I found out at the weekend that we’re soon to be offered ten days of free viewing of the Film1 film and sport channels as a promotional stunt. Now, I have no interest in the sport channels, but there could be some good films on the film channels.
Unfortunately, during most of the ten day free period, we’ll be in the UAE and Oman. So, how to ensure that we don’t miss any good stuff?
Enter the latest version of tv_grab_nl_upc, 0.6.1, which is the grabber I wrote to feed my MythTV system with programme schedule data for UPC’s digital television network. This new version is able to look up the IMDB viewer rating for each of the films that it finds. This rating is actually a very good indicator of the true quality of the film in question, as it reflects the opinion of real viewers and, usually, with sufficient quantity that a reliable average results.
The only thing that remains to do is produce a custom recording rule in MythTV; and here it is:
program.stars >= 0.75 AND MONTH(program.starttime) = 2
AND DAYOFMONTH(program.starttime) >= 16 AND DAYOFMONTH(program.starttime) <= 25
AND channel.callsign LIKE ‘F1%
This says to record any programme that has a star rating equal to or higher than 0.75 (equivalent to a 7.5/10 rating on IMDB), when the start of the broadcast is in February, between the 16th and the 25th of the month, and the broadcast channel is any of the Film1 channels.
Using tv_grab_nl_upc and the above rule, we should have a few decent films to watch when we return from holiday.
Again, I find the above a great example of the power and flexibility of MythTV. No other PVR gives you this level of control.