Plugin: Sage Recording Extender (SRE)

[vividweb]

Recording on the CAN game yesterday worked great, thanks again for the update Slugger.

[ohpleaseno]

After last week's Daytona 500, I'll pay you any amount of money to get NASCAR back as a monitored sport.

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by ohpleaseno

After last week's Daytona 500, I'll pay you any amount of money to get NASCAR back as a monitored sport.

As I always say, find a web service or something on the Internet that is:

1) Near real time
2) Can be easily parsed

By near real time I mean a source that identifies the event as being over within a few minutes of the event actually ending (few would ideally be 1 or 2 at the most, but even a 10-15 min delay would be acceptable, though not perfect). For example, the ESPN feeds I use are usually within 1-3 mins of real time, which I consider to be more than acceptable for our purposes. Ideally it's a true web service that provides a JSON or XML feed, but I've written HTML scrappers before for SRE and am not against doing it as long as the HTML is not horribly difficult to scrape (i.e. there's some kind of easily identifiable pattern to be found in the HTML code of the web page).

I used to use ESPN, but that source was no longer real time. Back before I removed the NASCAR monitor it was getting to the point where it was 4, 5, 6+ hours after the race before ESPN marked the race as over. No one wants to tie up a tuner for 6 hours after a race so I had to remove the monitor. The other issue at play is that I don't watch NASCAR - I only added the monitor from ESPN the first time because I stumbled upon it and there were a few users requesting it at the time. So this just means I won't be actively pursuing a replacement data source. But as I've always said, if someone brings me a source that meets the above criteria then I will add the monitor to SRE, however if I don't need the monitor (because I don't watch the event type in question) then I won't personally spend time trying to track down the required data source.

[cat6man]

hi slugger

EPG search shows mlb preseason broadcasts on MLB network start with first nationally televised spring training game on march 2 this year................first red sox game is not until march 7

your jays and the yankees are on march 6 but i don't know if you get mlb network or not.........don't know if any local networks are carrying games earlier or not, probably are some out there.....

and it is so nice to see 'boston red sox' once again hanging out there at the bottom of my SRE overrides page!

cheers

edit: bottom line, it is 1 week to green grass and sunshine on the telly.................don't care who's playing, i need to record that 1st game to remind myself the snow will not be here forever, that the world is once again renewed, there is yet another chance for good to defeat evil (aka yankees), and a hd300 will be around the corner so i can hear HD surround sound in my home theater.......hope springs eternal

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by cat6man

hi slugger

EPG search shows mlb preseason broadcasts on MLB network start with first nationally televised spring training game on march 2 this year................first red sox game is not until march 7

your jays and the yankees are on march 6 but i don't know if you get mlb network or not.........don't know if any local networks are carrying games earlier or not, probably are some out there.....

and it is so nice to see 'boston red sox' once again hanging out there at the bottom of my SRE overrides page!

cheers

edit: bottom line, it is 1 week to green grass and sunshine on the telly.................don't care who's playing, i need to record that 1st game to remind myself the snow will not be here forever, that the world is once again renewed, there is yet another chance for good to defeat evil (aka yankees), and a hd300 will be around the corner so i can hear HD surround sound in my home theater.......hope springs eternal

No MLB Network for me. But while I'm thinking of it, I'll take this opportunity to mention that in order to monitor preseason games, you will need to create overrides for the airing titles. Zap2It typically lists games with the title of 'MLB Preason Baseball' (or something similar). SRE will not recognize that title. You will need to override the title with 'MLB Baseball'. The other thing, which I won't be able to confirm until spring training games start, is that the ESPN Bottom Line feed must also provide the real time info for spring training games and I'm not sure if it actually does. If It doesn't then spring training games won't be monitored.

[cat6man]

no biggie on either of those........we'll see what happens for preseason games but opening day is the important thing of course.

[ohpleaseno]

Originally Posted by Slugger

As I always say, find a web service or something on the Internet that is:

1) Near real time
2) Can be easily parsed

By near real time I mean a source that identifies the event as being over within a few minutes of the event actually ending (few would ideally be 1 or 2 at the most, but even a 10-15 min delay would be acceptable, though not perfect). For example, the ESPN feeds I use are usually within 1-3 mins of real time, which I consider to be more than acceptable for our purposes. Ideally it's a true web service that provides a JSON or XML feed, but I've written HTML scrappers before for SRE and am not against doing it as long as the HTML is not horribly difficult to scrape (i.e. there's some kind of easily identifiable pattern to be found in the HTML code of the web page).

I used to use ESPN, but that source was no longer real time. Back before I removed the NASCAR monitor it was getting to the point where it was 4, 5, 6+ hours after the race before ESPN marked the race as over. No one wants to tie up a tuner for 6 hours after a race so I had to remove the monitor. The other issue at play is that I don't watch NASCAR - I only added the monitor from ESPN the first time because I stumbled upon it and there were a few users requesting it at the time. So this just means I won't be actively pursuing a replacement data source. But as I've always said, if someone brings me a source that meets the above criteria then I will add the monitor to SRE, however if I don't need the monitor (because I don't watch the event type in question) then I won't personally spend time trying to track down the required data source.

I'll check out NASCAR.com on Sunday and see what happens at the end of the race.

http://www.nascar.com/races/cup/

Oh, and I forgot to mention that I did a write-up of SRE on homeservershow.com

http://homeservershow.com/sagetv-add...-extender.html

[Slugger]

A friendly reminder for those not able to call in sick tomorrow and will be using SRE to monitor various NCAA games.

As far as I know, the current release of SRE (2.4.2.777) will monitor NCAA games for both the Men's and Women's tournaments. For the men, this also includes NIT games. However, most games - especially in the early rounds - are likely to need an override as a lot of lesser known schools will be playing.

So be aware that you will likely need overrides for most games this weekend, but unfortunately the ESPN feeds used by SRE do not change over until 12:00 ET each day so you will not be able to look up override values until 12:00 each day and since some games start at 12:00 for the next four days you're going to have to remember to set override values shortly after games begin if you're trying to monitor any of the early games.

NIT games are showing up properly in the ESPN feed today and I have no reason to believe that the NCAA tourney games won't, but if for some reason an updated parser is required for the start of the tournament I will do my best to get an update built before the end of Thursday's action - that's all I can promise. And since Syracuse doesn't start until Friday night, I won't be in a huge rush to fix anything tomorrow afternoon (though I really would be shocked if a fix was needed).

Let the madness begin!!

[Slugger]

There seems to be no rhyme or reason as to when or why ESPN doesn't provide game data for some events in their Bottom Line feed. For whatever reason, NIT games are in the feed, but today's NCAA tourney games aren't. I'm working so can't tackle this now. And I'm not even sure if I'm going to be able to find a new data source quick enough - I'll do my best. If anyone knows of a live JSON or XML feed of the game scores then I'd love to hear about it. I may have to resort to writing a new HTML scrapper otherwise.

[wayner]

Isn't the best option for the tourney to just record all games back-to-back and then manually pad the last game by an hour or so. My CBS-East station (WIVB-Buffalo) shows B-Ball from 12:10pm to 12am with a 2 hour break from 5-7 for news. My CBS West station (KIRO-Seattle) has different games from 12:10 pm EDT to midnight without the break. Just record all games and add padding after midnight and you are good to go!

[Slugger]

Definitely an option, but others in my house would kill me if I dedicated my lone HD input to basketball all day (I believe The Office is new tonight in HD?).

Seems I'm able to recycle some old ESPN.com HTML scrappers to handle this unfortunate set of circumstances that ESPN has put us in. I'm testing the build right now.

[Slugger]

Snapshot 785 is now available, which supports the NCAA Men's tournament by recycling an old ESPN.com HTML scraper. Two things to note:

1. The global override map is empty for the men's tournament (since I'm using a new data source, a new global override map was created online for it).

2. Do NOT visit sre-maps.appspot.com for NCAA men's hoops override information as long as you're using 2.4.3.785. Instead, for NCAA Men's basketball only visit http://scores.espn.go.com/ncb/scoreboard and find the game you wish to monitor on that scoreboard and use the team names as listed there for override information.

[Slugger]

Snapshot 788 is the new recommended build for NCAA tourney support.

[craigap]

Will SRE work in such a way that it can help correctly record TV shows that come on after a sporting event that has run long?

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by craigap

Will SRE work in such a way that it can help correctly record TV shows that come on after a sporting event that has run long?

That's a negative. A more detailed explanation as to why can be found in the first page or two of this thread.

[Slugger]

Snapshot 789 fixes a bug with the NCAA Men's b'ball monitor that prevented proper creation of future overrides in some circumstances.

[cat6man]

opening day is within reach!!!..........or at least i can schedule it now that it
shows up in my EPG

as i understand it, and i haven't used SRE since last season, the new SRE
will not validate scheduled ballgames in the future until the day of the game
(because you are now using the current day's ticker as your source)?

edit: i guess i was wrong...........4/4 game between the red sox and hankies is already in bold letters
so game has been confirmed in SRE...........cool

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by cat6man

opening day is within reach!!!..........or at least i can schedule it now that it
shows up in my EPG

as i understand it, and i haven't used SRE since last season, the new SRE
will not validate scheduled ballgames in the future until the day of the game
(because you are now using the current day's ticker as your source)?

That's correct. Future games will just automatically be marked as valid until the day of the game then it will check again and update accordingly. For this reason, I highly recommend installing and configuring SageAlert along side SRE. That way SRE will notify you if a recording can't be monitored.

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by cat6man

edit: i guess i was wrong...........4/4 game between the red sox and hankies is already in bold letters
so game has been confirmed in SRE...........cool

See my last post for more details...

[cat6man]

baseball season has started and last night SRE continued my recording of red sox v. yankees without a hitch

all hail slugger!

best customization ever!