mc2xml - microsoft legacy vs other guide sources (United States) [Poll] (1 Viewer)

What guide data source do you prefer (United States)


  • Total voters
    12

hairlesshobo

MP Donator
  • Premium Supporter
  • March 18, 2012
    66
    22
    Jacksonville, FL
    Home Country
    United States of America United States of America
    Hello Everyone,

    Last night I finally got around to naming my channels correctly and mapping to Guide Data. It works fine, but I am just wondering if there would be a benefit to switching guide data source. I am in the US and I am currently using Microsoft Legacy. I have heard of the following services and was wondering if there would be a benefit of switching to one of these.

    Microsoft Legacy
    Microsoft (new) w/ full ATSC support
    TitanTV (I signed up for this but mc2xml refuses to connect.. not sure what's going on)
    Schedules Direct
    zap2it

    From what little I could find online, it sounds like the new Microsoft Service has more detailed guide data vs legacy, and I was wondering if this would be useful for MediaPortal. I would definitely be willing to donate the $20 for the "fancy" version of mc2xml, but I want to make sure that there is something to gain from using the new service.

    Anyways, the main question. What does everyone use and why? Place your vote :)

    -Steve
     

    karl10247

    Portal Pro
    November 8, 2011
    135
    17
    52
    Home Country
    Great Britain (UK) Great Britain (UK)
    hey hairless, i've just started using mce2xml for my OTA services in houston. Since the channel names that come in when i tune the TV server it is hard to match them up in the xmltv plugin. You mentioned you renamed all your channels? did you do that manually? i was hoping to avoid that agony
    Is there not another way to sort out the channel names in some semi automatic program or something?

    Also there are now only 3 options available in mce2xml which are microsoft legacy, titan tv and schedules direct.

    Did you ever get round to trying those 3?

    Cheers
     

    RonD

    Test Group
  • Team MediaPortal
  • December 20, 2011
    911
    278
    SillyValley CA
    Home Country
    United States of America United States of America
    I paid the $20 for the enhanced mc2xml version, really donation to the guy who wrote the tool. The tv channel IDs are the same for both "legacy" and "new" download options so it does not really help the mismatch between EPG download IDs and the IDs MePo gets when you do an ATSC channel scan. The "new" option adds the ATSC channel.subchan numbers, 2.1, 2.2 etc that helps a little if you know the number you are looking for when you setup xmltv.

    This mismatch between the EPG IDs and MePo ATSC scan IDs is a pet peeve of mine, I wrote a rant in the following thread on this topic.
    https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/...-guide-data-source.124358/page-2#post-1060267

    As far as I know this problem exists with all the "freeloader" ATSC EPG options, WebEPG, xmltv/mc2xml, xmltv/WebGrab+Plus. The core problem is the names the stations send in the OTA PSIP data that contains the Channel IDs is not used by the various online sources. The online IDs are typically close, but I rarely get an exact match. One thing to keep in mind, sometimes the stations add/remove ATSC subchannels, change OTA ATSC channel IDs, etc so the IDs you see today may not be the same 6-12 months from now when you do another scan.

    For WebEPG you have to by hand enter both the MePo ID and the EPG ID, so you can get them to match. For mc2xml, I've been using the mc2xml.ren file option to build a rename/mapping file. Each line has the EpgID:MePoID and mc2xml uses this to tweak the IDs in the tvguide.xml file so my xmltv imports find the channels I want. See http://mc2xml.hosterbox.net/ This is a pain to setup, you need to run mc2xml to get a 1st pass tvguide.xml file with EPG IDs, by hand create a mc2xml.ren with the mappings, then run mc2xml a 2nd time create a new tvguide.xml file with your channel names. It takes work to setup the 1st time, but at least when you do a new install, new scan, or other changes its a lot easier to get xmltv setup again. Pay me now or pay me later.

    I've never used the SchedulesDirect option, for a strange reason the $25/yr (1 cup of coffee/month) cost bugs me. But from various threads/comments it can auto-generate your local MePo channels. Since it uses the same channel IDs for both MePo channels and EPG, I think in general they match. One of these days I may give this a try.

    This is all for OTA/ATSC, I've never tried free QAM or CableCard, but based on various forum threads there can be similar MePo channel ID vs EPG ID name mismatch, resync problems. I'll fight that battle if I ever get cable again.
     

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