Using XMLTV for the new TV Engine for NA EPG.

[ASiDiE]

Currently right now the Zap2it plug-in in not working with the new TV engine. Because the new TV engine is all about TV and you really need a guide to really use it... its very important. I am going to write a little how-to with XMLTV so people can get there Guide going!

You will need a Zap2it account... and because most of you people here in North America were using the zap2it plug-in.. you should already have an account. (Search for forums if you do not have an account already)

First you will need to download this file HERE

Once you download the file all you need to do is extract it to your Team mediaportal/Mediaportal directory. It should tell you that the folder already exists... and that is fine.

Now you will need to open up a dos prompt. Go to start, all programs and run and type in "CMD" without quotes.

You should now have a dos prompt.. now we need to get into the XML directory. Type these commands in just how I have them below.

cd..
cd.. (you should now be at C: )
cd program files
cd team mediaportal
cd mediaportal
cd xmltv

We are now in the XML directory. Now we need to type this in.

xmltv tv_grab_na_dd --configure

You will then need to follow the directions. It will ask for time zone, your username and password... then login and see what zap2it channel line ups you have. Select the one you want... and you should be done.

Now you need to go out to the xmltv directory with windows explorer and find the tvguide.bat. Right click on it and select edit. The only options you really have in here is how many days of guide the program will grab. I have it set at 1 for now... for testing. You can changed the value from 1 to 13. Once you are done with that, exit out of the file and double click on the bat file. It should come up and start running. The next thing you know, you should have a tvguide.xml file created in that directory.

THATS IT! Now you will need to go into the TV engine set up and change the directory to the XMLTV directory. From what Frodo has told me that TV engine server checked about every minute for a new tvguide.xml file. I usually wait for like 5 minutes and then check it. If all goes well.... you should have your guide imported and it should have added channels to your channel list...

If you are having problems... run the tvguide.bat withing a dos window.. this will stay open and might give an error message to what is going wrong.

At this point in time... I am not even doing a scan of the channels... I just let my guide import the channels.....

Well I hope this will help until Patrick can get the zap2it plug-in working with the new TV engine.

If you have any questions, please post them here!

[YAG]

Thanks ASiDiE for the detailed description!
Question - when I used the zap2it plugin on "regular" MP, everything looked great, channels, order, icons etc...
When I use the xmltv approach I get the channels all out of order. Is there an easy way to sort them in TV server? add icons? all I found so far is manually pushing each channel up or down a position - kind of tedious with 100+ channels...

[ASiDiE]

You can hit the top of the column and it will put them in order the best it can.. you will still need to move 2-9 because they are stuck in-between 19,2,20. After that it should only take you about 2 minutes to get them all set up. Infact I just installed version 11475 of the new tv engine.. and was recording/test shows in under 5 mintues with everything set up.

[jahamala]

excellent guide. channels imported very easily.

[ASiDiE]

Just to let you guys know, the import and export option in the tv server work pretty well. Once I get everything set up I then save it out. The only thing I have found that it does not bring back in are the country codes. I have imported the Frequencies by hand, so there is no possible way for the tv engine to hit the wrong channle going off of the country code. This also saves what cards the channels are mapped too. I can imported my full list of channles, all in order and all mapped in 3 seconds! Saves me a ton of time when testing. And if I am using the zap2it pluing, I don't need to keep putting in the frequencies!

[jburnette]

Great work Asidie. This will allow me to try out the new tv server without my wife freaking out on me. Thanks so much.

[crawdaddy]

Im not sure what I'm doing wrong, but my epg guides are off by 12 hours. I set the correct timezone and such, and it's off. When I try to adjust the offset in the xmltv plugin for the servr, it dumps all the existing EPG info from the server, but never rebuilds it with the right data...what's going on?

EDIT: after much fussing around with it, I finally got it to adjust to the correct time offset so that my guide is correct in whats in what timeslot...one more question I have, does this method autmatically connect and build a new tv guide xml file with the new listings, or does that have to be done separatley? As of now, I'm guessing it's something that has to be done manually, so I'm gonna set that bat file up in a windows scheduled task.

[notfound]

Thanks for this guide!

This almost works for me. However, there's a Perl error:

Use of uninitialized value in sprintf at /PerlApp/grab/na_dd/tv_grab_na_dd line
995, <STDIN> line 5.

This is an error in the tv_grab_na_dd script, which is located inside the xmltv.exe wrapper created by the Perl Dev Kit's PerlApp. However, I'm not on a machine with the PDK installed so I haven't looked into the source yet.

When I run tvguide.bat, it gives the following; the important part is the "Strange 48" line:

C:\Program Files\Team MediaPortal\MediaPortal\XMLTV>xmltv.exe tv_grab_na_dd --days 1 --output tvguide.xml
Timezone is -0500
adding '--share=C:/Program Files/Team MediaPortal/MediaPortal/XMLTV/share/xmltv'

using config filename ./.xmltv/tv_grab_na_dd.conf

WARNING: Password in config file, protect as required

Fetching from DataDirect:     Fetched 1166 k/bytes in 16 seconds
##################################################
loading data: ##################################################
WARNING: Strange 48 has no callsign. Skipping
Writing schedule: ##################################################
MESSAGE: Your subscription will expire: 2007-02-11T13:32:33Z
Downloaded 1851 programs in 43 seconds

C:\Program Files\Team MediaPortal\MediaPortal\XMLTV>

Now, by random chance I happened to be at a friend's house last night, and he has an old TV that won't auto-program correctly on the same cable system. It cannot see any channels below 48, but finds all the channels above 48. This might only be a coincidence, but I'm including it just in case.

Can anyone here help with the Perl sprintf error?

Thanks!

[gfx_dude]

I'm still having issues with the times from importing the XMLTV guide in the TVServer. I've tried editing the timezone info in the configuration used for generating the XML file from DataDirect, and I've tried checking/unchecking the "adjust time zone" check box, along with random times in the time adjustment boxes, nothing seems to change the times of the shows.

Crawdaddy was this the problem you were having and if so how did you fix it? Anyone else seeing this and hav a solution?

Thanks,

gfx_dude

[JaBu]

I'm having a timezone problem too, everything is offset. Anyone fixed it? Crawdaddy?