Adding EPG information to channel that only carries now/next (1 Viewer)

[Benoire]

Hi,

I'm after a way to merge guide data with another channel. For example, in NZ the Sky HD channels only carry the now/next information but what I would like to do is replicate the guide channel data from the SD channel with the HD channel to populate the HD stream. Now I know you can achieve this by the Combine feature but I need the SD channels available too so I can use them on another machine that doesn't support HD.

Also, is there anyway to specify a transponder for all the EPG information? Again, SKY NZ has a transponder which carries openTV and EIT guide data and it would be great just to be able to call from that and assign guide channels to the physical channels... I guess similar to how 4therecord does it.

Any help is greatly appreciated!

Chris

 

[mm1352000]

Hello Chris

In the ideal situation, how do you see the SD/HD channel selection working from your two separate machines?
I guess in an ideal world TV Server would know that the "weaker" PC is not capable of playing the HD stream and deliver the SD stream automatically. This is not currently possible - TV Server currently doesn't differentiate between the clients.
So the only way I can see it working is if you have two versions of the channels: one for the HD version, and another for the SD version.
The SD version should automatically get guide data via the DVB EPG grabber.
The question then becomes how to get guide data for the HD channel.
Unfortunately TV Server doesn't support the "guide channel" concept that 4TR does for the DVB EPG grabber.
Quite honestly, the most straightforward way I can think of to do what you want is to use the EPG Collector to grab the EPG, and use the XMLTV plugin to link the channels up how you want - the XMLTV channel effectively does have a guide channel concept, so you can do what you want quite easily. The EPG grabber can check whether tuners are available or not and play nicely with TV Server as long as you don't use the "pause card" configuration for your tuners.
If you merge/combine the HD and SD channel (and create another copy of the SD channel for your underpowered client(s)) to get the guide data for the HD channel, there is (1) no way to force TV Server to only tune with the HD tuning detail, and (2) I can't guarantee that TV Server would not overwrite the full EPG data from the SD channel with the now/next info from the HD channel.

Also, is there anyway to specify a transponder for all the EPG information? Again, SKY NZ has a transponder which carries openTV and EIT guide data and it would be great just to be able to call from that and assign guide channels to the physical channels... I guess similar to how 4therecord does it.

First, MP doesn't support grabbing OpenTV format EPG data. DJBlu's plugin does I think, but the default TV Server does not. This in itself is not really a disadvantage in this case as I think the content of the OpenTV and EIT data is identical.
You can specify to only grab EPG from one of the channels which is on the 12519H transponder. Unless you enable the "grab EPG only for channels on the same transponder" option, TV Server would pick up EPG for all channels that way. However, you'd still have the problem with only getting now/next info for the HD channels... so I don't see how this helps.

mm

 

[Benoire]

Hey MM,

I'll be honest, I liked the way 4therecord managed it. Their client plugin had a channel manager which allowed you to specify which channels would be shown on that client. For example the server had all the channels available selected but only the channels to be included in the guide where selected in each client through the built in channel manager. This also allowed you to merge guide data together by choosing which channels did what. I think that would be far more succesful than a more intelligent system of determining which client can do what from the server. At present I have a combined SD/HD channel to feed guide data to the HD channels and then re-created the SD channel so I have both active at the same time... The GF keeps complaining about it but it is the only way I can make it work!

I've been trying to get an all-in-one system but will take your suggestion with respect to EPGCollector... If it works fine for everyone else then it will work fine for me

Thanks for the help!