listings

[keveaton]

hi, hope all is well....and that someone can help me!

mp seems to work ok, tv displays just fine. im trying to get the guide listings to work...downloaded requisite files from sourceforge, extracted, moved to corrct folder, ran executable to link to radiotimes. it crashes mainly or cant connect, but occasionally works all the way through. get to MP, edit channels (why cant someone script bbc3 = bbc three....really annoying to have to remap this...just a thought unless i missed/did something dumb which isnt unusual)
get back to mp and mytv, and no guide listings.

tried various things for several hours and no joy. very frustrated! it looks like a good bit of kit, but why is it so difficult to get guide listings? is there an(other) instruction list for this please?

on a seperate note, i am currently connecting with an aerial feed into a Kstar 100 freeview PCI card.
i would like to get this working with the virgin cable box that was just installed, is this possible (it has a co-ax output)? i also have a media center remote with 2 IR senders on it which should help change the channel on the virgin box but it doesnt seem to work either...anybody done this before?

well, thanks for your time guys and girls.

regards
kevin

[level20peon]

Hello keveaton,

if you mean "EPG" by "guide listings" see my signature for a HowTo.


-level20peon

[TritonT]

There are many ways to get EPG data into MediaPortal (I assume you are using standard MediaPortal not TV-Server). I use XMLTV GUI Grabber. This is scheduled to run at 5.30am every day. It can also be set to post-process the xmltv file to change the channel names. Now all you need is to tell MediaPortal where the xmltv file will be. There are many other ways, the advantage of this one is that you don't have to do any repeat setup if you reinstall MediaPortal.

Your KWorld DVB-T 100 PCI card (I assume that is what you meant) is a digital terrestrial only card, you will need to buy a hardware encoding analog card to connect to your Virgin Cable box.

[keveaton]

thankyou for your help guys. i will try this.

in case i cant figure it out, how do i tell mp where the file is?

any suggestions for a tv card for my virgin box(oo errr missus...) ?

also...which post processors do i need please?

how do i automate the grabber? is there a command line i can schedule?

[TritonT]

The Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-150 seems to be the safe choice for analog. I haven't used one for a while as most of the HTPCs I've built in the last year are freeview plus satellite.

If you're trying XMLTV GUI you need to choose UK_RT for the grabber and UK_RT_ALTNAMES_Text as a postprocessor, this requires a text file to process, the format of the text file is as follows:

Sky Sports News|Sky Spts News
E4 +1|E4+1

So a text file containing the above lines changes all occurences of E4 +1 to E4+1 etc in the xmltv file.

I use Windows Scheduler to run the command line version of XMLTV GUI every morning, with the following command (you'll need a path):

XmltvConsole.exe /grab

You tell MediaPortal where to find the xmltv file in Setup - Television - Program Guide.

[keveaton]

thanks for this triton.

i think we are talking about different things with post processing...i am trying to avoid having to tell media portal to map "BBC1" to the listings for "BBC1" etc and also "E4 plus 1" to "E4 + 1" etc in the guide setup so it knows which guide lists to associate with which channel....im after something that can do this automatically - (surprised actually that it doesn't already do it...the interface for doing this manually is also unnecessarily annoying - have to scroll down through a list that always starts at A with no way to go directly to, say, all the Y's or god forbid actually matching BBC1 to BBC1 itself.....anyways, it takes ages unless i am doing something dumb)

i dont care if it displays "E4 plus 1" or "E4 +1" during normal usage...just dont want to have to map stuff that could very easily be scripted....anyways, its a minor thing.

if we are talking about epg mapping, then has someone got a post process text file that they can post please? no point re-inventing the wheel....

a few more questions if i may...

1) is there any reason you havent built cable media centers recently?
2) what about HD? can i get this through my virgin cable service?
3) if 2 is yes, can the hauppage card you recommended cope with that?
4) again, if 2 is yes, will my 42" sony monitor cope? SONY PFM 42B1 http://www.cinenow.com/uk/materiel.php3/tid,2/id,61/

5) cards...the 150 looks good, there is also a 500 with twin tuners. any thoughts on the 500?

thanks again
kev

[TritonT]

The method I am suggesting requires you to do NO 'setting up' or 'mapping' in MediaPortal at all. I have always done all my messing with xmltv outside MediaPortal as it saves setup time if you reinstall MediaPortal SVN quite often.

Here is my old postprocessor file (it is out of date now and you probably aren't the same region), altchnames.txt

1. No-one asks for cable, most common setup I'm seeing at the moment is 2 freeview tuners and 1 satellite tuner.
2. You can get HD on Virgin cable, but you can't get it out of the cable box and into MediaPortal, not only that you can't get it into your TV - it hasn't got HDMI or DVI.
3. No analog HD.
4. Your TV isn't really HD. I haven't tried that model but I have setup the model from the year after, took ages to get it running at properly at 1024x1024, so best of luck!
5. Haven't used the 500, but I don’t think it varies much in quality from the 150. Viewing the same channel on your freeview tuner is always going to be better quality than the analog card connected to your cable box.

[keveaton]

crickeys!

maybe i would be better off just using analogue for the moment then, and ditching the virgin tv thing.

is it possible to get MP (or any media centre for that matter) to work with HD?
if so, what would i need to buy?

thanks again

kev

[TritonT]

Freeview (dvb-t) is digital.

Your problem is not MediaPortal - it can show HD fine.

Your problem is your source (freeview and cable) can't produce HD and your viewing device (the Sony PFM 42B1) can't show it properly.

The usual source of HD material is satellite.

[keveaton]

but if i get sky HD or virgin cable HD , i need to buy

1) new plasma unless can get mine to work at 1,024x768 (isnt this HD?)
2) a new capture card for the PC...which one??
3) anything else??
cheers again