Newcomer has questions/issues (1 Viewer)

[Anthony Donegan]

I currently use SageTV which i find excellent, but I need a replacement for several friends currently using MC and possibly myself if I move from Sage.

1) Sage and MCE in the USA instantly set up your EPG, Mediaportal seems to require a LOT of work. For example, using the HDHOMERUN Prime with cablecard yields me 596 channels. With the other media programs you just edit your channels and you are done. Using the XML plugin with MP1, I get channels numbered from 1 to 596 and the channel labels are the ones in the cable card datastream (ie: WCBS___WCBS_CBS). The other media programs would show: 802 WCBS. My cable system's channel (802) and the broadcaster name (WCBSHD). MP1 yields "1 WCBS___WCBS_CBS". This means I have to edit all 200 odd channels that i want to use. There must be a better way than that.

2) I have MP1 installed and configured. It has my tuners and guide info as above but it only allows 1 recording directory. In SageTV I use 2 different drives for a large amount of space. Sagetv allocates the drive to receive a recording based on space and bandwidth. If one drive has much more space it will use that or if 3 recordings are going to drive 1 the next might go to drive 2. can multiple Recording Directories be set up in MP1?

3)I set up Music (source: NAS) and that works fine and has metadata. I set up Video (Source: Network Share) and the database gets populated by 300+ movies, etc. When I click the "video" tab on the home screen, the screen just blinks and nothing happens. Movies are in 2 directories. 1 Directory is video files with a cover jpg of the same name. The other is a Directory of DVDs ripped to disk with a "folder.jpg" cover file in each subdirectory. Anyone know why I can't bring these up?

4) There seems to be little activity with MP2, is it still being developed? Should I be looking at it?

 

[mm1352000]

Hello and welcome!

1) Sage and MCE in the USA instantly set up your EPG, Mediaportal seems to require a LOT of work.

Sage and MCE have a guide data service (which MS and Google pay for). We can't afford such a service. Hence the situation.

Using the XML plugin with MP1, I get channels numbered from 1 to 596...

Could you post a screenshot of what you're looking at please.

TV Server should have the correct cable system channel numbers. You can check this in the TV Channels section in TV Server configuration, "channel number" column. It sounds like you may want to untick "select channels by index" and tick "show channel numbers" here:
http://wiki.team-mediaportal.com/1_...Configuration/22_TV/TV_Client#Channel_numbers

...and the channel labels are the ones in the cable card datastream (ie: WCBS___WCBS_CBS).

Sorry, there's no way for us to get around that. The "pretty" WCBS name you see in Sage and MCE comes from their paid-for guide data service.

2) Can multiple Recording Directories be set up in MP1?

You can have different directories for each tuner, but you can't have multiple directories for a single tuner.

3. Anyone know why I can't bring these up?

Not without log files so we can examine your configuration etc.

4) There seems to be little activity with MP2, is it still being developed?

Yes. There's probably more meaningful activity happening with MP2 than with MP1.

Should I be looking at it?

Completely up to you.
MP1 and MP2 can be installed on the same PC, so there's nothing stopping you.

 

[Anthony Donegan]

I'll try the guide suggestion. Meanwhile here are my logs for the videos issue.

 

[mm1352000]

Thanks for the log files.

They show that you've somehow managed to disable the videos plugin:

<plugins>
...
<entry name="Videos">no</entry>
...
</plugins>
<plugindlls>
...
<entry name="GUIVideos.dll">no</entry>
...
</plugindlls>

To fix this, you can simply re-enable the video plugin in the "plugins" section of MediaPortal configuration.
http://wiki.team-mediaportal.com/1_...guration/MediaPortal_Configuration/95_Plugins

 

[Anthony Donegan]

Thanks for you help, it has been spot on. I now have the videos coming up. I've set up the WEBEPG plugin and set up the config mappings but I can't get it to work. The Channel names from the tuner import, but when I hit automap to pull the data based on the site names, it just reads "loading configuration" and hangs. Attached is xml file.

 

[mm1352000]

Thanks for you help, it has been spot on.

No problem, happy to help any time.

Attached is xml file.

You have a syntax error in there.
Replace the ampersands (&) in the channel IDs with "&amp;". For example, "A&E____A&E" should be "A&amp;E____A&amp;E". It's an XML syntax thing.

 

[RonD]

I was going to reply with the same comment that the & symbol causes problems with the xml code, you need the fix mm showed. You can check for this using firefox or chrome to open your www_imdb_com_07065.xml file (drag file into firefox window). I find firefox does the best job of showing where the problem is.

XML Parsing Error: not well-formed

Line Number 78, Column 26:
    <Channel id="A&E____A&E" siteId="AETV" />
-------------------------^

side comment to mm, the 2nd time a user got tripped up with & for A&E, I'll look into adding some text in the setup guide, but for a new user they are not likely to understand why this is a problem, I know I would not have figured out what was going on when I 1st started using MePo

 

[Anthony Donegan]

After fixing the syntax I still get nothing. When I first hit "import" the far left column "EPG Name" populates with the channels from the tuner. When I hit automap, Channelid populates and the grabber field shows the proper filename with zipcode. Channelid is the same as in the file and a copy of "EPG Name". Channel Name is blank and I guess it should be the "siteId" values. Running the grabber reports 0 records found.

 

[mm1352000]

side comment to mm, the 2nd time a user got tripped up with & for A&E, I'll look into adding some text in the setup guide, but for a new user they are not likely to understand why this is a problem, I know I would not have figured out what was going on when I 1st started using MePo

Yeah, I remember a previous occasion too. Unfortunately this probably can't easily be overlooked with code. Ampersand simply isn't a valid character, and so the .NET XML parser is quite within its rights to trip on it.

I've been thinking...
It seems like the channel IDs are the same for everybody. In other words, I mean guide data for "A&E" in Dallas is the same as for New York... except for the time difference. So, rather than having people customise their own XML files, it may be better to put all possible channels in the XML we include. Then people just have to put in their zip code and match the channels up. Should be much less error prone.

 

[mm1352000]

When I first hit "import" the far left column "EPG Name" populates with the channels from the tuner. When I hit automap, Channelid populates and the grabber field shows the proper filename with zipcode. Channelid is the same as in the file and a copy of "EPG Name".

That sounds right.

Before you ran the grabber, did you do this:

1. Select WebEPG > General,
2. Enable Write Program to TV Server database
3. Select the checkbox for Delete old programs before import (Recommended!).
4. Press Save to save the setup
5. Press Grab Now! to start the grabber.

Particularly step 5 - very important.