TV Guide Genres (Colors) - Not Working (1 Viewer)

[NRivera637]

[I move this as I think I posted it in wrong place]

I think this is the last hair-pulling configuration issue I have with MP 1.6 (and prior versions). I did dutifully and faithfully execute the search and die effort of searching for an answer but after 7 pacemaker recharges I am exhausted.

I am trying to get my TV Guide Genres to show up with them pretty colors I keep seeing all over the MP Website. Try as I may I cannot get mine to work. So I have compiled a few questions based on the comments I have encountered...

1. Are Genre Colors Skin Dependent..? If so, which Skin(s) allows Genre Coloring..?
(I tried Titan as shown but it won't work - MP GUI and Server Web EPG tweaked per setup instructions)

2. Is Genre Color functionality based on provider info..?
I use Comcast Cable in U.S.A. & IMDB for Guide info

3. If not provider dependent - where does Genre identifier come from..?

4. Is there a comprehensible setup/configuration writing anywhere known to work..?
(So far all I find does not work)

Ok, so now I sit with my Pacemaker plugged in & charging while taking a senior nap hoping to hear from someone.

- just kidding, no nap.

 

[mm1352000]

Hello again NRivera637

[I move this as I think I posted it in wrong place]

The original location was fine, however I've deleted that thread to avoid confusion. In general any configuration questions like this can go in installation/configuration support:
https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/forums/installation-configuration-support.53/

1. Are Genre Colors Skin Dependent..? If so, which Skin(s) allows Genre Coloring..?

(I tried Titan as shown but it won't work - MP GUI and Server Web EPG tweaked per setup instructions)

To be honest, I don't know for sure. I think the answer is yes though.
I do know:

1. Titan supports genre coloring.
2. No skin/interface will work unless you've configured TV Server correctly.

2. Is Genre Color functionality based on provider info..?

I use Comcast Cable in U.S.A. & IMDB for Guide info

Yes. So, the relevant point here is that you use IMDB.

3. If not provider dependent - where does Genre identifier come from..?

As above: the genre info comes from your guide data source. If your guide data source has the information and TV Server imports that information then you will be able to configure the UI to show colors.

4. Is there a comprehensible setup/configuration writing anywhere known to work..?

(So far all I find does not work)

I'm not sure... but it shouldn't be hard to figure this out.

1. Determine whether your guide data has the genre information.
2. Determine whether TV Server is importing that information.
3. Configure TV Server to understand the information.
4. Configure the colors in MP.

Part 1 and 2 can be done in one simple step. Open TV Server configuration and go here:
http://wiki.team-mediaportal.com/1_...Server_Configuration/05_DVB_EPG/EPG_Genre_Map

Look at the mapped and unmapped program genres lists.
If there are no entries in there then TV Server is not receiving any genre data and you won't get it working unless you switch to a different data provider.

If there are entries then proceed with step 3...

1. Select MediaPortal genre in the top list of 7 genres (documentary...).
2. Select the corresponding genre(s) from your provider in the "unmapped program genres" list.
3. Click "<<".
4. Repeat 1..3 for each MediaPortal genre.

Step 4. If you're using Titan, at this point all you should have to do is enable showing the colors as shown here:
http://wiki.team-mediaportal.com/1_...ion/MediaPortal_Configuration/13_GUI#TV_guide

Tick "enable guide coloring" and "enable program genre coloring".
Optionally, configure the colors on the "colors" sub tab.

After that, restart MediaPortal and you should be good to go.
Surely not too hard?

mm

 

[NRivera637]

Hey MM - thanks for reply. I already went all the steps you indicate above and they are set accordingly. Nothing ever shows up in 'EPG Genre Map' though. So I guess bottom line is that the WebEPG IMDB does not pull down Genre information for MP to use. I tried to search the WEB for a means to add a 'Genre' parameter but I could not find anything. Attached is the IMDB XML file I use (thanks to your update info yesterday). I don't see in it where I can flip on a 'Genre' field - couldn't find anything on web either. One of your partners there (didn't note name) might have indicated some time back that IMDB does not support ''Genres' - but I don't know if that has changed since. Does anyone know where I can identify parameters in the attached file to maybe locate a 'Genre' field I can switch on..? That might be only solution for WebEPG IMDB. Opinion..?

 

[mm1352000]

Hello again

I already went all the steps you indicate above and they are set accordingly. Nothing ever shows up in 'EPG Genre Map' though. So I guess bottom line is that the WebEPG IMDB does not pull down Genre information for MP to use.

I agree.

I tried to search the WEB for a means to add a 'Genre' parameter but I could not find anything. Attached is the IMDB XML file I use (thanks to your update info yesterday). I don't see in it where I can flip on a 'Genre' field - couldn't find anything on web either. One of your partners there (didn't note name) might have indicated some time back that IMDB does not support ''Genres' - but I don't know if that has changed since. Does anyone know where I can identify parameters in the attached file to maybe locate a 'Genre' field I can switch on..? That might be only solution for WebEPG IMDB. Opinion..?

I've looked at the website where this data is being scraped from:
http://www.imdb.com/tvgrid/2014-01-28/2000/?zip=77057&

Sadly for you, I don't see any genre information behind the scenes, therefore I don't see any way to make this work with IMDB. There is genre information when you click into the show detail but I doubt the grabber is going to be able to get that for you.

@RonD I think you may know more about this than I. Any comments?

mm

 

[NRivera637]

IMDB seems to be the easiest grabber to use as I've looked at others and they can give you brain pains. Looking at the XML script attached it seems there are unused parameters which might hold the answer to this but I don't have a primer or layout of what the parameters are or their syntax. I guess I'll keep looking for that and report back if found.

Meantime, if RonD has any suggestions I would surely appreciate any feedback. Thanks again MM, as always - excellent response.

Previously posted by RonD: Hoping this has changed since...

https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/...om-grabber-file-adds-subtitle-support.108360/

 

[RonD]

My updated version of the imdb_com grabber does not have support for categories/genres. When I got the SubTitle working I decided I was done with WebEPG, wrote some Setup Guide instructions that are in the Wiki, and moved on in life.

With work you might be able to add limited genre support if you are willing to work (do battle) with the WebEPG templates and tools. You can find more info about WebEPG looking at the following wiki sections. It also helps to use FireFox with Firebug to look at the gory details of the web page formats. Other browsers have similar web page tools.
http://wiki.team-mediaportal.com/1_...zation/EPG_Grabbers_and_Tuning_details/WebEPG

Xmltv/mc2xml is another option that has categories, but each program has multiple categories/genres that don't really play well with MePo. I've never tried Schedules Direct so I don't know what it supports and can't remember if WebGrab+Plus has useful genre support.

This is kind of a Goldilocks problem, imdb_com is "too cold" (no genres), mc2xml is "too hot" (3-5 or more) genres per show, so far I have not found a "just right" genre option. I another thread I uploaded a quick/dirty vbs script/hack to grind through the mc2xml categories and try to select 1 category per show but I'm not really happy with how that works. When I have time I putter around with making a smarter vbs hack but don't have a version I like. See
https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/threads/epg-genre-mapping.123776/

 

[NRivera637]

Understood - I took a whack at MC2XML but that was a bit too cumbersome for me. IMDB works fine now that you guys helped me through the kinks and is robust enough in itself to make it a keeper. There is a 'Genre' field in the IMDB DB so it's a matter of figuring out how to pluck it out. I will continue to stick with IMDB and fiddle with it to see if I can grab that 'Genre' field someday.

Meantime, thank you both (RonD & MM) for your great help and responsiveness on my issues and helping me to establish a stable setup. Getting bast the KWORLD UB435-Q issues was the biggest milestones. As I said before, the image quality from MP and Channel selections/availability way outpaces Windows Media Center - this, even as Comcast makes it difficult for accessing their content without a Box. Thank you both again, until next time..!

 

[DaltonST]

Regarding mc2xml being "too hot", it is easy to change the output of mc2xml to have different EPG categories (genres) than those on the input file, as well as to reduce them to a single category that is indicative of what the program truly is.

I have been using mc2xml for 2 years, and from the beginning used sed.exe on Windows 8 to change some symbols for Repeats [R] and News [NEWS]. Since I was using sed.exe anyway, I just added some more lines to my .bat file that runs mc2xml.exe and then sed.exe to clean up the EPG categories to my taste (my kids are all adults now). Examples shown below. These are obviously personal to me, but can easily be modified to suit yourself.
http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/sed.htm
http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/sed.htm

To make more complex changes that sed.exe cannot, I wrote a VBS script that is a generic template to manage EPG categories. I wrote it originally to put Movies as the first category so MediaPortal would properly classify Movies (since MP only uses the very first category), but it is generic and easily customizable. See the attached file at the bottom with a .txt extension that is really a .vbs file.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Part of my mc2xml.bat file that runs once a day for mc2xmldonator.exe, then sed.exe, and finally vbs:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
c:
cd c:\mc2xml

c:\mc2xml\mc2xmldonator.exe -b -c US -F -g 10001 -D mc2xml.dat -C mc2xml.chl -I xmltv.xml -o input.xml

c:
cd "C:\Program Files (x86)\GnuWin32\bin"

sed.exe -e "/<title lang=/ s/"*"/[R]/g" <"C:\mc2xml\input.xml" >"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp1.xml"
sed.exe -e "/.*News.*"[R]"/ s/"[R]"/"NEWS"/g" <"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp1.xml" >"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp2.xml"
sed.exe -e "/<title lang=/ s/ABC World News Now.*</ABC Early News [NEWS]</g" <"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp2.xml" >"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp3.xml"
sed.exe -e "/<title lang=/ s/ABC World News.*</ABC World News [NEWS]</g" <"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp3.xml" >"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp1.xml"
sed.exe -e "/<title lang=/ s/NBC Nightly News.*</NBC Nightly News [NEWS]</g" <"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp1.xml" >"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp2.xml"
sed.exe -e "/<title lang=/ s/CBS Evening News.*</CBS Evening News [NEWS]</g" <"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp2.xml" >"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp3.xml"

REM Delete meaningless categories that are redundant
sed.exe -e "/<category lang.*Series/d" <"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp3.xml" >"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp1.xml"
sed.exe -e "/<category lang.*Lifestyle/d"<"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp1.xml" >"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp2.xml"
sed.exe -e "/<category lang.*General/d" <"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp2.xml" >"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp3.xml"
sed.exe -e "/<category lang.*Soap/d" <"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp3.xml" >"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp1.xml"

REM Delete categories that are not desired
sed.exe -e "/<category lang.*Basketball<.*/d" <"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp1.xml" >"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp2.xml"
sed.exe -e "/<category lang.*Football<.*/d" <"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp2.xml" >"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp3.xml"
sed.exe -e "/<category lang.*Baseball<.*/d" <"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp3.xml" >"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp1.xml"

sed.exe -e "/<category lang.*Action and Adventure<*/d" <"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp1.xml" >"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp2.xml"
sed.exe -e "/<category lang.*Action.*/d" <"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp2.xml" >"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp3.xml"
sed.exe -e "/<category lang.*Suspense<.*/d" <"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp3.xml" >"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp1.xml"

sed.exe -e "/<category lang.*Fantasy<*/d" <"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp1.xml" >"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp2.xml"
sed.exe -e "/<category lang.*Horror<.*/d" <"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp2.xml" >"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp3.xml"
sed.exe -e "/<category lang.*Sci-Fi*<.*/d" <"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp3.xml" >"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp1.xml"

sed.exe -e "/<category lang.*Western<.*/d" <"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp1.xml" >"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp2.xml"
sed.exe -e "/<category lang.*Horror<.*/d" <"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp2.xml" >"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp3.xml"
sed.exe -e "/<category lang.*Science Fiction<.*/d" <"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp3.xml" >"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp1.xml"

sed.exe -e "/<category lang.*Talk.*<.*/d" <"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp1.xml" >"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp2.xml"
sed.exe -e "/<category lang.*Sci.*<.*/d" <"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp2.xml" >"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp3.xml"
sed.exe -e "/<category lang.*Golf<.*/d" <"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp3.xml" >"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp1.xml"

REM Change various to some other category
sed.exe -e "/<category lang=/ s/Public Affairs.*</News</g" <"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp1.xml" >"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp2.xml"
sed.exe -e "/<category lang=/ s/Current Events.*</News</g" <"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp2.xml" >"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp3.xml"

REM Change various to Pablum for later mass delete
sed.exe -e "/<category lang=/ s/Game Show.*</Pablum</g" <"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp3.xml" >"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp1.xml"
sed.exe -e "/<category lang=/ s/Religious.*</Pablum</g" <"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp1.xml" >"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp2.xml"
sed.exe -e "/<category lang=/ s/Kids.*</Pablum</g" <"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp2.xml" >"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp3.xml"
sed.exe -e "/<category lang=/ s/Children.*</Pablum</g" <"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp3.xml" >"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp1.xml"
sed.exe -e "/<category lang=/ s/Family*Children.*</Pablum</g" <"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp1.xml" >"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp2.xml"
sed.exe -e "/<category lang=/ s/Reality.*</Pablum</g" <"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp2.xml" >"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp3.xml"

REM Now mass delete Pablum and Other
sed.exe -e "/<category lang.*Pablum/d" <"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp3.xml" >"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp1.xml"
sed.exe -e "/<category lang.*Other/d" <"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp1.xml" >"C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp2.xml"
copy C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp2.xml C:\mc2xml\tvguide_draft.xml

REM Now run VBS to do complex EPG category manipulation using the simplified xml file output from sed.exe above
c:
cd c:\mc2xml
C:\Windows\System32\cscript.exe //NoLogo "C:\mc2xml\EPG_Category_Cleaner.vbs" "c:\mc2xml\tvguide_draft.xml" "c:\mc2xml\tvguide.xml"

REM clean up temporary work files
del C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp1.xml
del C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp2.xml
del C:\mc2xml\tvguidetmp3.xml
del C:\mc2xml\tvguide_draft.xml

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

-------- See the VBS file attached below. It is very customizable.

 

[gonzo90017]

Another option is using getcat.vbs https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/threads/epg-genre-mapping.123776/
I run every night when updating my EPG using PowerScheduler++

c:
cd "\MediaWah\Files\mc2xmlMP"
mc2xml.exe -f
cscript //NoLogo getcat.vbs C:\MediaWah\Files\mc2xmlMP\xmltv.xml C:\MediaWah\Files\mc2xmlMP\tvguide.xml

 

[Stéphane Lenclud]

Genre Color selection is working the same for StreamedMP skin.