Show sub-title field in EPG from XMLTV Source?

[bobbyd87]

Does anyone know of a way to show the sub-title field on the tvguide?

I'm currently using yapi2xml to grab my contents and important information such as who's playing who in a sports event gets put in the <sub-title> field and Mediaportal does not show that information in the TVGuide. For example, when browsing the tvguide, all I can see is MLB Baseball for the title and not who's playing (the sub-title field is clearly in the xml source, but there is no description)

Thanks

[racer7890]

I too am interested in this. I recently moved from MythTV to Media Portal and while everything else about Media Portal is great I would like to be able to set the recording schedule to match repeats by sub-title.

For example say I have set Media Portal to record every episode of "the simpsons", if there is a repeat episode coming up of a previously recorded episode which is still stored in Media Portal I would like to have Media Portal be smart enough to know that this is a repeat and not to record it. In MythTV this was possible but it doesn't look like it is in Media Portal. I even checked the database (I'm using the new tv server) and there isn't even a sub-title field in there at all.

[Clean]

I can not help with the dupe checking but I have a cludge that will display the Episode Name in the TV Guide display. I am also wanting to know what specific sports event is on what channel (i.e. Miami vs. Oaklahoma rather than just College Football).

Here is what you will need to do. In your Skin directory (whichever skin you use) find the mytvguide.xml file. Back this up (important!). Now open the file in notepad (or text editor of your choice). You are going to add a section (or block) to this. I added it after the Genre section. A section/block begins with <control> and ends with </control>. Do a search for <description>Current program genre</description> and then look for the next </control>. That will be the end of the Genre section. On the next line paste the following...

<control>
<description>Current program name</description>
<type>label</type>
<id>27</id>
<posX>374</posX>
<posY>614</posY>
<label>#TV.Guide.EpisodeName</label>
<align>left</align>
<font>font14</font>
<textcolor>FFB2D4F5</textcolor>
<animation effect="fade" time="250">WindowOpen</animation>
<animation effect="fade" time="500">WindowClose</animation>
</control>

The one and only thing that is important about this block is <label>#TV.Guide.EpisodeName</label>. This will display the name of the sports event/Episode Name. Leave the <type> and <id> alone as well. Everything else you can change to suite your own display needs. I use the Foofaraw1610 skin so my <posX> (left to right) and <posY> (top to bottom) may differ from yours as well as text colors and animations. Feel free to change than and experiment.

[bobbyd87]

Originally Posted by Clean

I can not help with the dupe checking but I have a cludge that will display the Episode Name in the TV Guide display. I am also wanting to know what specific sports event is on what channel (i.e. Miami vs. Oaklahoma rather than just College Football).

Here is what you will need to do. In your Skin directory (whichever skin you use) find the mytvguide.xml file. Back this up (important!). Now open the file in notepad (or text editor of your choice). You are going to add a section (or block) to this. I added it after the Genre section. A section/block begins with <control> and ends with </control>. Do a search for <description>Current program genre</description> and then look for the next </control>. That will be the end of the Genre section. On the next line paste the following...

<control>
<description>Current program name</description>
<type>label</type>
<id>27</id>
<posX>374</posX>
<posY>614</posY>
<label>#TV.Guide.EpisodeName</label>
<align>left</align>
<font>font14</font>
<textcolor>FFB2D4F5</textcolor>
<animation effect="fade" time="250">WindowOpen</animation>
<animation effect="fade" time="500">WindowClose</animation>
</control>

The one and only thing that is important about this block is <label>#TV.Guide.EpisodeName</label>. This will display the name of the sports event/Episode Name. Leave the <type> and <id> alone as well. Everything else you can change to suite your own display needs. I use the Foofaraw1610 skin so my <posX> (left to right) and <posY> (top to bottom) may differ from yours as well as text colors and animations. Feel free to change than and experiment.

thanks for the response but i cant seem to get it to work using TVServer 3... Are you using TVServer 3 or myTV 2? I just have a feeling that racer7890 is right that sub-title isnt even implemented in TVServer 3

[Clean]

I am using myTV2. You should have access to the same info as me though. Go into \Docs and run SQLite Database Browser.exe and open the TVDatabase file. Go to the Browse Data table then the pull down menu to Programs which should populate the screen with a table. Look at the column headers, I have one the says strEpisodeName. Yours may have a different value but that is what you want to use in <label>#TV.Guide.EpisodeName</label>.

Now, having written all of that, it occurs to me that I forgot to write that any changes to a skin file will not show up unless you delete that skin's folder from the \Cache directory. For me, I delete the Foofaraw1610 directory in my \Cache folder any time I make a change. Sorry 'bout that.

[bobbyd87]

I still can't get it to work, I double checked the name in the SQLite DB, and it hasnt changed from EpisodeName, I put exactly what you had into mytvguide.xml, deleted the cache, and nothing shows up for sub-title whatsoever. I'm starting to think that this is a bug with TVServer 3

[Clean]

Sorry to hear it is not working. I tried installing TV3 but it is not too friendly with my ATSC card here in NA. The only other thing I could suggest is to adjust the Description field as well. I had to lower where the description started so it was under the EpName. Granted it is a long shot because you should have seen a change. Below is what I changed in my skin file, yours may differ but you'll get the point. Not sure why this would be a TV3 bug as I have not been able to use it so I have no idea how it interacts with the tvguide skin file.

<control>
<description>Current program name</description>
<type>label</type>
<id>27</id>
<posX>374</posX>
<posY>614</posY>
<label>#TV.Guide.EpisodeName</label>
<align>left</align>
<font>font14</font>
<textcolor>FFB2D4F5</textcolor>
<animation effect="fade" time="250">WindowOpen</animation>
<animation effect="fade" time="500">WindowClose</animation>
</control>
<control>
<description>Description1</description>
<type>textboxscrollup</type>
<id>15</id>
<posX>374</posX>
<posY>644</posY> <---- Changed from 614
<width>879</width>
<height>93</height>
<seperator>----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------</seperator>
<label>#TV.Guide.Description</label>
<font>font12</font>
<textcolor>FFFFFFFF</textcolor>
<animation effect="fade" time="250">WindowOpen</animation>
<animation effect="fade" time="500">WindowClose</animation>
</control>

[Clean]

Here are two screen shots of what is now displayed to get a sense of what my TVGuide looks like...

[bobbyd87]

I came up with a quick fix, though not really the best solution. I tweaked my XML grabber to combine the title and subtitle fields so that they are both in the title column. Thanks for your help though!

[mameo]

Originally Posted by bobbyd87

I came up with a quick fix, though not really the best solution. I tweaked my XML grabber to combine the title and subtitle fields so that they are both in the title column. Thanks for your help though!

I'm interested too.. how have you made? Do you use XMLTV grabber?