TVDB response. House Hunters International is in my database as Rovi 48277837 to SD 00804863.
3) 68 Whiskey and Deputy - I stopped gathering data in December 2019 and these just started so they weren't included.

So, I'm a bit sorry you didn't get 1/3 of your requests transferred automatically... but not sorry. You are welcome for the 2/3 of your requests that transferred automatically without any bit of thought or consideration by yourself.

Note: You can see what the transfer tool will look like before actually starting to convert over to epg123. All you need to do is open a recording backup file with the tool and it will show most of everything. Your wishlist requests won't show on the left because they are still on the right.

Note: You lose all recording history (no record of which episodes have been seen before) for all requests regardless of if the transfer was successful or not. You deleted the database of episodes with Rovi program IDs which have no meaning to EPG123/SD.

[foxwood]

You sound a bit affronted that I am bringing this up, but the reason that I'm posting isn't to complain about outcome (that won't do me much good at this point), but hopefully it will be help to set realistic expectations for anyone else going through the process, especially if they've added any of the new 2020 series.

As I said, I expected there to be some issues, but after all the glowing reports of how easy the process is, and your own documentation showing a handful of red entries, it was a bit of a shock to be presented with two screenfuls of red entries. I had no way of knowing whether I did something wrong, and if I should start over from scratch. Turns out this is normal, but nobody bothered to mention it. Yes, the Transfer Tool saved me some work, but it also left me confused because I was lead to believe that it would do a much better job than it actually did.

I've put off doing this migration until the last minute precisely because anything that involves a channel scan has always been a pain in the rear. And despite everything I had read in advance, it turned out to be as painful as I anticipated. I'm not underestimating the complications involved in the transfer tool, but I am saying that it wasn't as useful as I was led to believe it would be, and it was not at all obvious that I could have done dry run with it before I did the actual EPG123 setup, that would have allowed me time to go through the list of non-transferrable titles without the pressure of getting everything back up and running in time for evening viewing. Under other circumstances I probably would have rolled everything back so that I could look into the non-transferrable series in more detail, but I just don't have that luxury anymore, so I took the time to go ahead and manually add the series that didn't transfer. That would have been slightly easier if there had been some visual indication of which of the red series had been transferred using the manual right-click Match process.

Again, my purpose isn't to criticize you for the fact that a lot of my Series recordings didn't transfer automatically, it is simply to highlight to anyone who hasn't gone through this process yet that they will probably have to manually add some of their series recordings than they realized.

[garyan2]

Not affronted that you bring something up like this, but I can't help but notice that your statements misrepresent the severity of this "issue" which is exactly what you are alluding is happening in the forum concerning the Transfer Tool.

I described how the tool works, and some of the limitations above, but may not have pointed out what it means to have "red" series on the left side and why they are there.

1) Since I have been collecting data for quite a while, the majority of the series on the left that are red will be because it was cancelled, and has not aired any episodes, prior to and since July 2017. So being red on the left is not really an issue since even if it did transfer over, there would be no recordings of that series scheduled. Of course, if you wanted to keep it just in case the series runs in syndication at some point in the future so you could record reruns, then I guess you could consider it an issue. I call it spring cleaning.

2) With the uptick in new users, we have seen evidence that there are some things in the backup recording request file that is not "current" and may cause some series to be red on the left. We noticed that the channel assigned to the request is the original channel from when the request was created. If the channel has changed due to lineup changes from the provider, or using a new provider, then the request will not work without some intervention. The same may be true for the series ID for the request, which I've heard Rovi has changed some in the past. This finally explains why WMC warns us to check the scheduled recordings after a database recovery because if the ID is different, then the request will fail. In which case, the manual Match using theTVDB may find the SD series ID for us, but maybe not... no guarantees.

3) The rest of the series that are red will probably be due to differences in the title of the show when I was creating the database. This is particularly true for local news broadcasts ("Good Day LA 4AM" versus "Good Day LA at 4am" as an example which falls just below the 85% confidence requirement). Again, this may be corrected for by using the Match routine, but also again, no guarantees.

So to speak of the severity of the problem, the interesting question is of the 1/3 series requests (2 pages worth), how many of those fall in to the first category and how many were left over after failing to find the series ID using the match feature? After understanding that, then each individual can decide on how "successful" or not the Transfer Tool will be and how much of an impact it will have.

Now a big asterisk to all the above... My transfer database is limited to series that are broadcast in the US. The success rate of transferring over series requests will be small for regions outside the US. Wishlist requests will transfer without issue.

[IT Troll]

Back in the early days there was no transfer tool. But you try and tell the young people today that...

[clio_williams]

Hey Gary and thank you for the above, EPG123 and even the Transfer Tool!

On that topic, I'm starting to use EPG123 for my parents Media Center. I have found that they have no less than 1,290 scheduled recordings (Ok, so there are some duplicates and one-off's etc... but there are probably c. 200 genuine ones at least)
The trouble is that none of them have been matched by the Transfer Tool. I think I understand the process it uses as described in your Install Steps and above... and that's fair enough and understood. It's probably something about being in the UK and having used a mix of tuners and re-arranged channel numbers and various migrations and all sorts over the years that isn't helping.

I was wondering two things....
1. Are you able to publish your Series ID mapping Table / DB so that we can manually look through it to see what might have a match or... better still....
2. Would it be possible to colour-code the left side items in the Transfer Tool to show which MIGHT have a Schedules Direct match? As you can imagine, I'm going through hundreds of lines to find that some do and some don't.

Also, a suggestion for you. I know you kindly offer EPG123 for free requesting only optional donations. Very kind. In my case, I'm always happy to pay for something that works... but it takes a while to see if something is going to work in a useful way. I would suggest you slip in a reminder pop-up (maybe in Media Center) after, say, a month... just to say... Ok, looks like you like EPG123... don't forget you can donate if you wish.

Kind regards, James