[Plugin] EPG Cleaner & Schedule Repair (3 Viewers)

[SciDoctor]

Many thanks.

This is an excellent plugin.

From a very professional mp extension manager instal. without issues.
Downloaded plugin, stopped TvService, installed plugin and restarted TvService with plugin enabled.
Opened SetupTv and with instructions.

The instructions were extensive and clear, you do need to be patient and read everything.

Mine was a simple need; removal of " New: " which has blighted my EPG and recordings.

I can see though there is much flexibility and power to what the plugin can do.

I would like to see 'case sensitivity' of the searches to be agnostic so that New and NEW and NeW etc are all treated the same.
Maybe it is already there and I missed it.

Thanks again

 

[hurley]

Hi @SciDoctor, that's some very encouraging feedback. Thanks very much!

I would like to see 'case sensitivity' of the searches to be agnostic so that New and NEW and NeW etc are all treated the same.

You can make any filter case insensitive using the regex switch (?i) at the start of your regex expression.
In your case the filter expression would look like this: (?i)^New:\s (Assuming New is at the beginning of the line. If not remove the ^)

There was a global case insensitive option in the previous beta release but I dropped it in favour of using the regex switch - for flexibility again.
...perhaps it would be worthwhile adding a checkbox to each filter for this setting...

If you ever need to quickly check on regex syntax, the red R at top right of the plugin settings page will open the Regular Expression Reference and the index at the top will jump to the section of interest.

I'm glad to hear the plugin is useful to the MP community. Cheers.

EDIT: Added quote.

 

[MadibaJ]

I've recently been juggling between WMC and MePo trying to decide which backend to settle on. The jury was out until I found this. Fantastic plugin and easy to set-up. Also being in Aus I just copied your settings straight from the help file -awesome.

Could you please explain a bit more on dynamic guide data, I'm not sure how this can help me. I use EPGCollector to pull and lookup data every midday.

 

[hurley]

G'day @MadibaJ, nice to see another Aussie here

Could you please explain a bit more on dynamic guide data, I'm not sure how this can help me.

Dynamic refers to the ability for broadcast (DVB) guide data to be adjusted at any time by the networks, particularly for cases like sport that over-runs or breaking news that might alter their intended scheduling.
Of course this depends on them actually updating the data they send with the TV signal and Grabbing that data frequently.

Here in Oz and possibly other regions too, the networks tend to layout the weeks programing in block format ie:

8:30 - 10:30 Movie xyz
10:30 - 11:30 Late News​

Then as the broadcast time approaches they fine tune the scheduling, usually by only a few minutes eg:

8:32 - 10:36 Movie xyz
10:36 - 11:28 Late News​

These small changes are enough to break certain schedule types, something which Schedule Repair aims to address.

In contrast, web based guide data is rather static.
They don't tend to update program times for these small changes, so DVB data is more likely to be accurate.
Ideally you would combine the best of both worlds: DVB for timing information and web for 'enriching' the data with episode info and the like.
I believe there is a MP plugin here somewhere which is designed to do this epg enriching for you, though I haven't tried it myself.

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Regarding EPGCollector and other xmltv based EPG tools. This is something I've thought about...
The plugin at this stage is designed to work with DVB guide data, but there's no technical reason why it couldn't also work with xmltv too.
As long as there is an event the plugin can catch 'OnImport' of xmltv data.
I might look at implementing that feature for v1.1 if there's any interest in it.
...However I need to get my source organised and published for v1.0 first. (almost there...)

Hope that's some helpful info, cheers.

 

[MadibaJ]

I use EPG Collector as it pulls the Mheg5 freeview schedule which has more data than the OTA EPG stream, especially when it comes to episode sub titles.

You wouldn't happen to know what would happen if MePo pulled an OTA schedule would it totally overwrite the xmltv one? Or do nothing or just amend the times.

 

[MadibaJ]

I haven't yet come across a MePo guide enricher. Argus did have a very good one.

 

[hurley]

Ah MHEG5, I had heard this was better quality guide data but I couldn't get it to work last time I tried it.
Maybe I should give EPGCollector another go. Does the MHEG5 data also have channel Nine's spam like:
"(Includes Sneak Peek Whatever junk show they're pushing at the mo at 8:30PM)"?

Yes DVB would conflict with xmltv, I assume the DVB would overwrite the xmltv, but not sure.
However, if MHEG5 is better quality that's a very good reason to add support for xmltv/EPGCollector to the plugin.

Thanks for that tip.

I haven't yet come across a MePo guide enricher.

I'll see if I can find that plugin, maybe I just imagined it, but I'm sure it's somewhere...

 

[MadibaJ]

Yep, it is full of that spam, for some reason I wasn't getting any spam until a few weeks ago.

Ideally the order of data should be download xmltv - remove spam - run tvdb lookup - import data. (If the lookup doesn't work with spam)

I'll have a look at my xmltv tonight to see if the lookup matches series with spam in the title.

The bloke that looks after EPGCollector is a kiwi bloke and very helpful.

 

[hurley]

Yep, it is full of that spam

Well that's a shame. Kinda nullifies any advantage MHEG5 had over EIT data. Damn TV networks.

There must be existing tools out there to post-process xmltv data if you want to use EPG Collector as your data source.
I think EPG Collector itself has some filtering abilities too that might be worth trying.

MediaPortal's built in grabber has always been the most reliable and stress free way to get accurate data for me.
What would really be great is if MP adds support for MHEG5 data.
If we're lucky that may be part of the next TV Engine 3.5...

@mm1352000 might be the one to ask about that. (Another extremely helpful kiwi)
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I had another go at EPG Collector and got MHEG5 working. It looks to be clean and spam free!
I did notice some issues though like empty description fields or descriptions which were just the program title, where the EIT data had the correct info.
That could possibly be my config though as I haven't played with it much.
MHEG5 Looks very promising in any case.

 

[mm1352000]

What would really be great is if MP adds support for MHEG5 data.
If we're lucky that may be part of the next TV Engine 3.5...

@mm1352000 might be the one to ask about that. (Another extremely helpful kiwi)

It's on my "nice to have" list. Unfortunately I can't justify making it a priority because:

1. MHEG 5 has only been deployed in 5 countries (AU, HK, IE, NZ, UK).
2. Due to the popularity of HbbTV, it seems highly unlikely that MHEG 5 will be deployed in additional countries.
3. At least 3 of the above countries (AU, NZ, UK) have a parallel EIT feed.
4. The same 3 countries have effectively deprecated MHEG 5 in favour of HbbTv.

Nevertheless I'm still very interested to know more about the differences between MHEG 5 and EIT data in Australia. Having such information is really helpful for decision-making...