Program data quality

Program Data Quality

The program data is received from the press office of each broadcast station, and is automatically processed; hence the quality depends on the data obtained.

Some broadcast stations provide the data as structured XML. From others, we receive the information in an informal and proprietary format, like RTF.

As a result, for example, in the data from some broadcast stations, the actors are listed individually, but not in that of others.

Some stations include information about the audio format (mono, stereo, dual or Dolby-Surround), while others don't.

Some provide even more information, such as cast blurbs, which information is nevertheless unstructured, and therefore can't be parsed out automatically — hence, it appears within the general broadcast description.

Sometimes the classification of the data is unavailable (movie, quiz-show, etc.). If it is available then, once again, it is often presented in a proprietary format. Beyond that, the terminology itself is not standardized (e.g., one station speaks of a "Documentary," while another will call it an "Info-Show").

Since TV-Browser is free of charge, we're unable to reformat all that data. In particular, we can not make manual corrections to errors in the data, or modify programs to account for current events.

If you'd like to send us data, or if you'd like to know how the data is processed, you can find additional information in our tutorial.