uk tvtv vs. xmltv

[planetc]

Hi all, since it appears there are 'at least' a couple of active uk users here I thought I'd ask the question.....

Has anyone compared tvtv with xmltv since the support for tvtv was sorted? I dabbled with it at the beginning but there was very little data showing and I'm reluctant to change too much at the moment as I currently have a glitch free setup.
I'd just like to find out if there is any advantage to tvtv, perhaps more channels listed and/or superior listings?
Xmltv is pretty good, but could be more comprehensive.

[nielm]

quick summary based on my experience with tvtv so far...note I do not yet use TVTV on my live system.

TVTV:
Plusses

• better show/episode identification -- should help a lot to stop sage re-recording already watched movies/shows
• proper EPGID's with episode numbers (sometimes)
• when it works, it should be more reliable...

Minuses

• not free -- Subscription based.
• 60 channel limit
• Several missing channels including sports/ppv channels
• No informaton for +1h/+2h channels
• bleeding edge -- it is a new service from TVTV/Sage, and may still have problems...

[ben_gb]

I tested TVTV for about a day and I noticed an oddity in that a timeslot on BBC1 had the wrong programme title showing in the Sage Program Guide after the TVTV download. However, the XMLTV file and the TVTV website showed the correct program in the same slot.

I only noticed this because the (correct) title was the one I wanted to record so I couldn't understand why I couldn't find it while searching in Sage, even though it was correctly displayed in the Freeview EPG too. I tried forcing a redownload of the TVTV date, but it made no difference.

Also, doing the initial channel setup with TVTV was messy, as all the stations it supports seemed to be listed (including from France, Germany etc), so you have to page you way through 100s of irrelevant channels to find the ones relevant to Sky or Freeview. A part of the setting up of TVTV does ask which country you are in, so it seems odd that they cannot just send you the valid channels for that country.

Since my short test, I've been continuing with XMLTV, as that is what I've got to know best.

I would like to have better spotting of repeated showings. However, I also quite like having the full Radio Times reviews that are in XMLTV.

[robd]

It's disappointing that Frey still haven't sorted out TvTv after all this time.

I understand that most of you out there won't be interested but I thought that Frey might like the feedback.
I've basically given up on SageTV because of the lack of programme guide support in the uk.
If SageTV is a product for techies or people that are willing to learn then fine (I'm talking about XMLTV I guess). But to reach a mass audience it has to work out of the box.
There is a third choice and that is use another product. I've moved to Microsoft XP Media Center Edition 2005 and I'm very pleased.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting you guys should do the same.
I know that SageTV does a hell of a lot more than MCE but for people like me that just want to use it like a VCR then it's brilliant - and looks amazing - if you're shallow enough to care .
But the UK TV guide is pretty much seamless - correct channel numbers for Telewest out of the box as well!
Good luck everyone with SageTV - no doubt Frey will sort out the UK TV Guide issues now that I've moved to MCE

[ben_gb]

I agree, Robd...though give them a bit of a chance, as the TVTV feature is quite new and it will probably take time to get it working properly.

However, I do think Sage is missing a big opportunity by not directly supporting DVB-T cards (and other forms of DVB for that matter).

DVB-T (Freeview) is really big in the UK and in other parts of Europe, but currently Sage is cutting themselves off from this market, except amongst hard-core techies who've got the time, knowledge and patience to figure out one of the 'kludges' that is available (no disrepect AT ALL to the people who've developed these DVB plugins, but these aren't the kind of 'fit and forget' options which are needed to go into most people's living rooms).

At the moment, Microsoft MCE pretty much has the living room media PC market to itself in the UK, because I believe it is currently the only option which fully supports DVB available here (except perhaps for the free GB-PVR). There are numerous OEM/PC companies which produce PC boxes designed for the living room, but all are running MCE. Sage should be able to get into OEMs to allow them to produce a customised setup with which they can differentiate themselves, but without official DVB support that is impossible.

Ben

[nielm]

Originally Posted by nielm

• bleeding edge -- it is a new service from TVTV/Sage, and may still have problems...

I should have really emphaised that last line!
Ok having played with it, it is really buggy:

• non-unique EPxxx EPisode IDs given to all episodes of a series (such as Eastenders) which means that Sage thinks that they are all the same episode: you set watched on one, all are set as watched, and only one will ever get recorded.
• Episode ID's shared between channels so that program info for shows on French channels overwrite program info for shows on BBC1
• poor or no summary information (despite that info being on the TVTV web site!)

So, basically still unuseable for me

[Alfiegerner]

Originally Posted by ben_gb

DVB-T (Freeview) is really big in the UK and in other parts of Europe, but currently Sage is cutting themselves off from this market, except amongst hard-core techies who've got the time, knowledge and patience to figure out one of the 'kludges' that is available (no disrepect AT ALL to the people who've developed these DVB plugins, but these aren't the kind of 'fit and forget' options which are needed to go into most people's living rooms).

Don't mean to get too off-topic but just wanted to say that peterjb's my theatre plugin provides a really reliable and easy to setup way of using dvb cards with sage. I use it with a Nova-T card and its absolutely rock solid. It also allows you to distribute your cards across other machines on your network which for me is a big bonus.

The downside is that My Theatre costs an additional $40 (or 35 euros) but for me this was well worth it. The dvb hardware compatability and stability of My theatre are excellent. I run it in 'headless' mode (i.e. so that the video is not playing through My Theatre and sage acts as a client) so it doesn't use much resources at all.

[ben_gb]

Yes, I do use the MyTheatre plugin too, and it's pretty solid. But there are issues with Mytheatre itself (it's certainly not for the faint-hearted to setup), and people have been having problems things like slow channel changes. I also have a problem with it crashing on Windows shutdown and reboot, and needing the keyboard to be hauled out to complete the process. No good for a HTPC system in the living room!

[Alfiegerner]

Originally Posted by ben_gb

Yes, I do use the MyTheatre plugin too, and it's pretty solid. But there are issues with Mytheatre itself (it's certainly not for the faint-hearted to setup), and people have been having problems things like slow channel changes.

I though it was okay to setup - no more difficult than any other TV program at any rate. I had it and the sage plugin up and running in about 30 mins. Channel changes are a little slow but acceptable. I think those with dvb-s cards are experiencing slower channel changes. For me they take at most about 3 seconds. Changing the sage.properties as recommended in the latest docs seemed to help - by the by, I don't know if you've seen the latest version up?

I also have a problem with it crashing on Windows shutdown and reboot, and needing the keyboard to be hauled out to complete the process. No good for a HTPC system in the living room!

Yeah I know what you mean about the shutdown and reboot with My Theatre. I've found that you have to close My Theatre first - so long as you do that it's okay. I reboot my sage server every morning with a .bat script scheduled to run at 6 that closes My Theatre first:

cd "c:\Program Files\MyTheatre\"
mtstart.exe /close

shutdown -r -f -t 5

That seems to do the trick.

Sorry for hijacking the thread again (last time I promise !)

[Mahoney]

Any further word on the reliability of this? I'm about to put together a new system with Sage 4. Rather than going through the xmltv nightmare again, I'd rather use something easy out of the box - but it doesn't sound like the user experience is good!

[Mahoney]

That good eh?

[nielm]

I have not yet heard that the problems reported in my 12/Jan post above have been fixed...

[Mahoney]

Thanks nielm.