However I think you missed my point, or maybe I wasn't clear. Let me try again:
Actually, I think you missed this point:
BTW, TheTVDB still seems to be having trouble. I don't always get a quick response from it at the moment, and I am getting Ajax errors using it manually. . . and it is currently off-line. ?
It really isn't a good time for you to be doing this testing, as TheTVDB seems to be up and down constantly. It just allowed me to look up a Series, and then went off-line when I tried to select that series. It may be best to postpone your testing until TheTVDB is back and reliable. The lookup from within MC using the "Get Movie & TV Info" function does seem to be working, but it is a bit flaky. I'm sure it will be fixed soon though. Just test an Episode lookup on the web site manually before starting any new tests.
The Good Wife may actually use years as Season numbers on TheTVDB, as some programs do. But I can't check as the site isn't working.
But to answer some of your comments;
If the EPG data has a value in the Season field, it should be retained and used by MC. No question. In fact, if the EPG data has a Season number, it will usually also have an Episode number, and so the lookup should work. To delete or ignore the Season number in the EPG data would break a whole lot of the lookup functionality, and people's systems. Not good.
Basically, if the data from the EPG source is wrong, get it fixed at the source, or do some manipulation to it prior to loading into MC.
However, there used to be some sort of default in MC that would put a year value in the Season tag under certain circumstances, I believe, Yaobing said something along those lines once, from memory, but didn't confirm it when I asked.
If that functionality still exists, it should be removed now, given other MC improvements.I just tested deleting the Season number for a program, and doing a manual "Get Movie & TV Info" lookup. This is what I found (when TheTVDB was working);
If you delete the Season number in MC, then the lookup will fail, as MC will search for "The Good Wife S0E12". Basically any search of Season "0" for a program, such as a search for "The Good Wife S0E12" will return a result that is for a Special from that series, not the correct data. Season 0 on TheTVDB is where Specials are stored.
If you delete the "S0" (or get rid of it or ignore it in the search) and just search for "The Good Wife E12", which I think is what you are asking for,
MC will look up TheTVDB based on the Series and Episode names. i.e. It doesn't get a match on the Season and Episode number combination, so it uses the new functionality. I hadn't tested this before, but this is what it is doing.
If you get rid of or ignore the
Episode number, then MC will look up TheTVDB using the Series and Episode names. Again, MC doesn't get a match on the Season and Episode number combination, so it uses the new functionality.
So basically;
If the season field is left empty (or simply ignored in the search...) Wouldn't the "Get Movie & TV Info" grab the season data from the TVDB automatically with the auto-import?
Probably. If the search dropped the Season number, so it searched for "The Good Wife E12", MC would use the Series and Episode names to find the correct result, depending on whether "E12" has some meaning for the series. But how would MC decide when to drop the EPG Season number and when to keep it, given that TheTVDB sometimes uses the year as the Season number?
Also BTW; I forced MC to look up "The Good Wife" with an episode name of "Tracks", which is S07E12 according to Wikipedia. MC couldn't find a result, so on that basis, there might well be something strange about the records for "The Good Wife" on TheTVDB. Perhaps it uses the year as the Season number, as I suggested above, or something else is broken. So "The Good Wife" probably isn't a good series to test against.
Finally, Glynor's post was from November 16th, and a lot has changed since then. He doesn't even need Season and Episode numbers in the EPG data any more, as MC will look up TheTVDB by Series and Episode names. I don't know whether he has turned off Sage yet, but the issue he raised is no longer valid. Oh and note that Glynor does do some tagging on Auto-Import to add some information.
Finally plus 1: tagging set up in Recording Rules could be used to convert a Season number or 2016 to Season 07, if none of the above works at all. An expression would do it.
Finally plus 2: I haven't tested using EPG data that has no Season and Episode numbers, as my EPG data now has all Season and Episode numbers that TheTVDB knows about. So it is good that you are testing this functionality. It is just bad timing with TheTVDB, and maybe you picked a bad example in "The Good Wife".