What is the best FTA EPG for Oz? (1 Viewer)

jazZman

MP Donator
  • Premium Supporter
  • July 13, 2005
    44
    0
    Brisbane, Australia
    Hi Folks,
    I have been using MP now for about 7yrs in that time I have used many different EPGs from scrapers to that marvellous work of Angusman, to IceTV , to the "Freeview guide: (EPG provided over the air).
    While Freeview is OK, the Broadcasters are constantly screwing with the names of the shows so that my scheduled recordings don't happen. ICETV is better, but neither this one or Freeview indicates wether the program is a repeat or not.
    I've had a look at the forums, but there doesn't seem to be anything current for Australia.
    So, what are others from the Great Southern Land using? Do other have these problems or have messed up the setup?
    Thanks

    Jamie
     

    Shadime

    MP Donator
  • Premium Supporter
  • June 2, 2009
    106
    5
    Home Country
    Australia Australia
    Hello,

    I use the EPG over the air and like you say it is not perfect. My main grumble is that the time of the programs change daily by a few minutes so scheduled recording either dont record or record twice.

    Unfortunately I dont know of a better solution, but if you find one I would be keen to know.

    Regards

    Shadime
     

    mm1352000

    Retired Team Member
  • Premium Supporter
  • September 1, 2008
    21,578
    8,227
    Home Country
    New Zealand New Zealand
    I use the EPG over the air and like you say it is not perfect. My main grumble is that the time of the programs change daily by a few minutes so scheduled recording either dont record or record twice.
    I note that the EPG Collector mentioned by thekiwi is able to round times to the nearest 5 minutes. Don't know if that could assist...
     

    aidbish

    MP Donator
  • Premium Supporter
  • March 7, 2007
    207
    20
    righthandside 3/4 way up
    Last edited:

    Lichloathe

    MP Donator
  • Premium Supporter
  • July 25, 2007
    200
    184
    Home Country
    Australia Australia
    I too use OTA due to the amount of trouble I have had over the years. However I found a host that has the shepherd xml's. It requires extracting and renaming but I managed to get one to import ok.
    I haven't tried to use it regularly but I'm sure it can work.
    http://www.siliconhill.com.au/shepherd/
     

    kmarkot

    MP Donator
  • Premium Supporter
  • September 20, 2007
    38
    4
    24
    Home Country
    Poland Poland

    kiwijunglist

    Super Moderator
  • Team MediaPortal
  • June 10, 2008
    6,746
    1,751
    New Zealand
    Home Country
    New Zealand New Zealand
    recommend epg collector, there is a setup guide for NZ in the NZ section of the team mediaportal wiki, but aussie setup is pretty much the same.
     

    kmarkot

    MP Donator
  • Premium Supporter
  • September 20, 2007
    38
    4
    24
    Home Country
    Poland Poland

    karl10247

    Portal Pro
    November 8, 2011
    135
    17
    53
    Home Country
    Great Britain (UK) Great Britain (UK)
    Hi All.

    Just thought id share my experiences with oz FTA EPG grabbing

    Ive tried three solutions:
    Standard OTA DVB-T grab through the mediaportal client
    Icetv via xmltv plugin
    EPGcollector via xmltv plugin

    Heres what i found:
    OTA: Easy to setup, works well for program titles and descriptions only. No episode titles, series/episode numbers or genres
    Icetv: Easy guide to follow on the icetv site to setup in xmltv plugin. About 70% of shows have an episode title, about 60% have series/episode number. (note in mp config->tv client you have to show episode info: number + title for episode titles and series/episode numbers to appear). Genres are problematic, it appears icetv passes two genres across for movies the first being the actual genre then followed by movie e.g. drama, movie. MP only picks up the first genre so it is impossible to colour code your epg to highlight all movies.
    EPG Collector: Slightly more difficult to setup, i used this guide to a certain extent but modified for the perth region: http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=126&topicid=111044. I told EPG collector to get MHEG 5 data for each frequency available and also asked it to "create episode tags from description". Creating the tvguide.xml was straightforward and pretty easy to import via xmltv plugin. Guide data seems to have accurate program titles but no episode titles, series/episode numbers or genres.

    So basically i figured icetv was the best, although not perfect

    Any thoughts to improve epgcollector or the icetv genre issue?

    Regards
     

    Users who are viewing this thread

    Top Bottom