Roll Call for Canadians - Guide listings for Canada

[olyar15]

Give XMLTV a try. It really works fine. I wouldn't let a lack of official Cdn listings from holding you back from buying SageTV.

[joedornan]

this isn't promising...

in an interview with htpcnews Sage said:

"Canadian EPG?
We've looked at it, and there is no tentative time line for it."

how come? is it a partnship issue?

http://www.htpcnews.com/main.php?id=interview3

[joedornan]

Hi folks,

After a bit of digging, i found out that SageTV's EPG is fueled by zap2it.com listings. This is good news because zap2it.com definitely offers Canadian listing services (I've been using them for a long time now).

So... can we 'flip the switch' on Canadian listing info? pretty please?

(I know I know, it's probably a little more than just flipping a switch... :-)

[mikbro]

It is all about the money, the Canadian listings (like the US listings) cost Sage money. They need be able to identify how they are going to recoup that.

For now, use the XMLTV listings, they are fairly complete and easy to use once you get it going. Though I would happily pay $ to have everything nice and tidy directly from Sage like the US listings.

Unfortunately they would need at least a couple hundred users paying $10/month to start to break even on the cost of the Canadian listings.

[davey_fl]

well you can count me in. I haven't tried the xmltv thing but would apreciate some guidance as to how to get and load the info!

Davey

[pawn]

Originally posted by davey_fl
well you can count me in. I haven't tried the xmltv thing but would apreciate some guidance as to how to get and load the info!

Davey

There's a HOWTO in the SageTV Service forum.

[davey_fl]

Thanks for that, it helped a bit - but or the canadian channel listings, where/how to you download them? The howto indicates that there are two scripts, a NA grabber and a UK grabber (neither of which were with the dload that I tried). There doesn't seem to be a CA grabber??

[mikbro]

NA covers Canada, you just enter your postal code when going through the setup.

[denimarhat]

I found the xmltv works great, but I haven't seen any guarantees that it will work in the version 2 currently in Beta. I'm running Sage on trial and knowing this would make me buy it.
Does anyone know?

[joedornan]

I wonder if people in this thread could explain very briefly what if any drawback there is to XMLTV? I was under the impression that full integrated EPG was better but am not sure why... (granted this isn't a Canadian only issue, but it seems to fit the current discussion about XMLTV as an option for Canadians...

[pawn]

1. It's been said that the quality of the XMLTV data varies depending on your area. The only problem I've ever seen is that the rerun/firstrun flag is never set, meaning Sage thinks all shows are first run. This is very important when settings favourites, when possibly only wanting (for instance) new Simpson's episodes, instead of the 7000 reruns shown every week.

2. From time to time, Zap2it (the source of the guide data for XMLTV) changes the format of the data, meaning we're dependent on the XMLTV developers to update the software if and when changes occur. This can take a few days sometimes. It's happened three times since this time last year (that I know of).

That's all I can complain about.

[davey_fl]

well there are a few drawbacks. First, it looks like you can only keep 9 days of info at a time - maybe this isn't a big deal for some. Also, it's a bit clunky loading the info in. Yes the script works ok but I've found you have to remove your tuner card and re-add it to get the listings to update. If this wasn't necessary I would say xmltv is great. Also, channels aren't recognized properly for the guide colors etc, such as the movie channels. From what I understand there is no way to tell the guide that channel x is a movie channel.

[pawn]

Yes the script works ok but I've found you have to remove your tuner card and re-add it to get the listings to update.

Unless I'm misunderstanding you, you're really doing this the hard way. To force a listing update, simply remove a channel from your guide using Channel Setup, then sleep, then re-add the channel and BOOM, forced guide update.

[Lester Jacobs]

Originally posted by davey_fl
well there are a few drawbacks. First, it looks like you can only keep 9 days of info at a time - maybe this isn't a big deal for some. Also, it's a bit clunky loading the info in. Yes the script works ok but I've found you have to remove your tuner card and re-add it to get the listings to update. If this wasn't necessary I would say xmltv is great. Also, channels aren't recognized properly for the guide colors etc, such as the movie channels. From what I understand there is no way to tell the guide that channel x is a movie channel.

The guide data always updates automatically for me using xmltv. I've never had to do anything in Sage to "force" an update.

Regards
Lester

[davey_fl]

nope that does not work for me. I have to remove my source, go through setup again, and re-add the source, enter TRIAL, 00000, choose xmltv, and THEN it updates the listings. I've tried every other way I can think of and this is the only way I can get it to update.

[pawn]

Are you being patient? It usually takes a couple of minutes to fully propogate.

[davey_fl]

yup, and when it does propogate you can always here the hard drive reading (and see the led blinking), but there is no activity at all...

[davey_fl]

any ideas anyone? It's a real pain to have to remove my source and re-add it every time I want to do an epg update? Possibly reinstall the whole package and start from scratch?

thx

[pawn]

Originally posted by davey_fl
any ideas anyone? It's a real pain to have to remove my source and re-add it every time I want to do an epg update? Possibly reinstall the whole package and start from scratch?

thx

Not sure what to suggest, since as far as I know, the method I described has always worked for everyone.

Let's be clear: you want to force SageTV to update the EPG data after downloading a new XMLTV file, right?

I go in to Detailed Setup, Channel Setup, remove a channel, exit the settings and put Sage to sleep. Then I wake Sage up and go back and re-add that channel. I put her to bed again, wake her up and open the guide.

You can see some channels updating right away (assuming you had no data before) and if you keep scrolling through the guide, all channels eventually have new data.

Maybe if you describe your symptoms?

[davey_fl]

pawn thanks for the reply. Here's my situation:

SageTv Version: 1.4.10
xmltv plugin from Corykim
xmltv version 0.5.24

xlmtv in C:\xmltv
Sage installed in: C:\Program Files\Frey Technologies\SageTV

OS: Windows XP Pro

So when I run the update with -9 days (exact code shown below) it grabs the xml data no problem and copies it over to the Installed SageTv directory as noted above.

Code from the xmltv Howto in SageTv Service (thanks Robogeek):

c:
cd\xmltv
xmltv tv_grab_na --configure --auto-new-channels add --auto-missing-channels remove
xmltv tv_grab_na --listings c:\xmltv\TVDatapre.xml --days 9 --listings-overwrite true
xmltv tv_sort --by-channel --output c:\xmltv\epgdata.xml c:\xmltv\TVDatapre.xml
copy "c:\xmltv\epgdata.xml" "c:\Program Files\Frey Technologies\SageTV"
exit

I can check the files and they are new xml files once the script is finished. I then go into Setup, Channel Setup and remove a channel, right arrow and then put sage to sleep. I then bring it back from sleep mode and re-add the channel that was just removed and put it to sleep again. I then wake SageTv up again and go into the guide. No new epg data. There is also no increased hard drive activity indicating an update is occuring. My only way to force the update seems to be entering Setup, Setup Wizard, Remove my Hauppauge Source, Complete Setup. I then go back into setup, Setup Wizard, Add Source, Choose my Hauppauge PVR250, enter TRIAL, enter 00000, choose xmltv, hit enter, and NOW it updates the EPG. But you can see why I don't want to go through this step everytime.

I have tried shutting down SageTv before the update to no avail. I was suggested that maybe I need to get different versions of the xmltv or use a different plugin than corykim, but I thought I'd ask you guys who already have it working.

Thanks you advance for any help you can offer.

Davey