NZ Freeview DVB-T EPG decoder

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giggles

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#59324 1-Apr-2010 16:08

HI Guys,

I have been reading the threads about Freeview DVB-T EPG's for some time now and as per everyone else I thought it would be a good idea to decode the information from the transport stream rather than rely on EPG grabbers (i'd like to run my HTPC completely off the network so no need for Virus protection slowing stuff down). So over the last few months, on and off (more off than on), I began researching the MHEG5 standard and in particular Data Carousels (ISO13818-6).

Thanks to the WWW I found alot of very usefull information on standards that enabled me to start reverse engineering the packets in a transport stream.

I have started developing a C# application and I have gotten to the point where I can take a recorded Transport Stream (TS) dump, decode the DownloadDataInformation message, decode the DownloadModules and then decode / uncompress the DownloadDataBlocks that make up the Modules. Form here I parse the BIOP messages (searching for the 'fil' type) and extract the weeks EPG information into a xmltv compliant file.

I have tested this on 5, 40 second, transport stream dumps (obtained using DVBExplorer) and I'd like to get a sense if anyone is interested in helping me continue developing / testing it. I would like to test it a bit better before adding functionality to record the TS dump. The reason I am sticking with an intermediate dump file is so that I don't interupt any live TV (although it may be possible to avoid this - will figure it out later).

Is anyone else able to help test against TS dumps? Note: they need to be unfiltered TS files (ie. NOT recorded programs in TS format - as these only save Audio/Video streams I beleive).

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#314106 2-Apr-2010 10:27

Have a look at the thread I started a couple of weeks ago (MHEG5 EPG grabber).

I have been using the MHEG data in my own application for a few months now. I saw the threads here on lack of EPG and offered to build a utility from my existing code that would prcess MHEG5 or EIT EPG data on DVB-S or T and produce a usable file (XMLTV format).

Another member (RustyGonad) has just started testing the first release (which was pretty rough) but I am about to give him a much more robust version.

I would like to hand the code over to someone else when it's in reasonable shape as I won't use the utility myself (it's features are integrated into my own application).

There is someone else who has some CSharp experience who has offered to join in but the more the merrier especially if you are an experienced developer.

Let me know if you are interested.

Regards

Steve

giggles

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#314149 2-Apr-2010 12:54

Hi Steve, sounds like we should collaborate :-)

As I said I am at the point where it spits out an XMLTV file , but why don't we get together and swap notes. I'm a C# developer on the side but happy to take an EPG project further. Where would you like to go from here?

Brad (aka giggles).

SJB

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#314153 2-Apr-2010 13:29

I'll zip up a copy of my project and send it to you if you let me know your email address.

It's VS2008.

I'm on satellite only so the DVB-T tuning code hasn't been checked out nor has code for multiple tuners although Rusty will do that in the next few days hopefully. It's reliable as far as the MHEG data is concerned, the EIT data takes too long to collect at the moment.

Steve

nigelramsay

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#314241 2-Apr-2010 19:54

I suggest you guys create a free account on Github. It's ideal for open collaboration projects like this. Sure beats emailing zip files.

--

Nigel Ramsay
Wellington, NZ

Twitter: @nigelramsay

Read my blog at https://nigel.ramsay.org.nz
I work on AddressFinder at Abletech

giggles

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#314435 3-Apr-2010 17:27

Hi Steve,

Have emailed my PM address. Happy to share my code with you too if you'd like (also written with VS2008).

I started down the track of parsing EIT tables (PMT, PAT , etc) but found that I didn't need to for my specific purposes. So I have some code around this (specifically to extract the 0x03EA stream (MHEG - TVNZ MUX, Prog - 1200) but not alot else. I think that we would certainly be able to put together fairly quickly for further testing. I am still testing mine agiant TS dumps and so far, so good :-)

Cheers
Brad

Jaxson

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#315699 7-Apr-2010 11:19

Hi guys,

Sorry to drop in our your thread, and good luck with the excellant work to extract the raw EIT data.

Was just going to suggest to some people using Win 7 Media Centre that you could easily install a small 40cm type dish to receive just the EIT data off the freeview broadcasts from the Optus D1 satellite. These can be mapped to the HD terrestrial channels in Media Centre. The dish is quite small and is fairly easy to mount and align. Just an idea if you want the raw EIT data, don't have internet at home or similar and you may also pick up the SBS channels too.

Just a thought.

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freitasm

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#315702 7-Apr-2010 11:24

But then you need a DVB-S card as well... It's more likely someone using Windows 7 Media Center to have Internet access than to have the will to add a DVB-S card, aerial, cables, etc...

I run Windows 7 MCE on a very small PC (Dell Zino HD) and my DVB-T comes through HDHomeRun. Wouldn't even have the space to add a card to the Dell box.

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giggles

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#315704 7-Apr-2010 11:35

Hi Guys,

Just a little update on where things are at...

Been working with SJB for the last few days and his code is way ahead of my POC code. It's much more focussed on providing a generic solution (both DVB-S and DVB-T) whereas mine is just specific to DVB-T in NZ.

I've been testing / tweaking DVB-T parts of his code and hope to have a couple of small fixes to the output done in the next day or two. From there you should be able to use the XMLTV file in whatever your preferred flavour of PVR is

Keep you posted...

SJB

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#315707 7-Apr-2010 11:43

I'm here too.

Very close to first proper release. As giggles said we have been collaborating and he has been a great hep in debugging DVB-T tuning for me (I'm DVB-S only) and checking the output file.

A few minor tweaks today and I then I plan to put it on Sourceforge.

Steve

Jaxson

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#315740 7-Apr-2010 12:59

freitasm: But then you need a DVB-S card as well... It's more likely someone using Windows 7 Media Center to have Internet access than to have the will to add a DVB-S card, aerial, cables, etc...

I run Windows 7 MCE on a very small PC (Dell Zino HD) and my DVB-T comes through HDHomeRun. Wouldn't even have the space to add a card to the Dell box.

Obviously it's not for everyone, but is just an option for those who want to get a bulletproof EPG going based on official broadcast data. Yes it's got other hardware issues associated with it, not trying to pretend it doesn't, just saying it's an option and also opens up the avenue for more free to air channels as well.

mentalinc

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#316586 9-Apr-2010 15:27

SJB:
A few minor tweaks today and I then I plan to put it on Sourceforge.

Steve

Any plans to provide us a weekend toy to play with?

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SJB

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#316615 9-Apr-2010 16:19

Rusty has tried an earlier version on W7 and it had problems at the start building the DirectShow graph. Same with Giggles on Vista.

Giggles is doing some debugging/development so we shouldn't be too much longer. We have both DVB-S and DVB-T working on XP so quite a bit of it seems OK.

Sorry for the delay.

Steve

chedev

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#316636 9-Apr-2010 17:50

I'm happy to help with testing. I have access to a number of different HTPCs running MediaPortal on Win7 and Server 2008 R2 with the following TV cards (Hauppauge HVR-3000, HVR-4000, Nova-TD500) using DVB-S and DVB-T. Let me know if there is anything I can do.

solorvox

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#317393 12-Apr-2010 15:57

I'd be intrested in porting this to Linux for use with mythtv, C/C++ maybe. Any chance you'd like to bring me up to speed on what you've already got working?
Cheers

Author MHEG2XMLTV https://sourceforge.net/projects/mheg2xmltv/
See my blog at http://epic.geek.nz/

mentalinc

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#317398 12-Apr-2010 16:02

solorvox: I'd be intrested in porting this to Linux for use with mythtv, C/C++ maybe. Any chance you'd like to bring me up to speed on what you've already got working?
Cheers

They are using C# so it may be possible to use somehting like mono without the need to port the code. Proably better to wait for the "completed' solution to port than to try while it is still not working correctly.

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