# OAD Discussion



## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

ozsat said:


> This has been discussed at great length in the past - for many series once it is in the Tribune database it will have the original (worldwide) air-date. Please don't discuss it here - I know why there should be a UK date - there is a thread somewhere.


The moral of the story is to never set an SP as First Run Only for series that are US made rather than being originated in the UK it would seem?


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## Milhouse (Sep 15, 2001)

ozsat said:


> This has been discussed at great length in the past - for many series once it is in the Tribune database it will have the original (worldwide) air-date. Please don't discuss it here - I know why there should be a UK date - there is a thread somewhere.


Oszat - apolgies for the discussion, please move to another thread/delete as appropriate however I feel it necessary to reply to this comment.

Given my previous post in this thread about the 1978 Battlestar Galactica series on BRAVO having 2007 OADs, why is it now acceptable for a never before shown episode of Battlestar Galactica to have a 2006 OAD which is actually the date when the episode has been shown in another country!

When you mention another thread, are you referring to this thread which appears to indicate Tribune are in error for *both* series of Battlestar Galatica? BRAVO should have had a much, much earlier OAD (1980's perhaps?) and the OAD for the 3rd series on SKYONE should be 9 Jan 2007 - the date when it is first shown in the UK.

Consistency would be a good thing. Random chance on OAD's makes the TiVo system unworkable and TiVo themselves are making it clear that Tribune should be using UK OADs when TiVoRich states: *The Original Air Date (OAD) is meant to be the date that the program was first broadcast on any channel in the UK.*


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

Milhouse said:


> Consistency would be a good thing. Random chance on OAD's makes the TiVo system unworkable and TiVo themselves are making it clear that Tribune should be using UK OADs when TiVoRich states: *The Original Air Date (OAD) is meant to be the date that the program was first broadcast on any channel in the UK.*


The problem seems to centre around non UK made series.

Tribune certainly seems to be capable of getting the Original Air Date (OAD) correct for even very old BBC programs.

For instance The Flipside of Dominick Hyde was shown on 26th Feb 2006 on BBC4 and is still resident on my 600 hour recording time Tivo. TivoWeb reports the OAD for this program as being "Tue 9th Dec 1980" which I believe is correct even though it was first broadcast over 25 years earlier.


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## Milhouse (Sep 15, 2001)

After my original 1978 Battlestar Galactica/BRAVOD post, Tribune have now corrected the OAD and todays episode has an OAD of Sun 24th Sep 1978, which may well be the US OAD. Thanks for that Ozsat! 

So it's highly likely that Tribune UK are publishing the programme guide with US OAD for US series, however that is neither logical or inline with the comment from TiVoRich, unless TiVoRich is restricting his comment to UK programmes? Would, for instance, a Japanese anime series have the Japanese OAD?


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## OzSat (Feb 15, 2001)

I know Tribune do not hold a US OAD as such - although for most US series the US OAD will be the true OAD.

With most UK series the OAD will be the UK OAD - but as only one OAD is held by Tribune (and TiVo) - problems appear when the UK is behind.

We have even seen problems when RTE gets programmes before the rest of the UK.

Something else I know happens - if Tribune do not have the OAD then when the programme first enters the TiVo database then TiVo sets it to the date of transmission. This is why so many old pre-2002 series had 2002 OADs - because that is when TiVo start using the OAD proper.


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## steveroe (Oct 29, 2002)

ozsat said:


> I know Tribune do not hold a US OAD as such - although for most US series the US OAD will be the true OAD.
> 
> With most UK series the OAD will be the UK OAD - but as only one OAD is held by Tribune (and TiVo) - problems appear when the UK is behind.


This is not the case in my experience. I can't think of another US originated show that hasn't had correct UK OADs in recent years (e.g. Smallville, Lost, Desperate Housewives).

A prime example is "The Simpsons". I have a FRO SP for this and only get new episodes - These have correct UK OADs.

Certainly until yesterday my FRO Wishlist for "Battlestar Galactica" had selected the new series. Now it hasn't as the OAD date has been changed. If it was possible to have the UK OAD yesterday, why is it not today?

If I now change my wishlist to be "first run and repeats" I will also get the 70s show from Bravo, which is incorrect.

Correct UK OADs - Isn't this part of the "service" that I pay for?


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## OzSat (Feb 15, 2001)

I don't think 'The Simpsons' has correct OADs by entry - but by accident as described above.


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## Milhouse (Sep 15, 2001)

I'd have thought the OAD is (could, or should be) internally generated Tribune meta-data.

Since the 3rd series of Battlestar Galactica has never been shown on SkyOne before, Tribune can use the UK air date for the OAD (ie. 9 Jan 2007). Next time the same episode is shown on SkyOne, Tribune can pull the UK OAD from their historical database ("When did this episode first air on this channel" or even "When did this episode air on any UK channel?").

I'm not sure why the US OAD is being used at all, as it's utterly irrelevant to the UK and with some effort on the part of Tribune the problem can be solved assuming they are able to parse their historical UK channel data.

Perhaps Tribune suffer the problems that plague most US-developed IT systems which are subsequently enhanced to support global users. These enhancements (eg. multiple currencies, timezones etc. and now, seemingly, OADs) are often horrible hacks that never work satisfactorily.


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## scrowe (Jan 12, 2002)

I've not been to these forums recently, but I have 2 problems this week, Nip/Tuck, and Battlestar Galactica, both not being picked up as a First Run season pass, because of OAD incorrect info.

I popped on here to look at the schedule\listing errors thread, because in the past the point of it seemed to be to alert forum users to programs they may or may not miss, due to guide data inaccuracies. With so many returning or premiering shoes across the channels Jan/Feb, I wanted to make sure I wasn't about to miss anything else.

I then saw the post from Ozsat implying that the thread should not be used to report errors in OAD, and that this does not count as an error, and should not be reported as such.

I would very much like to be assured that somewhere/somehow OAD errors, 'are' being reported to Tribune and efforts made to correct/update them.

£10 per month in 2007 for TV Listings is an expensive service, I've paid for my TiVo many times over over the years, and am happy to continue paying to keep the service going, but that includes 'accurate' listing to drive the TiVo season pass functionality, which 'includes' the ability to only specify recording of 'First Run' TV shows. It's UK data, on a UK TiVo, and a UK product, so US airdates have no business being part of the listings.

In the meantime can anyone point me to a thread that would tell me what other Season Passes are currently inaccurate that I might need to know about, due to OAD errors?


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## atari_addict (Mar 28, 2002)

scrowe said:


> I've not been to these forums recently, but I have 2 problems this week, Nip/Tuck, and Battlestar Galactica, both not being picked up as a First Run season pass, because of OAD incorrect info.


I have to agree with your sentiments. AFAICR BG has been the first casualty I've ever seen in all the years of my TiVo ownership. Now, it's quite possible that that's been because I may have had repeats AND first-runs included in season passes, but that is quite unintuitive! It's either a first-run in the UK or it's not (and we know that it is).

As it happens, the showings shown so far would not have been recorded due to conficts, so opportunities to catch the repeats. But what of people who don't have access to online forums - it seems to me that this series (and likely others) will go completely ignored by their TiVo.


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## TCM2007 (Dec 25, 2006)

Tribune long ago fixed this US/UK airdate thing; I'm not at all sure why Ozsat thinks it wasn't fixed. Maybe the discussion hasn't come up for a while and the memory's going a bit  .

The OAD is the OAD of any showing on a TiVo UK channel - this can cause problems when a show is shown on Sky, or very rarely on RTE1 before terrestrial). there shoudl be no US OADS in there - any that are are mistakes. For practical purposes so long as the real OAD is more than 28 days ago and the OAD in the database is over 28 days ago it really doesn't matter if they match.

The problem with BSG is a data error, pure and simple, NOT a problem with the system.


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## OzSat (Feb 15, 2001)

I know what is happening and have said so above - but I don't say that what is happening is correct! After all - who is it that is dealing with TiVo/TMS data input daily?

As you seem to know more than I do - I'll leave this thread alone now.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

ozsat said:


> I know what is happening and have said so above - but I don't say that what is happening is correct! After all - who is it that is dealing with TiVo/TMS data input daily?
> 
> As you seem to know more than I do - I'll leave this thread alone now.


Ah the old problem of Americans not realising that other countries actually have different tv schedules from theirs.  

Does this reflect some operational change by Tribune for entry of the UK data in recent times or just a recent change in Tribune personnel?


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## TCM2007 (Dec 25, 2006)

I think it's just a mistake slipping through. it happens. the vast majority will be correct.

No offense intended Ozsat, I (mis)read your posts as suggesting that it was normal for shows to have a US OAD attached (which indeed it was when 2.5.5 was first introduced).


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## Milhouse (Sep 15, 2001)

Ozsat - we really appreciate your assistance fixing these errors, however what you say is happening (US OADs being used) conflicts with what TiVo say should be happening (UK OADs), and what actually happens appears to fall somewhere in between (some US series get a US OAD, others get a UK OAD, possibly the latter due to missing data).

What would be nice would be to get a clear and final understanding of what should be happening (hopefully the TiVoRich description) and to see if we can get Tribune to stick to the plan...


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## Milhouse (Sep 15, 2001)

TCM2007 said:


> I (mis)read your posts as suggesting that it was normal for shows to have a US OAD attached (which indeed it was when 2.5.5 was first introduced).


That is how I read it - a US series will have a US OAD in the UK if the show airs in the US before the UK. Perhaps I misread it, but the new series of Battlestar Galactica on SkyOne appears to confirm my interpretation of what Ozsat is saying. Unfortunately that doesn't make any sense for us punters in the UK, and conflicts with what TiVoRich/TiVo say should be happening and renders FRO functionality worthless.

I'd just like to get to the bottom of it if possible, as something seems to be broken somewhere in the chain.


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## scrowe (Jan 12, 2002)

ozsat said:


> I know what is happening and have said so above - but I don't say that what is happening is correct! After all - who is it that is dealing with TiVo/TMS data input daily?
> 
> As you seem to know more than I do - I'll leave this thread alone now.


Then we need some clarification :-

1) When US drama airs for the first time in the UK, will it now 'always' have the original US airdate, or is it 'supposed' to be the UK original OAD?

2) If a US airing is the OAD for TiVoUK, this seems to be a change in policy, because having had around 30 season passes for US drama (it's almost all I watch) over the last several years, this is the first issue I can recall having, due to them being First Run Only SP

3) If there is a policy as above, then can we lodge feedback that this seriously impacts the quality of the TiVo season pass functionality for UK viewers, and that at £10 per month for the service, we would like this policy to be changed so that we 'can' rely on First-Run fucntionality on UK channels.

3) If a UK airing should be the OAD for US drama, and it is a mistake, then how do we feed back errors of this nature to Tribune, if we are not supposed to put them in the Tribune errors thread?


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## The Obo (Feb 22, 2005)

A year later and was this ever resolved?

I think not - it looks like all US shows now have US OADs 

some examples are: CSI, CSI Miami, Cold Case, etc which all have new series with OADs of about 6 months ago (US OADs) and tons of old series also showing which I'd like to avoid.

Has anyone come up with a workable solution to this?

Is it true that "First-Run" means an episode that is shown within 28 days of its OAD? - is there any way to edit this "28" days and make it for example 200 days?

Also, I have a SP First Run Only for Cold Case - it is not planning to record the new series 5 because OAD is "Sun 23rd Sep 2007" (almost 5 months)
BUT it is scheduling to record TEN IDENTICAL episodes with OAD of "Mon 9th May 2005" but *Episode = UNKNOWN* - Why is this???


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## TCM2007 (Dec 25, 2006)

The Obo said:


> A year later and was this ever resolved?


No, this has been a problem since 2002. I doubt it will ever be properly resolved.



> Is it true that "First-Run" means an episode that is shown within 28 days of its OAD? - is there any way to edit this "28" days and make it for example 200 days?


Yes it means that; no, no-one has ever (to my knowledge at least) found where the magic 28 is stored in order to change it!



> Also, I have a SP First Run Only for Cold Case - it is not planning to record the new series 5 because OAD is "Sun 23rd Sep 2007" (almost 5 months)
> BUT it is scheduling to record TEN IDENTICAL episodes with OAD of "Mon 9th May 2005" but *Episode = UNKNOWN* - Why is this???


Sounds like those showings have been erroneously set to IsEpisode=False - this is a setting which is for shows which are non-episodic (eg news bulletins) for which the FRO settings are ignored.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

TCM2007 said:


> Sounds like those showings have been erroneously set to IsEpisode=False - this is a setting which is for shows which are non-episodic (eg news bulletins) for which the FRO settings are ignored.


Which should be reported in the thread for faulty EPG listings and which ozsat will hopefully then get corrected via his Tribune contacts.


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