new US imdb_com grabber file, adds SubTitle support (2 Viewers)

[will_ssi]

Yeah, as long as the channel specific URLs are capturing the zipcode entered from the main listing, it could work.

From my brief testing, it looks like the channel specific URL is for an entire region of the US (east cost, central, etc), with zipcode specificity set through a cookie; i.e. the scraping model used with the imdb xml file wouldn't translate. For example, using your link if I enter my zipcode, the URL of the entire channel listings reflects it. If i go a specific channel's page (i.e. TV Listings: Find Local TV Listings for your favorite Channels, TV Shows and Movies- Zap2it) in a private browser window, there is no zipcode specified on that site. Station number (stnNum) might still be local and pulled from my zip entered on the schedule page, but its hard to tell from the URL format.

 

[mm1352000]

A few quick tests suggest that the station number is not local.

Even IMDB didn't use the zip code parameter. It used the "tv_prov" parameter, as detailed in our wiki.
WebEPG - TVGuide

No doubt time will need to be spent figuring all this stuff out.

 

[mm1352000]

Right.

Try these two ESPN URLs:
TV Listings: Find Local TV Listings for your favorite Channels, TV Shows and Movies- Zap2it
TV Listings: Find Local TV Listings for your favorite Channels, TV Shows and Movies- Zap2it

First is for an LA version; second is for a NY version.

 

[blackss69]

As a bypass to the IMDB TVGrid problem is there any way to manually select a time and channel to record? Or could we manually enter data in an.xml file to simulate the imput to allow us to import.

Thanks

 

[RonD]

At 1 level I'm amazed the Nov-2012 imdb grabber worked for 5 years with no changes. The EPG-grid html did not change for 5 years. Not too surprised imdb stopped providing EPG listing info. I wonder how much traffic was from people looking at listing and how much was from robo-scrappers like webepg. I switched to Schedules Direct a few years ago, $25/yr = 1 cup of coffee per month.

If you want to use zap2it or some other EPG web page with webepg you will need to build a grabber from scratch, the grabbers are tuned to match the web page html. Start from Web-EPG and have fun getting up to speed with details. You will need the WebEPG Designer tool. The wiki link is broken (@mm1352000 could you fix wiki link?). I uploaded the tool to this message WebEPG trouble creating grabber for US radio stations

If you want to make your own scrapper, you might look at WebGrab+Plus WebGrab+Plus with the MP xmltv-plugin. They have a USA tv.com grabber, no idea if it works. I played with WebGrab+Plus grabber and thought it was more flexible and easier to use than webepg, but either option works.

There is a learning curve to reverse engineer the webpage html, get up to speed with how the scrapping tools work, and get the grabber working. A gotcha with the grabbers is low signal to noise ratio. If you "view source" for the grid webpage, the "epg grid info" is probably less than 10%-20% of the webpage. A 1 point I made a private change to the imdb grabber to follow the "program link" to grab the Season/Episode numbers and genre info. This worked for 1 channel 1 day but generated 10 times more webpage download traffic. It failed with timeouts when I tried 10 channels 7 days. I suspect imdb had some type of robo-scrapper detector and blocked my IP addr when they saw 1000s of webpage requests from my IP.

 

[mm1352000]

As a bypass to the IMDB TVGrid problem is there any way to manually select a time and channel to record?

Of course.
Use the "quick record" menu from within the "schedules" section to record by choosing a channel, start time and stop time:
View Schedules

could you fix wiki link?

Done.
P.S. Anybody can edit the wiki!

 

[W4ATL]

I just switched over to Schedules Direct and it works great. With all the trouble I had with the free stuff I'm willing to throw a few dollars at the problem. Having a good guide is worth it to me.

There were some channel lineup issues that ended up being on my end. For some reason 2.1-3 was mapping to 47.1-3. I ended up deleting and rescanning. I discovered another series of channels that were screwed up too. I deleted and re-scanned the affected channels.

There is another thread that talks about how to install the Schedules Direct plugin. He says to delete the channels and re-scan. To avoide any issues with matching the channel to the program I would run TV Server Configuration Setup, click TV Channels, highlight all the channels and delete them. Then do a Re-Scan. That should fix the minor issues with a few channels not lining up. You'll have to tweak the channels you want but that's not too much trouble. It's worth it.