For The Record - The rule-based scheduling suite (5 Viewers)

[dvdfreak]

Wow - have been away for a while and TV Scheduler has gained a web gui! impressive.

Quick question does it work with MySQL?

The web gui doesn't contain any database code at all actually

And the TV Scheduler service itself still works with MySQL, so in that sense the answer to your question is yes

 

[dvdfreak]

Regards the logos - I'd go with whats simple and works. See how it works out in RL and then decide on the "best" solution.

I've thought this through and have come up with the following:

1) When you install TV Scheduler itself, there will be an empty "Logos" directory in its installation path.

2) You can then copy your logo images to that directory. The naming convention will be to use the DisplayName of the channel, with any extension (.jpg, .png,...).

3) There will be a new method on ITvSchedulerService:

        /// <summary>
        /// Get a resized channel logo, if newer than the provided timestamp. The aspect ratio of the
        /// original image is preserved so the returned image is potentially either smaller than
        /// the requested size, or centered on a transparant background.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="tvChannelId">The ID of the channel.</param>
        /// <param name="width">The requested width.</param>
        /// <param name="height">The requested height.</param>
        /// <param name="useTransparantBackground">Use a transparant background when preserving the aspect ratio.</param>
        /// <param name="modifiedAfterTime">Only return a logo if it is newer than the given timestamp.</param>
        /// <returns>A byte array containing the bytes of a (transparant) PNG of the resized logo, or null if no (newer) logo was found.</returns>
        [OperationContract]
        [FaultContract(typeof(TvSchedulerException))]
        byte[] GetChannelLogo(Guid tvChannelId, int width, int height, bool useTransparantBackground, DateTime modifiedAfterTime);

With this new method clients, like the TV Scheduler Web Access site, can build up a local cache of channel logos resized exactly for their purpose. By passing in the timestamp of the locally cached PNG, refreshing this cache will be very efficient since no logos will be resized or transferred unless they are really newer.

I was considering storing the channel logos in the database, but then I realized this would make it very hard for people to distribute "logo packs". By storing the logos in a directory it is very easy to simply unzip such a logo pack there, and hey presto, you've got channel logos The only thing you might have to do is rename some of the logos to match your channel name.

The slight hassle is that clients need to build up their own logo cache. But this is by far the best and cleanest solution since every client will have different size requirements depending on how they want to visualize the channels. A client might even build up two caches because it needs two differently sized logos.

BTW, the logo packs I mentioned before should ideally contain images of high quality, since it will be the TV Scheduler service itself that resizes them as needed.

 

[blackpaw]

Wow - have been away for a while and TV Scheduler has gained a web gui! impressive.

Quick question does it work with MySQL?

The web gui doesn't contain any database code at all actually

And the TV Scheduler service itself still works with MySQL, so in that sense the answer to your question is yes

Smart alec ! Yes I meant the TV Scheduler itself

Regards the logos - I'd go with whats simple and works. See how it works out in RL and then decide on the "best" solution.

I've thought this through and have come up with the following:

1) When you install TV Scheduler itself, there will be an empty "Logos" directory in its installation path.

2) You can then copy your logo images to that directory. The naming convention will be to use the DisplayName of the channel, with any extension (.jpg, .png,...).

3) There will be a new method on ITvSchedulerService:

Sounds like an excellent plan to me - I already have channel logo as individual files, I could easily integrate them with this or create an installer.

 

[dvdfreak]

Something I meant to ask before, any people here that would be willing to help with translating the Web Access gui? I can do the translation to flemish (= dutch) myself, but other languages would be more than welcome. I will provide XML resource files for translation then (these can easily be edited in a text editor).

 

[vertiger]

i can help with german

 

[dvdfreak]

Thanks! I'm going to be away for the next two weeks, so the TV Scheduler story will continue the beginning of 2008

 

[rr69]

I am testing this solution and i think it works great.

Since i own a smartphone with windows mobile and i would like to schedule programs anywhere i have two feature requests:

1. In addition to the standard web interface, a pda/smartone friendly webinterface. (200x320 pixels qvga is the most common i think)
2. the choice to disable the authentication to the webapplication and let IIS handle the authentication.


Regards, RR69

 

[petsa]

Hi dvd-freak,

I got the weirdest of problems....

I happened to press "Delete All Guide Data" and cleaned the database. Then I downloaded a new tvguide.xml and it got imported but nothing shows up in the TV Guide...!

I've tried several things are here are my findings:

- I've tried to reinstall, I picked-up up the latest version 1.0.10.0 - no change
- I've recreated the tvguide.xml and made sure it got iported again - no change
- I've looked in the SQL database - all data is there
- I've tried to search for a show - it can be found!

Somehow it seems as the data is in the database but won't be visible, nor will any recordings happen.

Any ideas?

/Peter

 

[dvdfreak]

I got the weirdest of problems....

Check the dates in your XMLTV guide. At least one other person reported having problems with WebEPG creating XMLTV files with dates in december 2008 and not 2007.

I am testing this solution and i think it works great.

Since i own a smartphone with windows mobile and i would like to schedule programs anywhere i have two feature requests:

1. In addition to the standard web interface, a pda/smartone friendly webinterface. (200x320 pixels qvga is the most common i think)
2. the choice to disable the authentication to the webapplication and let IIS handle the authentication.

Number 2 I'll add for sure.

Number 1 is likely as well, but I was thinking of a native Windows Mobile client as well, so perhaps I'll work on that first...

 

[petsa]

Hi dvd-freak,

I think I narrowed down the issue a little bit. My first problem was that I accidentally imported a TVguide.xml file AND synced with TV3E... That produce duplicate channels...

The other issue is that 1.0.10.0 does not link any channels at all for me, while 1.0.8.0 works well. 1.0.10.0 doesn't show any channels in TV3E config, but switching to 1.0.8.0 immediatly lists all available channels.

Any ideas?

It seems to work OK now (with 1.0.8.0) but of course I would like to upgrade to the latest version

/Peter