View TV Category Colors

[Galaxysurfer]

hi,

I have 2 outstanding bugs. I am using open source SageTV V9.0.14.568 Server on Win 10 64 bit. Whenever I go into Category Colors to tweek my settings & choose add category & custom color it freezes up my desktop. I need to signout of user in order to regain control of desktop. ( I use display sagetv on top of everything else). I also notice that often whenever I choose a color, the displayed color doesn't match my selection. This is frustrating when the improperly displayed color matches one of my other categories and color combinations. It throws my sorting & display of library out the window.
I also notice that some of the listed categories in the add new category from list provided in Sagetv do not function. They seem to be a dummy placeholder rather than functional.
Keep up the good work! If I had the skillset to help with coding etc I would.

[Galaxysurfer]

Having moved from the default sagetv epg to schedulesdirect it seems to have solved the one problem with categories. On a related note it seems to occur in shows with multiple category assignments. I guess key there is to custom assign them per show. Still finding an issue with being able to customize colours for categories. If I use the standard choices no issue. When I go to custom choices the screen freezes. Seems to be connected somehow to using sagetv as a service. I dont know how to edit /customize settings in default mode & have them stick when I go back to service mode & retain all my profile settings. Plugins issue?

[Narflex]

Ohh...if you try to not use the standard colors, then I believe it is launching a java.awt.ColorChooser in order to pick another one. And that'll just end up hanging an extender/placeshifter...but I'd expect it to work with a SageTVClient or standalone SageTV.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by Narflex

Ohh...if you try to not use the standard colors, then I believe it is launching a java.awt.ColorChooser in order to pick another one. And that'll just end up hanging an extender/placeshifter...but I'd expect it to work with a SageTVClient or standalone SageTV.

Does this mean someone needs to develop an in-STV color chooser?

[Galaxysurfer]

My only issue seems to continuity between show data categories esp when switching from sagetv default to schedulesdirect.

ie in default the late late show with james corden is given category talk
in schedulesdirect it is given category talk show
so previous colour assignment isnt recognized. the other issue is when a show is given multiple categories it defaults to first in list. there is a glitch for home/garden it returns a null, so basically that category is unusable. Basically just needs some code clean up i think. If i knew enough about code specifics i would take it on for myself.

also for me there is confusion between default config settings vs user customization.

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by Galaxysurfer

My only issue seems to continuity between show data categories esp when switching from sagetv default to schedulesdirect.

ie in default the late late show with james corden is given category talk
in schedulesdirect it is given category talk show
so previous colour assignment isnt recognized. the other issue is when a show is given multiple categories it defaults to first in list. there is a glitch for home/garden it returns a null, so basically that category is unusable. Basically just needs some code clean up i think. If i knew enough about code specifics i would take it on for myself.

also for me there is confusion between default config settings vs user customization.

Are you sure it's not just a matter of home/garden having that / in there that needs to be escaped for it to seen as a part of the string value and not a part of the property path? (e.g. home\/garden)

[Monedeath]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

Are you sure it's not just a matter of home/garden having that / in there that needs to be escaped for it to seen as a part of the string value and not a part of the property path? (e.g. home\/garden)

I wouldn't necessarily blame Schedules Direct for this issue either. The SageTV EPG service had been known to flip around the category descriptors for shows from one week to next in my own experience.

It certainly makes it annoying when you're grouping shows by Category and it cannot realize that Drama/Action and Action/Drama are essentially the same thing. Although I would agree that in theory there could be some subtle differences between the two.

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by Monedeath

I wouldn't necessarily blame Schedules Direct for this issue either. The SageTV EPG service had been known to flip around the category descriptors for shows from one week to next in my own experience.

It certainly makes it annoying when you're grouping shows by Category and it cannot realize that Drama/Action and Action/Drama are essentially the same thing. Although I would agree that in theory there could be some subtle differences between the two.

The data comes from TMS and I presume they generally just pull it in with very little modification. The best we could do on SageTV's side of things would be check for forward slashes and sort alphabetically to ensure they are always in the same order or separate them into their own two categories.

[Monedeath]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

The data comes from TMS and I presume they generally just pull it in with very little modification. The best we could do on SageTV's side of things would be check for forward slashes and sort alphabetically to ensure they are always in the same order or separate them into their own two categories.

I could see three paths.

1) sort (category) by alpha as you suggest and group in the first category only.
2) sort (category) by alpha and create "meta-groupings" that could include 2 or more categories on the same title. (I have personally see up to 3 categories on a recording from the Sage EPG, and as it uses the same upstream source....)
3) allow shows to appear in any (category) grouping it is flagged for, although this creates a sorting problem. As you could then have an NCIS episode get flagged for Action/Crime/Drama so that one recording would try to put all three categories at the top of the list for most recent recordings grouped by category.

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by Monedeath

I could see three paths.

1) sort (category) by alpha as you suggest and group in the first category only.
2) sort (category) by alpha and create "meta-groupings" that could include 2 or more categories on the same title. (I have personally see up to 3 categories on a recording from the Sage EPG, and as it uses the same upstream source....)
3) allow shows to appear in any (category) grouping it is flagged for, although this creates a sorting problem. As you could then have an NCIS episode get flagged for Action/Crime/Drama so that one recording would try to put all three categories at the top of the list for most recent recordings grouped by category.

2) I'm trying to follow this one. You're saying split the categories up into sub-categories within a category? I'm tempted to say that might actually reduce the number of Strings flying around because the categories would be more common/simple words and might be worth looking at. I'd need to take a look at my own database and see just how often we end up with the / in categories to see if that's really worth it.

3) I think this might be a little too weird behaviorally.

[Monedeath]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

2) I'm trying to follow this one. You're saying split the categories up into sub-categories within a category? I'm tempted to say that might actually reduce the number of Strings flying around because the categories would be more common/simple words and might be worth looking at. I'd need to take a look at my own database and see just how often we end up with the / in categories to see if that's really worth it.

As I reviewed recordings on the server here, I think that could end up being overly specific in some cases. I found one program that actually had 5 (!)category tags attached to it.

Also sorting by alpha can create some oddities as well. The more I look at it, this looks like a plugin or otherwise optional method that people need to intentionally enable rather than put in the default "stock" UI.

Edit: More specifically, I think the more "elegant" option would be someone to write a plugin that would allow someone to shift around the order in which the category tags are displayed. Which sounds like some of the metadata editors that have been around in various forms. As I don't think this is going yield well to a general automated approach without more direct guidance from the user in regards to specific programs(series).

[Tiki]

I think there are 2 separate issues being discussed here:
1. Sage uses the slash character to separate multiple categories, but some category names happen to contain a slash (such as "home/garden"), which confuses Sage.
2. The EPG data is inconsistent in how it's signs categories. A show could be listed as crime / drama or drama/ crime. In this case drama and crime are two distinct categories. So when sorting by categories should Sage sort by only one of the categories (which one?), or the complete list, or, ?? I think for filtering Sage looks at both categories, but for sorting it only looks at the first one.

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by Tiki

I think there are 2 separate issues being discussed here:
1. Sage uses the slash character to separate multiple categories, but some category names happen to contain a slash (such as "home/garden"), which confuses Sage.
2. The EPG data is inconsistent in how it's signs categories. A show could be listed as crime / drama or drama/ crime. In this case drama and crime are two distinct categories. So when sorting by categories should Sage sort by only one of the categories (which one?), or the complete list, or, ?? I think for filtering Sage looks at both categories, but for sorting it only looks at the first one.

Thanks for stepping up to clarify what we are really talking about. If I can improve the EPG solution so it's better for everyone, we want to do that. The ordering of the categories when they are in fact separate categories (not one category with a / in the middle) is the exact order they come in from Schedules Direct.

My understanding is that categories are ordered based on what category most strongly describes the show. This is why they will be out of order and makes perfect sense to me. If the show is more action than drama, action comes first. If the show is more action than adventure, action comes first. I believe because the first category is intended to capture the strongest descriptor of the show type and because of this you will not see consistency. Also as you likely guessed these are often just opinions and there is only subjective evidence that it's more one over the other.

[Monedeath]

Originally Posted by Tiki

2. The EPG data is inconsistent in how it's signs categories. A show could be listed as crime / drama or drama/ crime. In this case drama and crime are two distinct categories. So when sorting by categories should Sage sort by only one of the categories (which one?), or the complete list, or, ?? I think for filtering Sage looks at both categories, but for sorting it only looks at the first one.

There is a "Drama" category. There is a "Crime" category. There also is a "Crime Drama" category. If I poked around enough in my recordings, I could probably provide examples of each. The category grouping process simply picks whichever one was listed first.

[Fuzzy]

It would be wise to touch base with Schedule Direct to see if they actually parse these into a specific set of options, or if it is exactly as it comes from the various networks.