Custom Data Grabber including Sky UK Channel/EPG Grabber (3 Viewers)

[DJBlu]

DJBlu - bit the bullet tonight and upgraded TBS6984 driver to the latest 1.0.2.2 driver.

All seems well, and no continuity errors so far. Haven't upgraded the TBS6981 driver to the latest yet though..

May fix your problem if you are still having it

I'll give it a whirl this weekend.

 

[ay129]

Problem solved with the EPG. What a nightmare though. I'll write down what I did in case someone else faces the same issue.

I now have MP 1.2.2 working well with the full sky EPG. The steps I took were as follows:

1. CLEAN uninstall of my existing mediaportal 1.2.2 (the product of several upgrades with each new final version since 1.1.x)
I used Revo uninstaller to wipe everything MP - including MP registry keys (and here's the key), MySQL , but NOT Visual C++ stuff. If I had known better I would have just axed the MySQL, but oh well.
2. Installed Mediaportal 1.2.2 final - note that the MP installer doesnt reinstall things that are already on your system - so if you dont get rid of your mysql, it wont get updated by your new install.
3. Installed icam2's patched GIT files on page 86 of this thread - thanks icam2!
4. open up tv setup and see if you can timeshift an FTA channel under manual control - then stop the tv service and close down tv setup
5. Copied the custom data grabber and sky epg dll's into the appropriate folders
6. fire up tv server again (it asked me to start the tvservice first), and go to tv servers and click edit with your card highlighted and enable CAM, and alsoallow the card to grab EPG data.
7. go to your tv card, select the sky satellite on one of yer LNB's (28.2e) and tick the DVB-S2 option for HD channels, but DO NOT scan for channels just yet (as i discovered, DJblu's plugins do this for you)
8. go to plugins and tick on the sky grabber so it appears under plugins, and in the sky grabber plugin check that you have mapped your tv card to the EPG
9. select all the options you want, then push grab epg - should do the trick (almost). ignore any errors you get.
10. now go to DVB EPG Radio you will see a new radio channel called "sky uk grabber". Place a tick against it and ensure "english" is selected under language. On the DVB EPG TV select all tv channels by pressing all and select English as the language again
11. now run the sky grabber plugin again - this should sort out the EPG for you.

you can check by searching for the EPG.log file on your c:\ and reading through it - should show a non-zero number of items being added to the EPG for each channel.

Any problems, refer to a page or two back for how to drop the mptvdb database through the mysql command line. this clears all channels and any tvdb info including epg.

I strongly recommend exporting the sky channel groups to an xml file somewhere on your PC. that way you can just import your channels next time (and the groupings) without painful rescan.

Hope this helps someone. As a suggestion for the devs - can we incorporate this info and icam2's files into the fist two posts? This thread is getting real messy (no thanks to me and this problem)

spacemanc - here you go buddy

____________
My system again: Win 7 x64 ultimate edition, MP1.2.2 streamedMP, TBS 8920 single tuner DVB-S2 card

 

[psykix]

A couple of observations..

Step 7 is not needed - those options are only for scanning, and as you say DJBlu's plugin does the scanning.

Step 10 - no need to tick anything other than Sky UK Grabber - this just selects which channels you want to use to grab the EPG, not which channels you want an EPG for.

 

[spacemanc]

I've finally got it working with MP 1.2.2, the TBS 2.0.0.18 drivers and MDapi Plus.

I'd already suspected the database, and deleted MySQL competely (including the folders and files that are left behind)

It still took several attempts to get it to work even without the EPG! Neither DJBlus or icam2's files would work at first, and I tried so many combinations I can't even remember what I'm using now! I had many false dawns but now it's working stable and with fast channel changes

Regarding the fast channel changes, I have noticed that by far the slowest changes, are when I switch to a Sky HD movie channel (irrelevant of what I am switching from) - I'm sure that I've read in the past that Sky use very high bandwidth for these channels, so that makes me wonder if maybe a bit of the delay is down to the decoding rather than the tuning? (I'm using LAV filers)

 

[bubsy83]

I've finally got it working with MP 1.2.2, the TBS 2.0.0.18 drivers and MDapi Plus.

I'd already suspected the database, and deleted MySQL competely (including the folders and files that are left behind)

It still took several attempts to get it to work even without the EPG! Neither DJBlus or icam2's files would work at first, and I tried so many combinations I can't even remember what I'm using now! I had many false dawns but now it's working stable and with fast channel changes

Regarding the fast channel changes, I have noticed that by far the slowest changes, are when I switch to a Sky HD movie channel (irrelevant of what I am switching from) - I'm sure that I've read in the past that Sky use very high bandwidth for these channels, so that makes me wonder if maybe a bit of the delay is down to the decoding rather than the tuning? (I'm using LAV filers)

how long does it take?

 

[spacemanc]

how long does it take?

I would say up to 4-5 seconds for the movie channels. For all other channel's I would it's split between 1-3 seconds.

All very acceptable, but the speed of the other channels now makes movies really stand out!

 

[psykix]

I've finally got it working with MP 1.2.2, the TBS 2.0.0.18 drivers and MDapi Plus.

I'd already suspected the database, and deleted MySQL competely (including the folders and files that are left behind)

It still took several attempts to get it to work even without the EPG! Neither DJBlus or icam2's files would work at first, and I tried so many combinations I can't even remember what I'm using now! I had many false dawns but now it's working stable and with fast channel changes

Regarding the fast channel changes, I have noticed that by far the slowest changes, are when I switch to a Sky HD movie channel (irrelevant of what I am switching from) - I'm sure that I've read in the past that Sky use very high bandwidth for these channels, so that makes me wonder if maybe a bit of the delay is down to the decoding rather than the tuning? (I'm using LAV filers)

how long does it take?

Not sure which driver you are actually using.. 2.0.1.8 is a TBS6984 driver - is that the card you have? If so, that driver does not support the fast channel changing, so not sure why you would be seeing a difference...

EDIT : sorry I meant 1.0.1.8!

 

[spacemanc]

Not sure which driver you are actually using.. 2.0.1.8 is a TBS6984 driver - is that the card you have? If so, that driver does not support the fast channel changing, so not sure why you would be seeing a difference...

Yes it is a TBS 6981 driver. I got it from this post:

https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/...abber-with-plugins.96767/page-104#post-851383

It isn't the latest driver for the card, because it is only suitable for users with strong sat signal due to the way it works (So most people in England at least, should be fine)

Also I've read elsewhere that MDapi Plus has slowed down changes for some people, but I made a point of testing this before installing, and it is slightly quicker for me, and it's also supposedly more stable though I can't confirm that because my setup was already very stable.

 

[psykix]

Ah, ok.. TBS driver numbering is confusing to say the least - especially when you have 2 different TBS cards like I do!

 

[ay129]

silly question perhaps - does the TBS fast channel change tweak only work with the 6891/6894?

I have an older 8920 and would like faster channel changes tooo