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Wrong start and stop times generated by mewatch.sg.ini and/or starhubtvplus.com.E.ini - timezone confusion!!!

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chjohans
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Wrong start and stop times generated by mewatch.sg.ini and/or starhubtvplus.com.E.ini - timezone confusion!!!

his is using the encrypted mewwatch.sg.ini and starhubtvplus.com.E.ini, there are some confusion with regards to timezones and start/stop times for ini's for Singapore. Not sure how this passed through your quality control :)

I'm using the show "Babar And The Adventures Of Badou - EP 53" as an example, it is scheduled to show on Thursday 17th December at 8:30 AM in the morning local Singapore time. Singapore time is UTC +8.

This is generated by mewatch.sg.ini:

<programme start="20201217003000 +0800" stop="20201217010000 +0800" channel="Channel 5">
<title lang="en">Babar And The Adventures Of Badou</title>
<desc lang="en">Adventure in Celestville! From Pirate Adventures to The Rescuteers, Badou is our fearless leader and we see him in action as the head of the rescue club and he visits his friend Chiku in Monkeyville. Every episode is a true adventure as Babar, Badou, and all his friends explore the exciting world of Celestville.</desc>
<icon src="https://static.togglestatic.com/shain/v1/dataservice/ResizeImage/$value?Format='png'&amp;Quality=85&amp;ImageId='2353682'&amp;EntityType='LinearSchedule'&amp;EntityId='91f4b77b-15e2-4962-9624-2679874e79ea'&amp;Width=1280&amp;Height=720&amp;ImageUrl=2353682.png&amp;device=web_browser&amp;subscriptions=Anonymous&amp;segmentationTags=all" />
<episode-num system="onscreen">S1 E53</episode-num>
<rating>
<value>G</value>
</rating>
</programme>

My understanding of the start/stop times in the XMLTV format is that it will show the start/stop time and the timezone for that time. If that is the case all the times generated by mewatch.sg.ini is offset by 8 hours. It gets the timezone correct (+0800) but all the start time and the stop time are both 8 hours early. So all show times are offset by -8 hours with this ini.

<programme start="20201217003000 +0000" stop="20201217010000 +0000" channel="Channel 5 HD">
<title lang="en">Babar And The Adventures Of Badou</title>
<desc lang="en">Adventure in Celestville! From Pirate Adventures to The Rescuteers, Badou is our fearless leader and we see him in action as the head of the rescue club and he visits his friend Chiku in Monkeyville. Every episode is a true adventure as Babar, Badou, and all his friends explore the exciting world of Celestville.</desc>
<category lang="en">General</category>
<category lang="en">Others</category>
</programme>

The above is actually technically correct, since the start/stop times generated by starhubtvplus.com.E.ini is in UTC (+0000). But I thought start/stop times should be encoded according to the local timezone. So starhubtvplus.com.E.ini should output times according to local Singapore format (+0800).

So both should have had the time like this for the show in my example:
<programme start="20201217083000 +0800" stop="20201217090000 +0800" channel="Channel 5">

When you now charge for these ini-files by your "subscription model", and encrypt them so we are unable to modify them ourselves, and unable to see the code to try and figure out what's going on I think the need to be accurate and do the necessary testing when creating ini's has been upped a notch or two or three. :)

Anyhow, please fix this.

mat8861
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You are wrong. The output time depends on time scrubbed for that site, you cannot compare same channel for 2 different siteini, right because they could provide time in UTC or local. That said there is a new xmltv time modify, here : https://github.com/SilentButeo2/webgrabplus-siteinipack/tree/master/post... so you can change time for your convenience (it colud be that your app doesn't consider utc or local).

chjohans
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OK so I'm wrong you say, but then how come all my shows are offset by 8 hours?

Sigh I'm just a simple user, not a XML wizard, I can't get the ini to work no matter what I do.

Are you saying *both* those ini's are correct?

chjohans
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And one more thing, if you look carefully at my two examples they are the exact same program, the "start" and "stop" time are the same for both, except that the timezone/offset is +0800 for one and +0000 for the other.

How can this possibly be correct? There is an 8 hour time difference between the same show depending on if I'm grabbing with one in or the other.

Am I really wrong? If I am, can you please spoon-feed me?

chjohans
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You are right that my backend server is not reading the time offset, so I'm using and have been using the small program "WG2MP" in your download section to convert the showtimes. That has and still is working just fine. For "local" timezone guides (for me that is +0800) it does not matter much though, because the time will be the same still. But for other guides from other timezones it matters, and I successfully grab from sites in different timezones just fine, after running "WG2MP" all the show times will be in local time.

But, the show times generated by the in mewatch.sg.in is wrong, all the start and stop times must be offset by 8 hours. The show times this in generates are all in UTC, but the timezone/offset says +0800, indicating that the times are local (to me). They are not, so I used "xml_time_modify" and added another "postprocess" to the wg+ config file.

This works fine, and my guide now has the correct start/stop times.

But I'm not wrong, this ini generates wrong start/stop times. Please check again.

And of course I can compare output from two different siteini's for the same channels. Yes the time could be in local or UTC, but that can be seen from the time offset value. When you calculate the absolute start/stop times for each show, I am sure we can agree that they should be the same - no matter which site the guide data is grabbed from (of course the data on the two sites has to be correct for this to be true - and I assume it is). In my example the exact same show has the same start/stop times, but the time offset (timezone - or rather offset from UTC) is +0000 for one and +0800 for the other. So the two resulting guides disagree about show start/stop times with exactly 8 hours.

This should be fixed, but if you maintain that this is correct then oh well, I have a workaround that works fine for me. :)

chjohans
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@mat8861 Since you claim I'm wrong, could you please elaborate on that? Just "you are wrong" is not really very helpful, nor do I think it's correct.

To me, it's quite obvious that at least one of the ini's must be wrong when the showtimes they generate are 8 hours offset from each other. And that is after the start/stop times for both have been converted to UTC.

mat8861
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see new versions

chjohans
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Ok but since you said in public that I'm wrong, what was I wrong about?

Maybe it was you that was wrong?

mat8861
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I said you wrong because the different setup of timezone, i didn't pay attention they both had same start time one with and one without +8 hours. Sorry for that. As you saw mewatch needs local timezone, i missed that updating the old version. Hope you are ok and wish you a Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays.

chjohans
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Ok thanks for fixing the ini's. I have not tried them yet as my time editing works for now, but I'll change to the updated ini's after Christmas. Happy holidays to you and stay safe!

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