TV Tuner on PC (1 Viewer)

[Cliff Conway]

Noobie Question Alert.

Is a TV Tuner card mandatory.

I have just started looking at MP2 and trying to extract some TV scheduling info using WEBEPG.

My question is does my PC have to have a TV Tuner card for the extraction of TV scheduling info.

If the answer is yes, is there anyway to extract TV scheduling info with MP2 without a TV Tuner card in place?

WebGrab Plus has this functionality - is it also available in MP2?

Thanks in advance,

 

[mm1352000]

Hello Cliff

I have to say this is a bit of an unusual request. What exactly are you trying to achieve? I ask because there may well be other programs that are more suitable for achieving your goal.

My question is does my PC have to have a TV Tuner card for the extraction of TV scheduling info.

The answer depends on what you mean by "extraction of TV scheduling info".

If you mean program names, start and stop times etc. (which we'd call "EPG data"), then no you don't need a tuner. You may (I'm not sure) find that channels are required, but those can be created manually (or generated with a script, and then imported).

 

[Cliff Conway]

Thanks for your response.

Sorry for the confusion. I mentioned using WEBEPG in my post as I thought that would make it clear that EPG data is what I am interested in - unless WEBEPG provides other info?

I am using the "MediaPortal 2 TV Configuration" applicaton which was created when I installed MP2. I have configured the "Plugins" to use "WEBEPG". I have then added various "TV Mappings" by using the "Channel Selection" dialog and then saved. So far I have tried around 10 different selections and when I "Grab" I always get "Total Channels Imported 0" and "Total Programs Imported 0" and the "TVguide.xml" contains no EPG data.

My first assumption was that MP2 needs a TV Tuner card. However, your answer confirms that this assumption was incorrect.

So it looks like either my installation is in some way at fault (i have re-installed the package twice using custom installation and installing everything available) or there is something more I need to set related to WEBEPG extraction. You mentioned "channels". The only thing I have tried related to channels is setting the "Group" to "All Channels" with in the "TV Mappings" tab. I will check the documentation related to channels.

However, given what I have added to the issue above, does anything else cross your mind.

Thanks in advance,
--- Post updated ---
Sorry I should have added that I have used other programs (3 of) which have produce EPG data with no issues. I am researching various options to see which provides the most comprehensive EPG data - my research may result in using an amalgamation of programs.

EPG data is all that I am interested in i.e the output to either the file TVguide.xml or to the TV database. Having read the documentation related to channels I am really only interested in mapping channels if this is necessary to achieve my goal of getting EPG data.

 

[mm1352000]

Sorry for the confusion. I mentioned using WEBEPG in my post as I thought that would make it clear that EPG data is what I am interested in - unless WEBEPG provides other info?

No worries.
The only thing that confuses me is that people don't generally use TV Server solely as an EPG grabber. I would have thought there'd be better options for you... but maybe there aren't.

However, given what I have added to the issue above, does anything else cross your mind.

I'm not an expert with WebEPG, but I'm pretty sure it won't download any data unless the WebEPG channel is mapped to a channel listed in either the "TV Channels" or "Radio Channels" section (ie. TV Server channels). As per my previous reply: if you haven't got a tuner, you'd have to somehow create or import TV Server channels to have something to map against in WebEPG.

The other thing is...
If your forum profile info is correct, you're based in the UK. A bunch of the UK XMLTV and/or WebEPG grabbers - Atlas, RadioTimes, and/or DigiGuide, and perhaps others - may be broken or no longer fully working. There were big changes to those services approximately six months ago that made them significantly less attractive than they had been in the past.

 

[Cliff Conway]

Thanks for the update.

I think that Channel mapping is the problem and I will investigate further how to create mappings without a tuner. As I said I am only interested in EPG data.

Regarding the big changes I was aware of this and my testing to date has used overseas (to UK) selections.

Many thanks again for you help. Have a good one.