[ghanz]

You hero! was kind of losing my mind there. well done

[Bram]

Try using mc2xml for now. I've got it working even though the channel mapping is somewhat unclear (you'll see).

[henk99]

Originally Posted by Bram

Try using mc2xml for now. I've got it working even though the channel mapping is somewhat unclear (you'll see).

Hi Bram,

Can you explain how you got it to work? With work i mean, importing it into MP. mc2xml is working fine here as well, no problems there.

[ronald2oo2]

Originally Posted by henk99

....why isn't anybody using mc2xml? It is a plugin that can use the data from the microsoft site, which has data for 10 days or so, instead of 3 days on tvgids.nl. I mean this as a serious question, as the tool is very fast, it has all data in a few seconds.

Henk99,

Thanks for suggesting mc2xml ;-)))

It is the most complete TVguide I ever got and what I imported today is even (snik) 12 days ahead!

It works PERFECTLY!

Originally Posted by henk99

Can these plugins described here work with a xml file that is already present on the pc? So no downloading required, just writing the new data to MP?

So to answer your question, here is what you need to do:

1) download mc2xml.exe here: mc2xml
2) put this in a folder + a copy of 'xmltv.dtd'
3) open a DOS box (run 'cmd') and go to this folder
4) type 'mc2xml -c nl -g 0000 -o tvguide.xml' (or check the other country options here: mc2xml )
5) you get a menu/list of 9 possible sources (I used '5' = Canal Digitaal)
6) after a few seconds you have a very big ~20MB 'tvguide.xml'
7) ... optional (or do later)
8) You now startup the 'TVserver configuration'
9) goto plugin "XmlTv" (make sure the XmlTv plugin box is checked) & select the folder with above generated Tvguide.xml
10) goto tab 'mappings'
11) select your 'Group'
12) press 'load/refresh'
13) In the list box you now get your 'channels' with drop down boxes to select the belonging description from the at (6) generated TVguide.xml
14) When finished selecting all channels press 'Save'
15) Verify the correct selections by pressing 'load/refresh' again (all boxes should now be white)
16) Go back to the 'settings' tab & press 'import': you should see your number of channels and a lot of programs importing (after a few seconds)
17) close 'TVserver configuration'
18) start MP and enjoy
19) .... optional

About 7) & 19)

[EDIT]
19) Make a (daily) scheduled task with 'mc2xml -o TVGuide.xml'
Note: when you ran item 4)+5) the first time, the "grabbing" settings were stored in the 'mc2xml.dat' file which are now automatically used every time
[/EDIT]

7) You can reduce the very large TVguide.xml to only include the channels that you are using.
For example: I reduced the TVguide.xml from 22MB to 4MB file (412 channels to 26 channels), which you will notice performance wise

You do this as follows:
a) open the TVguide.xml with an editor (I can advise the freeware XML-editor from 'firstobject')
b) + open Notepad
c) check in the beginning of the xml file -until the programs begin- all the channel descriptions: e.g. like "<display-name>Ned 1</display-name>"
d) you now copy & paste one 'display-name' for each channel that you want in your EPG from the xml to the Notepad:
e.g. you copy& paste "Ned 1" to Notepad, next you copy 'Ned 2' to a new line etc. and you get something like this:
~~~
Ned 1
Ned 2
Ned 3
RTL 4
...
~~~ Note that these descriptions must be literal as in the TVguide.xml (that's why I suggest the copy&paste) so watch the upper & lower cases and spaces etc.. If you are missing programs with step 13) or later in your MP EPG, all chances are that this channel does not have the literal same text like in the TVguide.xml

e) when you have listed all your channels, save the Notepad to the TVguide folder as "mc2xml.chl"

I am not sure if this is absolutely nescesary but I did this next:
f) delete 'mc2xml.dat' from the folder
g) delete 'TVguide.xml' from the folder
h) repeat 3)+4)+5) and generate the smaller TVguide.xml



Success,
Ronald

[Bram]

For me, maybe this doesn't work for all postal codes, the following resulted in all the data I need and nothing more.

mc2xml -c nl -g 5211 -o TVguide.xml

....where '5211' is my postal code ('s-Hertogenbosch). I got a menu from which I could choose the cable provider and I get all the channel data I need and nothing more. This tool is realy fantastic! It should be included in MP because it would make it REALY EASY for everyone around the world to obtain their EPG data. This is not limited to the Dutch EPG. It makes use of the EPG service MS designed for Windows MCE and thus will always be available!

[henk99]

Originally Posted by ronald2oo2

Henk99,

Thanks for suggesting mc2xml ;-)))

It is the most complete TVguide I ever got and what I imported today is even (snik) 12 days ahead!

It works PERFECTLY!

So to answer your question, here is what you need to do:

1) download mc2xml.exe here: mc2xml
2) put this in a folder + a copy of 'xmltv.dtd'
3) open a DOS box (run 'cmd') and go to this folder
4) type 'mc2xml -c nl -g 0000 -o tvguide.xml'
5) you get a menu/list of 9 possible sources (I used '5' = Canal Digitaal)
6) after a few seconds you have a very big ~20MB 'tvguide.xml'
7) ... optional (or do later)
8) You now startup the 'TVserver configuration'
9) goto plugin "XmlTv" (make sure the XmlTv plugin box is checked) & select the folder with above generated Tvguide.xml
10) goto tab 'mappings'
11) select your 'Group'
12) press 'load/refresh'
13) In the list box you now get your 'channels' with drop down boxes to select the belonging description from the at (6) generated TVguide.xml
14) When finished selecting all channels press 'Save'
15) Verify the correct selections by pressing 'load/refresh' again (all boxes should now be white)
16) Go back to the 'settings' tab & press 'import': you should see your number of channels and a lot of programs importing (after a few seconds)
17) close 'TVserver configuration'
18) start MP and enjoy
19) .... optional

About 7) & 19)

19) Make a (daily) scheduled task with 'mc2xml.exe'
Note: when you ran item 4)+5) the first time, all settings were stored in the 'mc2xml.dat' file, so next time you can just give the command 'mc2xml'!

7) You can reduce the very large TVguide.xml to only include the channels that you are using.
For example: I reduced the TVguide.xml from 22MB to 4MB file (412 channels to 26 channels), which you will notice performance wise

You do this as follows:
a) open the TVguide.xml with an editor (I can advise the freeware XML-editor from 'firstobject')
b) open Notepad
c) check in the beginning of the xml file -until the programs begin- all the channel descriptions: e.g. like "<display-name>Ned 1</display-name>"
d) you now copy & paste one 'display-name' for each channel that you want in your EPG from the xml to the Notepad:
e.g. you copy& paste "Ned 1" to Notepad, next you copy 'Ned 2' to a new line etc. and you get something like this:
~~~
Ned 1
Ned 2
Ned 3
RTL 4
...
~~~ Note that these descriptions must be literal as in the TVguide.xml (that's why I suggest the copy&paste) so watch the upper & lower cases and spaces etc.. If you are missing programs with step 13) or later in your MP EPG, all chances are that this channel does not have the literal same text like in the TVguide.xml

e) when you have listed all your channels, save the Notepad to the TVguide folder as "mc2xml.chl"

I am not sure if this is absolutely nescesary but I did this next:
f) delete 'mc2xml.dat' from the folder
g) delete 'TVguide.xml' from the folder
h) repeat 3)+4)+5) and generate the smaller TVguide.xml



Success,
Ronald

I'm very glad you have got it working for you. When I found out about mc2xml, I couldn't understand why nobody was talking about it. Especially because tvgids.nl is giving problems I heard. I'm glad people are picking it up now. This way you are helping me getting it to work
I will try this tonight! I hope I can get this tv server stuff working. So far I couldn't get it to show anything. I'm afraid I'm not that good with MP yet.
So maybe, I have some questions here later

[ketjap]

Strange that I never heard of this before. This works much faster than any other importer I tried. Thanks for your help.

[thedisciple]

Thanx ronald2oo2 & henk99,

for that mc2xml suggestion and the explanation how to get it working. I've made my own channel list now and it seems to work. I am going to try it for a few days before i implement it fully on my Mediaportal, but it seems to do the work, and very fast.

[henk99]

Originally Posted by thedisciple

Thanx ronald2oo2 & henk99,

for that mc2xml suggestion and the explanation how to get it working. I've made my own channel list now and it seems to work. I am going to try it for a few days before i implement it fully on my Mediaportal, but it seems to do the work, and very fast.

The fun thing is that I came up with the mc2xml idea, but I can't get it to work myself
I find the TV server part very hard to install. Not much of a wiz myself, so I have no idea what I have to do. How do I get any channels for instance? I can't make any groups if there aren't any channels....right?

[Bram]

I've just had some more feedback from the project owner of Index of / . He's got it partially fixed and altered for the new tvgids.nl .
He's also looking into mc2xml and is pretty enthousiastic about it. Maybe we'll have a just as painless 14 day !!guide!! as we once had for 6 days. Without having to lean on the tvguids.nl website

@henk99.... I've tried everything, but I can't get mc2xml's TVguide.xml file being imported correctly after the first time. I thin the xml file might have to be parsed and regenerated to work correctly with the TVserver. Someone is looking into that