Basically, search here on OtrkeyFinder works just like on any other search engine on the Internet: you submit terms and the service will return matching entries. As OtrkeyFinder is a specialized search engine, there are some extensions to this common scheme in order to find the so-called Otrkeys on the Net:

• It's possible to search for extremely short terms (2 chars). Short terms like these are normally filtered out by other search engines
• Even fragments of a filename, incomplete words or terms, can be searched for
• Underscore-phrases (concatenated with "_") can be used in nearly arbitrary length to find matching filenames
• The common Otrkey video-format suffixes are recognized in searches
• Date and time of a broadcast are recognized and can be used to find matching recordings
• It's possible to find a broadcast before and after a certain recording
• Specific word combinations can be used as phrases by using double-quotes (")
• Using the minus-operator ("-") as prefix will filter out results containing this term

OtrkeyFinder offers an interactive dialog on search result pages to explain results. Following every heading "Search result: X otrkey-files found." is a small link "explain". Click on it and current search semantics are broken down visually. For an example click here.

Search-Operators and Special Chars

Summary: Search only uses "+", "-" (Plus and Minus) and Double-quotes (") as special chars. Other chars like the Asterisk (*), Dot (".") or any other Special Char do not carry a placeholder meaning and won't trigger any special feature. Search is also case-insensitive. Umlauts and German grapheme Eszett are replaced.

Field-Filter
Search supports a limited number of special search tokens which enable you to filter results for specific fields or attributes. Currently, you can filter broadcasts by "station", "country" and "language". Each of these attributes is used as token and as prefix to a search term, delimited by a colon (":"). For example:
Entering «Simpsons language:en» will match broadcasts of "The Simpsons" in Englisch language only.
Entering «World station:UKITV» matches only broadcasts with term "World" in its title and having aired on ITV UK.
Entering «country:USA CSI» will return only broadcasts with term "CSI" as part of the title and from US-Television stations.
It's also possible to combine these filters with each other and with additional normal search terms.

Vielleicht ist dir aufgefallen, dass manche Suchergebnisse mehrere Optionen zum Anschauen anbieten. Direktes Streaming in verschiedenen Qualitäten, von SD bis HD Video. Während andere nur den immer vorhandenen Link zum Portal bzw. in die Mediathek des Senders anbieten. Ebenso ist bei Videos, die nur in die Sendermediathek verlinken der Download nicht direkt möglich. Warum ist das so?

Der Grund ist das Angebot des Senders. Wir können nur Inhalte indexieren, die die Sender auch in ihren Mediatheken bereitstellen. Und die öffentlich-rechtlichen Sendeanstalten bieten ihren Zuschauern in ihren Sendermediatheken nicht bei allen Sendungen die gleichen Optionen. Warum das so ist, wissen wir nicht genau. Vielleicht hat es mit der Lizenz- oder Rechtssituation einzelner Programme zu tun. Wie dem auch sei: unsere Suchergebnisse bieten mehr Auswahl an Abspielmöglichkeiten, wenn die Sender die direkte URL eines Streams bzw. Videos auf ihrem ngebot veröffentlichen. Ebenso erhält es sich mit der Downloadoption. Das erklärt auch, warum alle privaten Sender keine erweiterten Optionen, sondern nur den Link in die Sendermediathek anbieten. Die Privaten bieten eben bisher nie die Donwloadfunktion an und nutzen manchmal zudem DRM (Digital-Rights-Management) Lösungen, um ein Abspielen von Streams nur auf der Senderseite zu ermöglichen.

Here on OtrkeyFinder, you can subscribe to arbitrary search results as a feed. Without limitation in maximum subscriptions and without the need to create an account or registration. In order to point users to this option, we have a feed icon on search results pages. Just right-click on it, copy and add the link to a feed reader of your choice and any time a search delivers new results, the feed will be updated. Also, every results page on OtrkeyFinder has a special tag embedded into the source-code of the page. So in case your browser/reader supports "RSS auto-dicovery", this tag will trigger a feed icon being shown in your adress bar, making subscribing even easier, as a simple click on it will subscribe you to the current search.

The RSS standard seems a little dated these days, but it still helps a good number of people to track and discover updates on the Internet even today. A few years ago, feed reader functionality was still a built-in feature of most browsers (see Firefox deprecation note). Today, you need to use a separate Feed Reader application or a Browser Add-On. For Firefox, you can find some notes on that here. The Add-On "Sage-Like" is (May 2020) a good choice, for example. For Chrome, there are a number of good Extensions as well.

EPG is short for "Electronic programming guide" - and that means it's our digital version of a paper Television Listings magazine. As "EPG" is such a handy abbreviation, it's also the URL of OtrkeyFinder's electronic "TV Listings", and you'll find it on video-on-demand search results in our media center meta-search where additional information about a broadcast is linked in from the programming guide.

VoD or "Video on demand" is a term to describe a service or portal where viewers are able to access and play video independent from a static broadcasting schedule. Here on the site "VoD" is used to refer to our video-on-demand search service. A growing number of television stations offer "catch-up TV" as a way for viewers to watch programmes, usually through their website, after the original television broadcast is over. Those services are something different from "Streaming Video" services that operate under a subscription-based model, as a modernization of traditional Pay-TV offerings. "Catch-Up" or "VoD" media center services are mostly an extension of linear broadcasting and usually offer a subset of what has been aired on live television. That said, there's some momentum for merge between these channels as geo-blocking or pay-per-view / subscription based business model like "TV Everywhere" blend the lines between a TV station's "Catch up" portal "as part of their service" and newer "stand-alone" Streaming Video services.