EPG without TV card, but for Online content only ? (1 Viewer)

[Mozzla]

Hello, I am new here, as you'll guess from this post. I have used MP for sometime now, as it provides a great interface to my video, music and pic collection, and also enables online content ( mainly UK TV channels ) to be accessed easily through Online Videos. However, the Online Videos plugin only provides a link to the streams, and does not grab the description info from the UK TV websites. It would be good therefore to be able to browse through an EPG within MP, and by checking the descriptions of the shows, decide what to watch, and then to select that show through the Online Videos plugin. It seems though that I need to have a TV card installed to set up an EPG, and I do not have one, and do not intent on using one.

Is there a way to achieve that which I've just described ? An if so, how please ? Thanks, Moz.

 

[mm1352000]

Hi Moz

Yes, there is... sort of. You don't have to have a tuner to create TV channels, so you could create the channels that you want EPG for in TV Server. They would then show up in the TV plugin TV guide. The remaining job would be to find an XMLTV or WebEPG grabber that supplies the EPG for the channels that you are interested in, and use the XMLTV plugin to import the EPG against your channels.

Once again, a bit hacky. But it can be done and all without a tuner!
mm

 

[hafblade]

The EPG module has nothing to do with the OnlineVideos plugin. I think this would be a large amount of work. I suppose that it would be possible to grab some more information from the streaming homepage but that is the decision of the stream-homepage-grabber-author.

 

[Mozzla]

Great stuff, thanks. I dont mind a bit of a hack, as it's half the fun and satisfaction on getting it working.... I installed without TV, so I think the first step is a re-install with full functionality, or perhaps there is a way to add the TV server without a complete re-install, as I have done quite a bit of configuration to my setup which I would prefer not to have to redo,

Thanks
Moz.

 

[mm1352000]

Hmm, yes would be a pain to do a full reinstall. You could try something like this...
Open the MediaPortal installer with an archiving program like PeaZip which is able to browse the contents of NSIS installers and extract the TV Server installer which is called "package-tvengine.exe". Alternatively, run the full installer and locate that EXE in your temp files somewhere... don't quite know where it gets put these days. Once you have the individual TV Server installer, you should be able to install the TV Server and TV plugin with it... I think. Not 100% sure on that, but worth a shot as there is no risk of affecting your MP install.

mm

 

[Mozzla]

All good ! I did a new install on my laptop, which is like a test bench - and I am now at the point of having the EPG with the UK channels, which is great, as it not only tells me what is one, but also gives the info on each programme. Now, I just need to try mm's idea for the install of tvserver on its own on my main HTPC. I am struggling though to find where the NSIS unpacks the installers to, so I may have to try the PeaZip .....

 

[Paranoid Delusion]

When your run the installer it unpacks to

C:\Users\insert user name\AppData\Local\Temp\MediaPortal Installation\deploy

 

[Mozzla]

Thanks for the assistance - all great now, with a 14 day EPG set up for the corresponding online UK TV channels. What would be ideal would be to select the channel from within the EPG, which then launched the corresponding stream from within Online VIDS....

Cheers
Moz.

 

[mm1352000]

Awesome.
Unfortunately the launching of the OV channel from the TV EPG guide is not possible. Maybe OV needs an EPG section or TV Server needs to support online streams.

mm

 

[x4mer]

.... or TV Server needs to support online streams.
mm

That would be fantastic.