Adding a 2nd tuner and XMLTV

[brewston]

Hi All

I'm thinking of adding a 2nd tuner to my system. Since I hooked up my Sky box to my PVR150 I have a spare aerial lead sitting there. My PC doesnt have room for another PCI card, so I was looking at WinTV-PVR-USB2

My concern is around the XMLTV lineups, as the aerial channels (1,2,itv & c4) are a subset of the Sky channels - can I use the same xmltv lineup and just alter the physical channel within the tuner definition ? eg ch4 is 104 on Sky and 66 on the aerial feed

I've read the threads on neilm's xmltv plugin that does multiple lineup,. I tried it briefly and it was lookingfor 1.xml 2.xml etc. Do I just create those files in my batch file ? (The one that takes the Alan Birtles output and copies into Sage directories)

Any comments ?

Thanks

Tim

[StephaneM]

Hello Tim,

Originally Posted by brewston

My concern is around the XMLTV lineups, as the aerial channels (1,2,itv & c4) are a subset of the Sky channels - can I use the same xmltv lineup and just alter the physical channel within the tuner definition ? eg ch4 is 104 on Sky and 66 on the aerial feed

I don't think you can do it, but you should try (my guess is that if you change the lineup on one source, it will change it for the other source too).

I guess that you best option is to use my XMLTV Importer, you can create the lineup and assign them channels (as well as duplicating channels) in a channel editor.

Regards,
Stéphane.

[Mark SS]

Originally Posted by brewston

I've read the threads on neilm's xmltv plugin that does multiple lineup,. I tried it briefly and it was lookingfor 1.xml 2.xml etc. Do I just create those files in my batch file ? (The one that takes the Alan Birtles output and copies into Sage directories)

Basically yes. I have a similar setup, 1xSky and 4xFreeview tuners. I have 2 instances of the birtles grabber setup to grab the freeview channel info to 1.xml and another for Sky data to 2.xml. The setup for 2.xml excludes the channels that appear on Freeview.

It works fine but Stephane's importer would be the better way to go, I just haven't got round to switching to it.

[SidKnee]

F.Y.I.
If you're interested Nielm's importer will work fine with the same listing data in both xml files, so there's no need to run the grabber twice.

I use a batch file to run Alan's grabber, saving the data as 1.xml, then I just copy it as 2.xml. I use 1.xml for my sky listing and just selected the freeview channels from 2.xml when I set up the freeview only tuners.

Cheers,
Adrian.

[brewston]

Cool, that sounds like the simplest solution. I will look at Stephane's importer when I get a chance though

Out of interest how would you get 2 Birtles instances ? Just copy to a different directory in program files and maintain 2 copies ?

Out of interest, am I the only one finding Sage an addiction ? As soon as I've figured out how to enhance one aspect, I'm off to tweak something else! I'm sure if it all 'just worked' I wouldn't find it half as fun

Tim

[rickgillyon]

You don't need to separate instances of the grabber - just create two shortcuts, e.g.
"C:\Program Files\XMLTV GUI 3\XmltvGUI.exe" /ccable
"C:\Program Files\XMLTV GUI 3\XmltvGUI.exe" /cfreeview

When you run these you run separate configs. I have all channels in cable, a subset in freeview. Then I have my freeview tuners at a higher encoder_merit than cable, so if I run out of freeview tuners it will still use cable.

The grabs look like this:
"C:\Program Files\XMLTV GUI 3\XmltvGUI.exe" /ccable /Grab
"C:\Program Files\XMLTV GUI 3\XmltvGUI.exe" /cfreeview /Grab

The setup from the shortcuts specifies the location and name of the XML File. Then use nielm's importer to separate lineups...

[Mark SS]

For some reason which I didn't go back to work out, the shortcuts to different configs wouldn't work so I took the easy route of copying and pasting the install directory.

[rickgillyon]

I used to have two installs, but tidied it up on an update of the grabber about 6 months ago. IIRC it messes up unless you have "Use Cache" turned off.

[pschweig]

Originally Posted by rickgillyon

I used to have two installs, but tidied it up on an update of the grabber about 6 months ago. IIRC it messes up unless you have "Use Cache" turned off.

I have I install of xmltvgui and 2 configs similar to this.

Use cache works a treat. Takes a little load off the undoubtedly overworked RT servers

[rickgillyon]

I found it sometimes failed to update when episode numbers appeared on the listings, as if it never updated them...

[doc]

I had to turn caching off too because it kept erroring. Its worked fine every time since.

[brewston]

I've been reading up on Stephane's importer and I'd like to give it a try ( I'd like to move to Java 1.6 but it seems Java 1.6 doesn't like xerces.jar which my current config uses) but I'm slightly confused as to how it all hangs together

I followed the sisko.org guide pretty much to the letter to get my setup working. So, I use Alan Birtles Grabber, XMLTV & xmltvImportPlugin. Which bits does it replace ?

Can anyone give me some pointers ?

Thanks

Tim

[Alfiegerner]

Sure. You still need the xmltv from Alan Birtle's grabber - Stephane's importer replaces the xmltvimportplugin (and also the xmltv.exe if you are using that do any sorting). You then need to set up Stephane's importer. I have so I use one xmltv xml from radio times and use the additional channels section of the importer to generate my freeview lineup.

[doc]

it replaces the xmltvimportplugin.

When you run the wizard after installing, you point it to the epgdata xml file output by Alan Birtles EPG grabber, and in the wizard you set up the channel numbers etc that you want sage to use.

you can then go into sage, delete the source, re-add it, and all the channel numbers are correct. Its much easier than editing channel numbers inside of sage.

so in summary.......

run alan birtles grabber to make an epgdata xml file
then run stephane's program, which processes this file and imports it into sage.

EDIT: beaten to it again

[brewston]

Thanks for the quick replies

So, I need an epgdata.xml to start with ? but from then on i call alan's grabber from within it ? or do I still need to schedule alan's grabber ?

I didn't quite grasp what you got for donating, you can schedule it then ?

does it also overwrite the XMLTVImportPlugin.jar in my sage directory then ?

I guess I should try it (after creating an XP system restore point)

Cheers

Tim

[rickgillyon]

Originally Posted by Alfiegerner

also the xmltv.exe if you are using that do any sorting

Unless you are doing something other than sorting, there's no point in running xmltv.exe - it comes out of RT in the correct order anyway, apparently.

[StephaneM]

Hello Tim,

Originally Posted by brewston

So, I need an epgdata.xml to start with ? but from then on i call alan's grabber from within it ? or do I still need to schedule alan's grabber ?

Yes you need the epgdata.xml the first time you set up XMLTV Importer (otherwise the Importer would have no idea of channels you have in your XMLTV file).

The during the Import wizard you'll be asked if you want that the Importer launch your grabber before it imports data into SageTV when the Importer is running unattended. Again later in the Import Wizard the Importer will asks you if you want to schedule it to run unattended.

I didn't quite grasp what you got for donating, you can schedule it then ?

When you donate, you have the ability to run the Importer unattended (and as such be able to schedule it to import automatically your data into SageTV). You can either use the built in scheduler in the Importe Wizard (it use the Windows Scheduler) or schedule it with the tool you want.

The Importer will launch your grabber (and wait for it to finish its job) only when it run unattended.

does it also overwrite the XMLTVImportPlugin.jar in my sage directory then ?

Overwrite not exactly, it replace your current XMLTV plugin (so it is the jar file), but it does not use jar istelf but .class files instead.

I guess I should try it (after creating an XP system restore point

When you setup the Importer, make sure to shut down SageTV first (as well when uninstalling it). Normally when you uninstall the Importer it will undo all changes it made (with maybe the exception of the Sage.properties file I don't remember )

What the setup do is in SageTV :

* Rename all xerces.jar (or .zip) it can find inside of SageTV folder (also it will not rename those in the Java folder, so if you have one rename it or delete it).
* Rename all .call file to .class.old in the SageTV\SageTV\xmltv directoy
* Copy class files in SageTV\SageTV\xmltv directory
* Change SageTV\SageTV\xmltv.properties (backuping up the existing one)
* Change Sage.properties to point to the new XMLTV plugin
* Create a SageTV\SageTV\3rdPartyGuideData folder

Otherwise it install the Importer itself (this is a typical .Net application that do all the job of conversion instead of letting the java plugin do it).

So you see there is really no need to set a restore point (if you want to be sure to not mess your installation : backup the SageTV folder).


Regards,
Stéphane.

[StephaneM]

Originally Posted by rickgillyon

Unless you are doing something other than sorting, there's no point in running xmltv.exe - it comes out of RT in the correct order anyway, apparently.

What Alfiegerner means is that my Importer is by default sorting the XMLTV data, so there is no need in my Importer to sort the data before submitting it (otherwise it is always a good idea to sort the XMLTV data as it can help some plugins to find stop time and/or removing conflicts : that's why my Importer is sorting first).

Regards,
Stéphane.

[rickgillyon]

Birtles says it comes from RT in channel-starttime-stoptime order anyway. Does yours use a different sort?

[StephaneM]

Originally Posted by rickgillyon

Does yours use a different sort?

The Importer sorts by start time, start is the only thing that may help for me when stop time is not available for some shows.