[vdr] Re: Strange EPG on VOX??

[Oliver Endriss <o.endriss@gmx.de>]

Jaakko Hyvätti wrote:
> On Tue, 10 Sep 2002, Klaus Schmidinger wrote:
> > They should learn how to set title, episode name and extended
> > description right - I really wonder what's so difficult about
> > that...
>
>   This style of using EPG 'shortinfo' for all additional information
> about the programme seems common.  In Finland all channels are like
> VOX in this matter.  I tried to find standards documents about it,
> and came up with the following:  Etsi document TR 101 288 V1.2.1
> (1997-12) - Television systems; Code of practice for an Electronic
> Programme Guide (EPG). However it does not talk about using
> 'shortinfo' for episode names..
>
>   So I think we have already lost the battle, and cannot hope to have
> sane structure in EPG data everywhere.  Nobody has standardized it. 
> Maybe it is just good luck that some broadcasters have adopted a
> convention of putting episode names into 'shortinfo'. Or do you have
> some other document that we can use when arguing with the
> broadcasters?
>
>   In addition to everything else, we might get advertising in short
> info..
>
> [TR 101 288] ...

ETR 211 (Guidelines on implementation and usage of Service Information):
-------------------------------  snip  --------------------------
4.2.4.4 Extended event descriptor
This descriptor is used to transmit a bigger amount of textual 
information for an event than is possible with the 
short_event_descriptor. The information in extended event descriptors 
supplements that given in a short event descriptor. A language code is 
transmitted in order to indicate in which language the text is written. 
More than one extended_event_descriptor is allowed, for transmitting 
more data than one descriptor may contain (255 bytes excluding header) 
and for different languages. Descriptors for the same language have to 
be grouped together, the last_descriptor field specifies the number of 
the last extended_event_descriptor for a specific language.

If there is a time_shifted_event_descriptor, this descriptor is not 
allowed. Transmission of this descriptor is optional.

4.2.4.8 Short event descriptor
This descriptor is used to transmit the name and a short text 
description for an event. A language code is transmitted in order to 
indicate in which language the title and the text are written. 
Transmission of this descriptor is mandatory, unless there is a 
time_shifted_event_descriptor, in which case the descriptor is not 
allowed. This descriptor is allowed more than once in the loop for 
different languages. Thus it is not allowed to have more than one 
short_event_descriptor with the same language code.
-------------------------------  snip  --------------------------

According to this text, the Extended event descriptor is completely 
optional and it's ok to put the description into the Short event 
descriptor as long as it fits into a single descriptor.

Oliver