Anybody notice that the epg.geek epg listings are not available now?

Forums › Home Theatre (including HTPC and EPG Collector) › Anybody notice that the epg.geek epg listings are not available now?

1 | ... | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | ... | 16

164 posts

Master Geek

#308057 16-Mar-2010 23:04

RLevis

I don't think there is a trick that FreeviewNZ-EPG uses.

Once the XML file is in the right folder, Mediaportal TV Server checks regularly (once a minute I think) for an updated file and imports it.

You have to go into the TV Server Configuration and make sure the names are mapped correctly and the directory to find the file in is set correctly... as you did with FreeviewNZ-EPG but I believe it will just work after that. I forced an import in the TV Server config software to test it but don't think I'll have to again. I'll let you know tomorrow night when hopefully it will automatically have updated during the day.

Cheers

Sharesies kids

Free kids accounts - trade shares and funds (NZ, US) with Sharesies (affiliate link).

Nil Einne

459 posts

Ultimate Geek

#308064 16-Mar-2010 23:21

And to those that suggest the EPG might get encrypted, that would be a breach of the DVB standard as far as I know.

Couldn't they just perhaps include EIT information for current and next show, and nothing else similar to what's currently done for Freeview DVB-t (i.e. HD)? The DVB-s and DVB-t standards are obviously different but I'm wondering if the same principle might not apply, you're surely not required to transmit a 8 day guide & it doesn't seem likely to me that you can't transmit an encrypted guide. Sure that encrypted guide is not going to be defined in the standard but why care about that anymore then your NDS encryption not being. In fact, even if they're technically breaching the DVB-s standards, if it doesn't cause problems for other devices not using Sky (and I can't see why it should, they shouldn't care about encrypted streams) why would anyone relevant, in particular Sky care?

I'm not of course saying this is going to happen. The unencrypted EIT is something the Sky boxes were designed to accept. Some of the older Pace & Zenith ones are fairly useless, slow and lacking memory (I recall I connected my to a comp via a serial port and while I didn't get any real useful information, it did send error reports about not enough memory quite often) as anyone who owns them well knows and already have enough problems with the guide as is. Trying to make them cope with an encrypted guide may just break them, if it's even possible (it may be the way the guide capturing system is set up, it just can't do it). It's unlikely the ability to encrypt the guide is going to be sufficient in itself to convince Sky to upgrade these boxes.

rlevis

331 posts

Ultimate Geek

#308101 17-Mar-2010 00:28

rvangelder: Yep, no problem. Will probably have something up tonight or tomorrow. I'll send you a pm. edit: was easier than I thought. should now have HDTV/SDTV video quality.
http://vangelder.orcon.net.nz/files/FreeviewToXMLTV.zip

rvangelder, you may not be using MediaPortal, but as we have young kids, I've always wanted to somehow get the ratings to appear in MP, but the previous xml files I've been using never had them. Now that your program is adding them to the xml file, I thought I could somehow get them to display in MP but with no luck.

The TV server config / General Settings / EPG tab can be set to show various information including %CLASSIFICATION%, but this is always blank.

Hopefully you or someone can help.

Thanks.

rlevis

331 posts

Ultimate Geek

#308103 17-Mar-2010 00:31

dklong:
I don't think there is a trick that FreeviewNZ-EPG uses. Once the XML file is in the right folder, Mediaportal TV Server checks regularly (once a minute I think) for an updated file and imports it.

Thanks for that. I wondered that myself, but when nothing had imported after a couple of minutes, I though there must be a process to activate. But eventually it did import.

Cheers.

rlevis

331 posts

Ultimate Geek

#308113 17-Mar-2010 02:10

rlevis: rvangelder, you may not be using MediaPortal, but as we have young kids, I've always wanted to somehow get the ratings to appear in MP, but the previous xml files I've been using never had them. Now that your program is adding them to the xml file, I thought I could somehow get them to display in MP but with no luck.

I managed to answered my own question with some hours of investigation. It is the skin that determines what information is displayed, and I found out how to modify the necessary file (mytvguide.xml) so that a #TV.Guide.Classification label is displayed on the screen. However, this field is blank!

So it appears the rating is not being read into the database. I'm lost now. I've asked on the ML/xmltv forum so hopefully I get a reply there.

rvangelder

352 posts

Ultimate Geek

#308124 17-Mar-2010 07:36

rlevis:
rlevis: rvangelder, you may not be using MediaPortal, but as we have young kids, I've always wanted to somehow get the ratings to appear in MP, but the previous xml files I've been using never had them.? Now that your program is adding them to the xml file, I thought I could somehow get them to display in MP but with no luck.

I managed to?answered my own question with some hours of investigation. It is the skin that determines what information is displayed, and I found out how to modify the necessary file (mytvguide.xml) so that a #TV.Guide.Classification label is displayed on the screen. However, this field is blank!

So it appears the rating is not being read into the database.? I'm lost now.? I've asked on the ML/xmltv forum so hopefully I get a reply there.

Sorry mate I don't use MediaPortal, I use WMC. Ratings are delivered to xmltv, but I've never tested whether they are in a compatible format. I just picked NZ as the rating system, and passed blank, G, PGR, or AO. If you discover I should have presented them differently, give me a yell and I'll modify the program to suit.

Cheers

Deev8

481 posts

Ultimate Geek

#308165 17-Mar-2010 09:43

dklong: ... all it requires are two basic command line utilities WGET and GZIP off the web and you can then write a basic batch file to download the file from http://nzepg.org (using WGET), unzip it using GZIP, rename it to tvguide.XML and copy it into your MediaPortalTVServer directory.

And GB-PVR users are fortunate in having an even more straightforward process - they enter the relevant URL as the EPG source in the GB-PVR configuration (in this case they change that entry to http://nzepg.org/freeview.xml.gz). GB-PVR then gets the file, unzips it and updates it's programme guide according to a user-configured schedule.

dklong

164 posts

Master Geek

#308192 17-Mar-2010 11:06

Deev8: Nice!

davidcole

5807 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#308215 17-Mar-2010 11:43

The only problem with having it hosted anywhere is that it may be taken down at some point with a C&D notice.

Previously known as psycik

OpenHAB: Gigabyte AMD A8 Brix, OpenHAB with Aeotech ZWave Controller, Raspberry PI, Wemos D1 Mini, Zwave, Xiaomi Humidity and Temperature sensors
Media:Chromecast v2, ATV4 4k, ATV4, HDHomeRun Dual
Windows 10 Host Plex Server 3x3TB, 4x4TB using DriveBender, Samsung 850 evo 512 GB SSD, Hyper-V Server with 1xW10, 2xUbuntu 20.04 LTS, Backblaze Backups, usenetprime.com

walt12

324 posts

Ultimate Geek

#308216 17-Mar-2010 11:46

davidcole: The only problem with having it hosted anywhere is that it may be taken down at some point with a C&D notice.

The SKY EPG, sure, but until Freeview clarify we don't know that they have any objection to their EPG being privately hosted.

RustyGonad

495 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

#308229 17-Mar-2010 12:10

If all you want if is a simple Freeview solution, then the solution put together by rvangelder is all you need.

http://vangelder.orcon.net.nz/files/FreeviewToXMLTV.zip

Its simple, fast, and effective (it even runs in plain old Windows for dummies like me, no need for Perl necklaces, or big Pythons). It doesn't rely on any third party hostings services, so unless Freeview decided to C&D themselves (I'd laugh, except anythings possible with Freeview), it should have a large degree of permanance.

It should also feed into any of the Media Center software solutions out there. It even has the HD flags set correctly! Its generates a single Freeview.xml file, locally on your own machine, which doesn't require any scripting with wget etc.

Did I remember to say it doesn't rely on any third party hosting.

Deev8

481 posts

Ultimate Geek

#308231 17-Mar-2010 12:11

davidcole: The only problem with having it hosted anywhere is that it may be taken down at some point with a C&D notice.

Quite right, that's why I believe the best long-term solution has to be a method to extract the required data from the broadcast MHEG-5 EPG.

Deev8: Long-term the best solution has to be extracting the data from the DVB-T broadcast EPG using a tool like the one sbiddle mentioned early in this thread:
sbiddle: Leith Bade did some fantastic work on this here writing an MHEG5 to XML extraction tool, very few people seem to have taken advantage of it.

That has to be the best type of solution as it doesn't involve any third party publishing the EPG information, and so it isn't subject to the type of legal challenge that has caused the current issue. Unfortunately Leith Bade's tool does appear to need some work before it is really ready for mainstream use.

RustyGonad

495 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

#308241 17-Mar-2010 12:24

Deev8:
davidcole: The only problem with having it hosted anywhere is that it may be taken down at some point with a C&D notice.

Quite right, that's why I believe the best long-term solution has to be a method to extract the required data from the broadcast MHEG-5 EPG.

Deev8: Long-term the best solution has to be extracting the data from the DVB-T broadcast EPG using a tool like the one sbiddle mentioned early in this thread:
sbiddle: Leith Bade did some fantastic work on this here writing an MHEG5 to XML extraction tool, very few people seem to have taken advantage of it.

That has to be the best type of solution as it doesn't involve any third party publishing the EPG information, and so it isn't subject to the type of legal challenge that has caused the current issue. Unfortunately Leith Bade's tool does appear to need some work before it is really ready for mainstream use.

While grabbing the MHEG data sounds easy, the pratical reality is that its probably not feasible. You either need to write a custom plugin for one of the app ie Media Center - which is useless for GBPVR, Media Portal etc, or you need to allocate a tuner either permanently (expensive) or temporarily (creates alot of headaches). In doing this you have to take into account anything thats being recorded, and how you actually get "insert package name here" to release the tuner while its being done.

Once you've got the data its easy to deal with, but like I said, unless its a native plugins, its gonna get real messy. Much easy to do it as per my post above.

davidcole

5807 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#308244 17-Mar-2010 12:34

RustyGonad:

While grabbing the MHEG data sounds easy, the pratical reality is that its probably not feasible. You either need to write a custom plugin for one of the app ie Media Center - which is useless for GBPVR, Media Portal etc, or you need to allocate a tuner either permanently (expensive) or temporarily (creates alot of headaches). In doing this you have to take into account anything thats being recorded, and how you actually get "insert package name here" to release the tuner while its being done.

Once you've got the data its easy to deal with, but like I said, unless its a native plugins, its gonna get real messy. Much easy to do it as per my post above.

Nah you're over complicating things. If a method can be found to extract the data, given the specification, then the tuner aspect is not that bad. I run a program from the GBPVR author that uses my satellite tuner and gets all listings from the satellite and dumps it to an xml file. EDIT: Let me clarify that - it's seperate form the main recording engine, and take my manual management to miss any recordings in progress. To this effect i set it to run at 7am every 3 days.

A similar process can be used for mheg5, it doesn't need to be real time, and only needs to be done every couple of days, so the tuner is only out for 20 mins or so.

Then once you've got the xml file it can be massaged into whatever format your media center of choice requires.

And surely for the timing aspect, you can always set it for some stupid time of the night when a single dvb-t tuner can be used for the task.

RustyGonad

495 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

#308249 17-Mar-2010 12:52

davidcole:
RustyGonad:

While grabbing the MHEG data sounds easy, the pratical reality is that its probably not feasible. You either need to write a custom plugin for one of the app ie Media Center - which is useless for GBPVR, Media Portal etc, or you need to allocate a tuner either permanently (expensive) or temporarily (creates alot of headaches). In doing this you have to take into account anything thats being recorded, and how you actually get "insert package name here" to release the tuner while its being done.

Once you've got the data its easy to deal with, but like I said, unless its a native plugins, its gonna get real messy. Much easy to do it as per my post above.

Nah you're over complicating things. If a method can be found to extract the data, given the specification, then the tuner aspect is not that bad. I run a program from the GBPVR author that uses my satellite tuner and gets all listings from the satellite and dumps it to an xml file. EDIT: Let me clarify that - it's seperate form the main recording engine, and take my manual management to miss any recordings in progress. To this effect i set it to run at 7am every 3 days.

A similar process can be used for mheg5, it doesn't need to be real time, and only needs to be done every couple of days, so the tuner is only out for 20 mins or so.

Then once you've got the xml file it can be massaged into whatever format your media center of choice requires.

And surely for the timing aspect, you can always set it for some stupid time of the night when a single dvb-t tuner can be used for the task.

More like wanting to undercomplicate it - even it clashes with a recording, even once, its not doing its job properly. If its needs any user input or change in thought process then its a bad solution. The download solutions sit in the background, require not input, and no change in behaviour.

I appreaciate that while you may be able to setup a service in GBPVR, in Media Center, the tuners remain allocated while a channel is active.

Its not practical or good practice to force a shutdown of the ehrec process (you can do it, but it would be very bad practice), and its likely to cause many other issues, especially with the way MCE works. Whatif the machine is in standby/off every night - do you force an guide update (locking the tuner in the process) during the middle of the day??? What do you tell the users, don't record at night, push stop before you goto bed???

For the average punter it has to be seamless and with complication - what works for you won't work for many on here. If you have to change your behaviour for a solution to work, then its probably not a very good solution.

Not saying it can't/shouldn't be done - but alot more thought needs to go into it...

1 | ... | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | ... | 16