Is it a repeat?

[dinkypumpkin]

On 27/06/2013 13:41, Chris Marriott wrote:
> You can tell if a programme is old by looking at the PID. PIDs increase
> as time goes by - current ones are "B03XXXXX". So any program with a
> lower PID (eg "B019XXXX") is a repeat of an older programme.

Good point, though I'm don't think that scheme is fine-grained enough. 
That two-digit prefix rarely changes, so you'll get repeats with the 
same prefix as new programmes.  OTOH, TV PIDs recently jumped to "02" 
and then on to "03" after only a month or two, while new radio 
programmes remain with the "02" prefix, so you would also need to watch 
for sorts of quick changes.  It would seem TV and radio PIDs should get 
different treatment at the very least.  You also get some corner cases 
like programmes that go into "Series Catch-Up" status and get a 
"p"-prefix PID.  Thus you have a case like "Rise of the Continents", 
where last week's episode is on the iPlayer site with PID beginning with 
"b03" while the episode from 2 weeks ago has a PID beginning with "p01". 
  Lower prefix number, but certainly not a repeat.  You'd want to dig 
out the original PID (from the "version PID"), but that's not available 
in the get_iplayer cache.

I'm not sure what all that means.  If you can come up with a scheme to 
use PIDs to reliably mark repeats, a patch or pull request will be 
gratefully accepted.