Ninemsn tv guide flakey? (1 Viewer)

[htpcoz]

Hi,

I'm currently using the tvxb program to scrape the program guides from ninemsn. And to the most part it has worked really well, however the nature of tvxb is that it assumes in a columnised listing, a program will be at a particular number column.

I have both FTA and cable, so I can't use D1XMLTV anymore as it no longer carries the cable channels.

This is pretty good most of the time, however I've noticed once before, and just again now... that sometimes the ninemsn guide just misses out the channels for FTA at the moment the guide is missing seven, ABC2 and SBS news.

The optus listing often misses out ACC, Al-Jazeera, and ANT..

Now while I don't want these channels, it stuffs up the numbering of the remaining columns.

I'm wondering a few things;

1) is there a grabber I can use that will get FTA and Optus Cable, and is configurable with timezones (as I'm in brissy where the FTA is on time, but the guides are 1 hour out for the cable) ?

2) Is there a bad time to use ninemsn where the data is incomplete?

3) or better... is there a good time to use ninemsn eg. in the early mornings of every thursday

4) am I better off giving ninemsn the flick and try something else

5) Is there a better way to configure tvxb to use column heading names rather than ordinal positions?

I used to use TVHarvest before it was changed over to ninemsn, I'm not sure where to download the newest one for ninemsn... That said, I would assume it will probably have the same problems that tvxb does.

phew... enough for one session...

 

[Callifo]

Bladerunner pro now handles ninemsn and its very quick (under 7 mins for a 7 day schedule of every fox channel). Get it off www.xpmediacentre.com.au

Had a bit of a scare yesterday, as ninemsns tvguide looks like they had pulled pretty much all the channels but it seems to be good again today.

 

[thechad]

Anyone else find that ninemsn has changed their site listings?

I am running an old version of tvxb and it aint working anymore?

HTML source seems to be encoded and not in plain text, havent looked into it too much hoping someone else has an easy answer?

 

[James]

Hi thechad,

I'm sorry to comfirm this is true. I have just check ninemsn. They are encoding the text in the HTML source and using Javascript to decode the text.

This means that all current Ninemsn grabbers will no longer work. It would be still possible to write something that runs the Javascript to decode the text (As this is what the web browser does) .

However, I would take this as a sign that Ninemsn no longer want their site's data grabbed. If this is the case then a new grabber developed to process this current change, may just prompt more site changes. It is question of who gives up first or if it is worth the effort.


Cheers,

/James

 

[madaz]

So with this development is there any curront working grabber that are available no mater how limited the data is,

Ultimately all i need is program names and scheduled times so that i can schedule my recording.

 

[James]

Hi Madaz,

WebEPG will still work, it currently supports the following sites:

sbs.com.au
abc.com.au
yahoo.com.au
d1.com.au

Between these site you should be able to at least get program names. Descriptions and extra data is a bit more of a problem.

The yahoo config will be soon updated to include pay tv channels.

Hope this helps,

/James

 

[Callifo]

New Bladerunner pro out which uses java to decode the page Back to ninemsn.

 

[BigBuddha]

New Bladerunner pro out which uses java to decode the page Back to ninemsn.

I can't seem to get the new ver to operate properly. Is it still using tvharvest or quickguide? Or is it just the bladerunner exe now?

Can you send me your configs? And does the new version still work for fox as well as fta?

 

[Callifo]

On the xpmediacentre site, you download BRP again. It says its from October but opening it you find its only from 2 days ago.

Its using tvharvest and a javascript grabber which now produces a slightly different file. The file now misses the channel list at the beginnning and so MP wont recognise it. If you add them manually then it works fine again. Ive dont this for now until I can work out how to get a script to add the channel list at the start.

 

[BigBuddha]

Its using tvharvest and a javascript grabber which now produces a slightly different file. The file now misses the channel list at the beginnning and so MP wont recognise it. If you add them manually then it works fine again. Ive dont this for now until I can work out how to get a script to add the channel list at the start.

The version I downloaded doesn't contain tvharvest. Does it do the fox channels?

If you send me your channel list and tell me the name of the file that you want to add them to I can write you a small util in C++ to add the channel list into the file each time it is run. It will take me a couple of days though cause I am in the process of reinstalling my system from scratch