Program images/icons/artwork in EPG (1 Viewer)

[opencode]

I'm moving from Windows Media Center + Xbox360 extender to a Windows PVR backend + Kodi on a Raspberry Pi 2 for the frontend. I'm trying to decide which PVR backend to use and hoping for as much of a WMC-like EPG experience as possible.

For the EPG, it looks like MediaPortal supports quite a bit. Having artwork/images/icons for each program appears to be the biggest gap. (Unless this is supported already and I'm just missing it?)
The xmltv format supports icons for each program (icon element under programme element):
http://xmltv.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/xmltv/xmltv/xmltv.dtd

From a quick look at the code for MediaPortal, it seems like there isn't a place to store this information in the MP database. Is that conclusion correct?
https://github.com/MediaPortal/MediaPortal-1/blob/master/TvEngine3/TVLibrary/TVDatabase/Program.cs

For the Kodi plugin, it looks like basically every other piece of data Kodi supports is available through the MP plugin, which is great; strIconPath is the one significant gap I see:
https://github.com/kodi-pvr/pvr.mediaportal.tvserver/blob/master/src/pvrclient-mediaportal.cpp#L502

Any thoughts on how hard it would be to add support for program artwork end-to-end (xmltv grabber, database, Kodi plugin)? Is this something likely to be done anytime soon? If needed, I'd consider contributing the code - if this isn't currently planned work, would a pull request here be welcomed?

Thanks,

David

 

[mm1352000]

Hello and welcome David!

I'm moving from Windows Media Center + Xbox360 extender to a Windows PVR backend + Kodi on a Raspberry Pi 2 for the frontend. I'm trying to decide which PVR backend to use and hoping for as much of a WMC-like EPG experience as possible.

Okay.

For the EPG, it looks like MediaPortal supports quite a bit. Having artwork/images/icons for each program appears to be the biggest gap. (Unless this is supported already and I'm just missing it?)

I'm personally not aware of way to get artwork for programs in the guide.

The xmltv format supports icons for each program (icon element under programme element):
http://xmltv.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/xmltv/xmltv/xmltv.dtd

From a quick look at the code for MediaPortal, it seems like there isn't a place to store this information in the MP database. Is that conclusion correct?
https://github.com/MediaPortal/MediaPortal-1/blob/master/TvEngine3/TVLibrary/TVDatabase/Program.cs

Yes, correct on both points.

For the Kodi plugin, it looks like basically every other piece of data Kodi supports is available through the MP plugin, which is great; strIconPath is the one significant gap I see:
https://github.com/kodi-pvr/pvr.mediaportal.tvserver/blob/master/src/pvrclient-mediaportal.cpp#L502

That's understandable, because AFAIK we don't have any such concept in our TV Server.

Any thoughts on how hard it would be to add support for program artwork end-to-end (xmltv grabber, database, Kodi plugin)? Is this something likely to be done anytime soon? If needed, I'd consider contributing the code - if this isn't currently planned work, would a pull request here be welcomed?

Yes contributions are welcome, and no I'm not aware of anybody working on such a feature.

There's a few things to keep in mind if you decide to try to implement this:

• TV Server is currently under code freeze while we develop a [significantly updated] new version [which we call TVE 3.5]. That means:
  1. Any and all code is subject to change at any time.
     
  2. We don't usually immediately integrate patches/changes etc. unless they're fixes for highly visible or critical stability issues.
• XMLTV is not TV Server's only source of EPG data. We also have built-in in-band DVB EPG support, and various other plugins including WebEPG (website scraper), SchedulesDirect (specific service) and ClickFinder (specific service). It would be ideal if the solution could work independently of the EPG data source.
• TV Server clients (eg. Kodi, MediaPortal etc.) are not always installed/running on the same "device" as TV Server. They also don't always have direct access to shared/common storage (eg. a folder that TV Server could store files in and clients could retrieve files from). It would be ideal if the solution was implemented in such a way that clients acquired resources (pictures etc.) via a TV Server interface rather than via direct access to a file system. The TV Server thumbnailer might be a good pattern for understanding how to do this.

Don't hesitate to ask if you have any questions.

Regards,
mm

 

[opencode]

Thanks, mm!

Related to the code freeze, I'd like to find a way to get this change into a MP 1.x release. (That's what I'm planning on using since MP 2.x isn't beta-quality yet.)
Any idea how long the code freeze is likely to last? Could this change go in during the code freeze? For TVE 3.5, will this be adopted by MP 1.x, or is that for MP 2.x only?

I think this data should be able to work fine with other sources; specifically, I think SchedulesDirect has support for this in their protocol as well. I imagine it's just a matter of adding this field to the database/API and having some sources set it and others leave it empty, depending on whether they can provide this data.

For accessing the files from a different device, I was thinking of just preserving the original image URL. I think that might be the format needed when passing this data along to Kodi anyway. Does that approach sound reasonable?

Also, let me know if there's a better forum/place to continue the details of this discussion.

Thanks,

David

 

[Edalex]

Nice proposal!

 

[regeszter]

Related to the code freeze, I'd like to find a way to get this change into a MP 1.0 release.

You may build an own installer and use it.