Re: [TV] Bad stop time in bleb listings

[Rich Fearn <bleb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Saturday 08 January 2005 17:57, Ed Avis wrote:
> In
> <http://www.bleb.org/tv/data/listings?format=XMLTV&file=zip&channels=bbc1,b
>bc2,itv1&days=1> there is a programme:
>
>   <programme
> start="20050110011500" stop="20050109000000"
> channel="south.bbc1.bbc.co.uk"> <title lang="en">BBC News 24</title>
>     <desc lang="en">BBC ONE joins the BBC's rolling news channel for a
> night of news, with bulletins on the hour and the headlines every 15
> minutes.</desc>
>   </programme>
>
> The stop time is before the start time, which makes no sense.  Maybe
> you can sanity check this before generating the XML.

This is the last programme for the day. It always occurs for the last 
programme in each channel/day combination. In this case it's the last 
programme on BBC1 on the 9th (I know the programme starts on the 10th, at 
01:15, but it's technically the last programme that's shown on BBC1 on the 
9th).

I found (just yesterday, in fact) this thread where someone else complains 
about the problem:

http://www.bleb.org/tv/maillist/msg00261.html

As the reply explains there is no end time for the last programme in the raw 
data. It can however be deduced by looking at the time that the first 
programme for the next day on the same channel starts - but as I understand 
it, that last programme *may* finish earlier than that (due to the channel 
"closing" for some period).

You could use this method to "fill in" the last stop time - but you can't do 
that for the last day you download listings for, as there is no next day :-|

It's easy to spot this happening, as you say - just look for a stop time 
that's less than the start time.

Rich Fearn