Need DVB EPG and or WebEPG help (2 Viewers)

[Sticks]

I installed MediaPortal yesterday and am very impressed! Thanks for the hard work you've put into this excellent app.

I started this post as a plea for help in getting either DVB EPG or WebEPG working with my MediaPortal install. While outlining the steps I've taken, below, I actually got WebEPG working. I'm leaving the rather long winded description of my steps below, hopefully it will help some other newb someday. I would still like to see what DVB EPG data looks like in the guide if anyone could help with that. I know at least some of my local channels embed EPG data in their stream, I've seen it in another PVR app. To keep some of you old pros from having to read everything below to get down to my current problems with WebEPG here's my two current questions:

1. How do I get the WebEpg data shifted one hour forward. All TV Guide listings are shown as airing one hour before they actually air.
2. Does anyone know where to find good EPG data for RETROTV (RTV) in the U.S.

After hours of reading the documentation and searching the forums I have been unable to get any EPG data listed in the TV Guide. I first tried obtaining the EPG data from the U.S. digital broadcast from my tuner card as mentioned in the Quick Setup Guide. The Guide says to enable EPG in the EPG tab of General Settings of the TV Server Configuration. I assume the instruction are for an older version, I can't find an enable/disable button, checkbox or option anywhere. In the DVB EPG section I do have EPG Grabbing while timeshifting/recording and EPG Grabbing while idle both enabled. I have tried checking Always try to fill holes and Always try to update existing. In the TV Epg Grabber tab I have Store data only for selected channels checked and have 11 of the 13 channels listed checked. Under Filter for these languages I have English checked. I didn't do anything in the Radio EPG Grabber.

The above all took place yesterday afternoon. The computer was on all night and I thought I would have data listed in the TV Guide this morning since EPG Grabbing while idle was enabled with a timeout of 10 min. and Refresh was set to every 240 min. (4 hours). When I found all Guide listings still said "No Data Available" I moved on and gave WebEPG a go.

I read, in a forum post, that DVB EPG had to be disabled before using WebEPG. Since I can't find the on/off switch for DVB EPG I deselected all channels in the TV EPG Grabber and selected the WebEPG plugin. I've listed my settings below:

WebEPG General Tab:
Grab Days = 2 (default)
Write Programs to = TV Server database (default)
Delete Old Programs before Import = checked (default)
Country = United States

WebEPG TV Mappings:
Group = All Channels
Clicked Import Button (All channels were imported)
Clicked Auto Map (One channel was mapped)

WebEPG Radio Mappings:
Did not touch

WebEPG Schedule:
Did not touch, thought I would setup scheduled time EPG Grabbing after I got it working.

WebEPG Generl Tab: (again)
Clicked the Grab Now button, wanted to see if I would get data for the one auto mapped channel but did not.

After saving and closing the TV Server Config. I ran MediaPortal and checked the TV Guide but even the one auto mapped channel (RETRO TV) still said "No Data Available" in all time slots. I then went back into the TV Server Config. and mapped all but two of my channels manually. All of these channels are network affiliates so I mapped them to United States/tv.yahoo.com and the appropriate networks and timezones. I then clicked Grab Now and let it finish, saved and closed the TV Server Config. and ran MediaPortal but still no TV Guide data. Oddly the only auto mapped channel then said "Paid Programming" in all time slots. All other channels still said "No Data Available".
My next step was to run TV Server Config. again and delete all of my channel mappings. I remapped all but the two channels I don't care about, this time to The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) and the appropriate network and timezone. Did the Grab Now thing, checked MP but still no data except RTV and it's never ending "Paid Programing"

Here's where things get strange! When I started this post I disabled the WebEPG plugin, and started stepping through the DVB EPG steps above to keep everything as accurate as possible. When I got to the point where I had disabled DVB EPG, reselected WebEPG, remapped all channels to tv.yahoo.com and did a scan I noticed the scan took about ten times as long as it did the other times. So I ran MP again and found I had real info in the TV Guide. The only problems I have now is that one channel still has "Paid Programming" in all time slots and the guide shows everything airing an hour before it actually airs. Hopefully some of you kind folks can help me out with those little problems.

 

[Sticks]

I've obviously done something wrong.

Did I post this in the wrong place?
Should I have included my system info? I filled out the System Info section when I singed up for the forums and thought it would be listed or at least a link to it with my post.
Should I have included log files even though I just need some general setup help?
Did I include way to much information for anyone to even want to read it?
Did I not include enough information?

I have a few more questions related to EPG data. If anyone can answer even one of them please jump in. I'm stuck and have tried everything I can think of.

1. How to force a DVB EPG scan? I read in one post where someone suggested a user rescan to get data for a missing channel. How do you do that?

2. Is there any way to clear the current data from the TV Guide? I have turned off the WebEPG plugin and been trying to get the DVB EPG option working. No matter what I try the data from the WebEPG scan remains in the guide. I tried removing all WebEPG mappings and rescanning. I tried removing all channels from the WebEPG mappings and rescanning.

3. Do I need to include my system info in post even though I filled in the info when I signed up?

4. Does anyone have specs. on how an xmltv.xml file should be laid out. I'll write my own scraper if I have to.

5. If a working TV Guide is not possible, is there anyway to name manual recordings? Every program I record is named manual_#.ts or Paid Programming_#.ts

 

[wouter1971]

Hi Sticks,

1) i believe this is not possible. I use xmltv plugin and have a batchjob running each day to retrieve the newest xmltv with mc2xml (do a search on google it's great and easy). Dvb epg scan enabled is handy to fill some gaps if the are there.
2) maybe you can backup all channeldata on the import/export tab in tv configuration and then delete all channels and do a restore of the channel data.
3) if you press the usercp menu in your profile you see a system info tab. Fill it please to get proper support here.
4) see answer 1 use mc2xml you'll love it.
5) n/a if you use the filled tv guide.

Greetings,

Wouter

 

[Sticks]

Hi Wouter,

Thanks for the reply! I did give mc2xml a try this afternoon and I'm pretty well sold on it. After running it the first time I had listings for all channels, that is a first. The guide listed times were still 1 hour ahead of the actual air time. I went back into MP TV Server config. and ran it again, selecting "Apply time compensation when loading tvguide.xml" and set it to 1 hour 0 min. Oddly, all listings were then listed 6 hours after they actually aired. I'm still experimenting with settings, a little guidance would probably save me a lot of time.

Hopefully my system info will now show up, I did fill in the info when I first singed up but found an option to display or not display it in my profile, it is now set to display.

 

[danweis]

Excuse me for jumping in here but I'm looking for the same information. I downloaded mc2xml and ran it and got the resulting file, however it outputs a xmltv.xml file and tv-server wants a tvguide.xml file. Is this just a rename process or am I missing something?

On a related note, is this the only way to get the TV Guide populated in MediaPortal?

Thanks,
Dan

 

[wouter1971]

Hi all,

Did you both see this line on the mc2xml website?

Create a folder for the EPG data (example: c:\mc2xml) and put the mc2xml.exe binary and a copy of xmltv.dtd in that folder (use a GUI file manager or command line)
So the xmltv.dtd is a requirement for it to function correctly.
Did you both download this file and copied it to the dir?

(mc2xml)

 

[danweis]

There is an excellent post here:

https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/...d-homerun-epg-setup-success-77732/#post578052

Starting at section 07, the entire process of dealing with mc2xml.exe and creating a tvguide.xml file is outlined in great detail.

I read this after posting my question here, so to answer your question, yes downloaded it, created c:\xmltv, copied the appropriate files to it and ran it. I have a valid tvguide.xml file. The mapping in TV-Server Configuration/Plugins/XmlTv/Mappings are correct (after a little fiddling with them).

However, I still have no program data in the TV Guide.

 

[wouter1971]

I think i cannot help you guys. It is USA specific i think. I just run mc2xml in separate windows schedule with a small script and have the mappings correctly in the xmltv plugin.
Remember that you have to run the mc2xml executable manual the first time to do the basic settings for retrieval. After the first time the schedule is enough.

 

[danweis]

Well, for some unknown reason, the program data has magically appeared. Thanks for all of your help.
Dan

 

[Sticks]

Hi Guys,

I finally have my TV Guide working properly. I never did get "Apply time compensation when loading tvguide.xml" working properly in the TV Server Config. XmlTv plugin settings. I finally went into my systems clock settings, looking for anything that could be wrong. In the Time Zone tab I found "Automatically adjust clock for Daylight Savings Time" was unticked. After checking the Daylight Savings Time checkbox my system clock jumped back one hour so I set the proper time and reran mc2xml.exe. I had to delete the mc2xml.dat file, otherwise it just told me my guide was up to date and exited. After running mc2xml I simply rename xmltv.xml to tvguide.xml for MP.

Danweis, I don't know what you are missing, hopefully some of what I've outlined below will help you. I'm seldom around on weekends thus the slow response. I do have my TV Guide working and will be glad to help if I can. Feel free to ask or even PM me if you like.

Wouter, thanks for your efforts! I've noticed the left pane in post have a "Thanked" number of times rating. If there is something I need to do in order to add one to your "Thanked" count, besides says thanks in the post, please tell me what it is.
Thanks again for your efforts.

There's some pretty good MediaPortal instructions at the mc2xml site at MediaPortal Instructions. The steps are numbered so I'll refer to the step numbers and point out the parts that were a little confusing to me. Hopefully this will help some other newbs to epg guide data.

Step 1. says to place a copy of xmltv.dtd in your mc2xml folder. I expected the link to xmltv.dtd to start a download of the file but it simply displayed a rather large text file in my web browser. I right clicked then clicked "Select All" and pasted the text into a text file I created and renamed to xmltv.dtd. Since I'm not sure exactly what a .dtd file is or how it should be laid out I'm far from sure this was the proper approach but it seemed to work.

Step 2. I skipped this one since I want most local channels anyway. I may do something here at a later date.

Step 3. says you must open a dos box and run mc2xml via the command line to get the tvguide.xml file. I did not do this, I just renamed the default xmltv.xml file to tvguide.xml and all seems well. I should point out that I'm still in the testing stage and have not scheduled mc2xml to run at a given time. I will probably create a batch file and follow the given command line instructions when I setup a scheduled time to refresh the guide.

Step 7. says to select your group. I've been playing with MP's channel grouping a bit so I have some odd groups. I simply selected "All Channels" here.

Steps 9 and 10. refers to channels and descriptions and simply says to do it without giving instructions. To complete this step I clicked the arrow that drops a list for each channel in the "Guide channel" list. I'm currently only using MP with OTA (Over The Air) channels so this was pretty easy for me. After dropping the "Guide channel" list I selected the appropriate selection for each "Tuning Channel".


One other problem I overcame:
After finally getting my Guide populated and displaying programs in the proper time slots I scheduled a couple test recordings. MP said it was starting to record and the little red "Record" dot came up in MP for the duration of the recording but nothing was saved in my F:\TV\LiveTvCapture which I had set as my "Recording folder". This seemed odd because I had successfully done some manual recordings before getting the Tv Guide working. After a good bit of digging I found that both WinTV (the simple pvr app. that came with my tunner card) and nPvr (the pvr app. I tried before finding MP) were both still listed in my Programs/Startup folder. After deleting both apps. from the startup folder and rebooting life is good. I successfully scheduled and recorded several programs while I was away for the weekend.

Dan,

It looks like I was a little late with my post to be any help to you. Glad you got it worked out.