Baseball games blacked out on one channel shown on another

[Deacon Crusher]

How does one configure Sage so that when the MLB network says it's carrying a game, Giants thank you , but the local baseball channel, Comcast SportsNet is also carrying it and in fact only one channel is actually going to show it, Sportsnet.

Is there a way to get Sage to know? Or is there a way to say, if multiple channels are listed always use channel X first?

Thanks

[Slugger]

You would need to write a plugin/script that scans your EPG and looks for this situation and then marks the airing that's actually blacked out as "Don't Like", forcing Sage to record it from the other channel.

There is no "magical" way for Sage to be able to figure this out on its own, other than convincing Tribune/Zap2It to mark the blacked out airing as such, which is unlikely.

I do something similar for NHL games, I have scripts that figure out when a game is blacked out then mark the airings so they don't match my fav rule -- I use a custom EPG plugin so I can actually catch this as the EPG data is loaded. If using the Sage EPG data, the process I describe in paragraph one will work.

[spacecadet]

Yup. Slugger is correct. There's no quick fix for this (that I've uncovered).

Many eons ago I tried creating two channel-specific favorites: "Giants on Comcast" and "Giants on MLB". I figured if I made "Giants on Comcast" the higher priority favorite, then Sage would choose to record it from the higher priority channel. But that approach doesn't work. Sage still records from whichever channel it feels like (assuming the airing id is the same across all channels, which it always is in my case).

If you discover a magic bullet fit for this, then I am interested in your solution.

Good luck!

[will]

One option is to reprogram the channel numbers. Make SportsNet a higher number than the MLB channels. If I recall correctly, Sage tries to record from the highest channel number first when scheduling. That way, if the game is shown on both it should pick SportsNet to record on and only record on MLB when the game is not on SportsNet.

[Deacon Crusher]

Originally Posted by will

One option is to reprogram the channel numbers. Make SportsNet a higher number than the MLB channels. If I recall correctly, Sage tries to record from the highest channel number first when scheduling. That way, if the game is shown on both it should pick SportsNet to record on and only record on MLB when the game is not on SportsNet.

Interesting.

Would make system slightly less friendly for others as you'd have to know that 720 isn't on 720 it's on 820 or wherever.

Might have to try this just to see what happens.

thanks

[wayner]

If you had multiple tuners you could also give them different merits and only activate the MLB channels on the lower priority tuner. This wouldn't be bullet-proof, especially if you are recording other shows at the same time as the game, but it should help.

[cat6man]

easy solution guys..........along with creating multiple favorites, use the 'favorites excluder' plugin!

i have a favorite to record the red sox on espn or MLB but i set favorites excluder to to not record these if the opponent is NY since then it will be blacked out..........then i have a 2nd favorite for recording on YES for those games.

works great

the one thing i haven't found is how to get the red sox broadcast of games when mlb carries both the home and away versions

[waynedunham]

I had that issue a week or so ago when the Sox and Yankees played a Spring Training game.

However none of the workarounds/solutions would have worked in my case. The game only showed up in the EPG as being on MLB and not any of the other likely candidates (NESN, YES, ESPN, or a couple locals)

I should have known to check it as soon as it started recording, but forgot and about 3 hours in (about the 5th inning in a Sox/Yanks game) I decided to start watching.
Some stupid highlights show........ skip 3 minutes, again, again, ad nauseam. Nope, nothing.

I tried going to NESN, but it wasn't on there either so I figured that maybe it had been rained out only to see the score in the morning.

The scenario you guys relate here (EPG showing it on 2 different networks) happens quite a lot, usually when its supposed to air on ESPN. I miss quite a few games that way. <sigh> But I've only got 2 HD tuners that can get those channels (6 HD tuners if its airing on one of the local networks where I can get QAM), and I've got other stuff to record too.
So I guess if I miss a half dozen games out of 162 that's not too bad.

[Fuzzy]

Realy there needs to be a common web service somewhere that can track these things that everyone could use as their epg source... something that could aggregate information/corrections from multiple people and provide highly accurate guide data to the pvr community... call it LivePVRData or something like that...

[wayner]

The problem with this case is that it is specific to certain regions or cities due to local blackouts. You would need to maintain a database for each city and league to determine what zip codes (or whatever) were deemed to be local for each team. That would be a nightmare.

What we really need some sort of a carrier signal with overhead data that contains the current show info that is properly updated in realtimes and communicates with SageTV. This would also work for SRE and a reverse SRE which allows you to figure out when 60 Minutes is actually on (at least in the east) during football season.

[cat6man]

Originally Posted by waynedunham

I had that issue a week or so ago when the Sox and Yankees played a Spring Training game.

However none of the workarounds/solutions would have worked in my case. The game only showed up in the EPG as being on MLB and not any of the other likely candidates (NESN, YES, ESPN, or a couple locals)

I should have known to check it as soon as it started recording, but forgot and about 3 hours in (about the 5th inning in a Sox/Yanks game) I decided to start watching.
Some stupid highlights show........ skip 3 minutes, again, again, ad nauseam. Nope, nothing.

I tried going to NESN, but it wasn't on there either so I figured that maybe it had been rained out only to see the score in the morning.

The scenario you guys relate here (EPG showing it on 2 different networks) happens quite a lot, usually when its supposed to air on ESPN. I miss quite a few games that way. <sigh> But I've only got 2 HD tuners that can get those channels (6 HD tuners if its airing on one of the local networks where I can get QAM), and I've got other stuff to record too.
So I guess if I miss a half dozen games out of 162 that's not too bad.

showed up on YES for me, so i didn't miss it.........fios here

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

Realy there needs to be a common web service somewhere that can track these things that everyone could use as their epg source... something that could aggregate information/corrections from multiple people and provide highly accurate guide data to the pvr community... call it LivePVRData or something like that...

[cat6man]

I know it is EOL and not supported anymore, but I just wanted to take one more chance to thank slugger for SRE.

Yesterday, my EPG picked up the first regular season game of the year (Seattle in Japan) and SRE popped up with the green circle and check mark..............life is good.

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by cat6man

I know it is EOL and not supported anymore, but I just wanted to take one more chance to thank slugger for SRE.

Yesterday, my EPG picked up the first regular season game of the year (Seattle in Japan) and SRE popped up with the green circle and check mark..............life is good.

To be clear, though not officially supported anymore (as with all my Sage projects), this is clearly a plugin I still heavily use and rely on. If it were to break, you can expect a fix relatively quickly (as long as I continue to use it -- and I plan on using it for some time to come).

[cat6man]

Originally Posted by Slugger

To be clear, though not officially supported anymore (as with all my Sage projects), this is clearly a plugin I still heavily use and rely on. If it were to break, you can expect a fix relatively quickly (as long as I continue to use it -- and I plan on using it for some time to come).

thanks slugger

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by cat6man

showed up on YES for me, so i didn't miss it.........fios here

It might have shown up for me there too if I had YES in the guide. I have YES turned off for all my tuners. Can't be watching shows on the "Evil Empire Channel".

Now if it were during the regular season I would turn YES on for a game that wasn't airing on NESN, and then turn it off the next day.

Of course having said that, there is one thing worse than watching a game on YES (now that Phil Rizzuto isn't there any more, there was nothing worse than his announcing)..... watching a game on FOX, those announcers are the absolute WORST on the planet!! I'm not sure who gave Joe Buck a job but it is probably the same moron who cancelled Firefly.
Plus then you put McCarver in the same booth and the suicide rate nationally goes up 10 points.

[cat6man]

well, living in the shadow of the evil empire, i can't get nesn at all, so YES is typically the only way i can watch sox-yankees games...........it IS better than a blackout.

it is really clear to anyone who listens to both sides that the yankee announcers are really biased...............even a bad call by the umpire, which the sox announcers would discuss in either direction (helping or hurting sox) would only be discussed on YES if the yankees were robbed by a bad call.......

what really blew my mind when i came to this area was that the local (and highly parochial) sports programs on the network news are so NY-centric that they don't usually even mention other scores from around the country........amazin'

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by cat6man

well, living in the shadow of the evil empire, i can't get nesn at all, so YES is typically the only way i can watch sox-yankees games...........it IS better than a blackout.

it is really clear to anyone who listens to both sides that the yankee announcers are really biased...............even a bad call by the umpire, which the sox announcers would discuss in either direction (helping or hurting sox) would only be discussed on YES if the yankees were robbed by a bad call.......

what really blew my mind when i came to this area was that the local (and highly parochial) sports programs on the network news are so NY-centric that they don't usually even mention other scores from around the country........amazin'

[jchiso]

Fortunately, DirecTV's receivers now automatically tune to available sports programming when available. If you have Extra Innings you can just set your recordings to the "700-series" channels. Of course, then you'd be flying blind without accurate guide data.

Originally Posted by waynedunham

... Of course having said that, there is one thing worse than watching a game on YES (now that Phil Rizzuto isn't there any more, there was nothing worse than his announcing)...

Well, the Scooter never did games on YES, and he's quite dead now, so now you get to enjoy Michael Kay!

Originally Posted by cat6man

... what really blew my mind when i came to this area was that the local (and highly parochial) sports programs on the network news are so NY-centric that they don't usually even mention other scores from around the country...

This is a recent development, since the mid-nineties, when the Yankees got good again. Before that time there were four seasons in NYC; Giants, Knicks, Rangers and Devils were all winning or battling for titles. Once the Yankee bandwagon got rolling all of those teams (and all the other teams in MLB) were pushed to the back burner. New York sports media and its fans have gotten increasingly dumber ever since.

If you don't believe me just tune in to a couple of hours of Mike Francesa on YES one afternoon ...

Full-disclosure Department: I'm a Mets fan.