XBMC plugin for SageTV

[jhh]

My setup is working far too well for quite some time now so I was looking for something to break it again. Then I stumbled on this one: http://xbmc.org/wiki/?title=GSoC_-_Unified_PVR_Frontend which got me rather excited. So far there is nothing to play with yet but it got me in the direction of plugins. So I did a first attempt to create a plugin for SageTV in XBMC.

The configuration bit is completely taken over from Coolwave's XBMC SageTV script. In fact if you have that script running you can simply copy the settings.xml file and it will work.

It's not the final version yet but for the time being it is good enough. Issue is that it is using the video/movie settings from XBMC - I've mapped some of the fields but it's far from perfect. What bothers me most is that I cannot delete a show using this one.

Just unpack the zip and put it in video plugins then add it as a source.

Also related to the skinnable PVR frontend is the program guide: BBB has changed his MyTV to version 1.18 which can be skinned - problem is that the SageTV datasource is broken. He changed to urllib2 which doesn't allow passing the id+pwd in the URL and for the 'search' datasource a dateformat is not as he expected so that is broken also. I'll try to work on this one a bit when I have some time although I will not be upset if someone manages to do it before I get round to it.


UPDATE: I've updated the script a bit.

- I've abused the file-size field to put in the hours since 01/01/2000 - I admit not so nice but if I sort descending on size I get my recordings sorted by date with latest recording first

- I've defined a folder in the webserver to put in thumbnails; if you define a folder http://123.123.123.123:8080/thumbs the script will take the favorite id and retrieve http://123.123.123.123:8080/thumbs/favorite_id.jpg as a thumbnail. It's a bit of work but at least thumbnails will be consistent. If it is not a favorite then it will use the icon it shows now. You create the folder under /webroot and it should not be password protected. The easiest way to get all favorite ids with description is to go to the webserver - use Favourites manager and click the xml button. You may need to delete the cached thumbnails in XBMC to get the new ones (/xbmx/userdata/thumbnails/video - I simply deleted all folders under this one and I got new icons).

Basically that's as far as I will go for now - some pics included screenshot 000 is small icons, 001 is DVD view and 002 is detailed info screen.

Jhh

[w84no1]

Originally Posted by jhh

My setup is working far too well for quite some time now so I was looking for something to break it again. Then I stumbled on this one: http://xbmc.org/wiki/?title=GSoC_-_Unified_PVR_Frontend which got me rather excited. So far there is nothing to play with yet but it got me in the direction of plugins. So I did a first attempt to create a plugin for SageTV in XBMC.

The configuration bit is completely taken over from Coolwave's XBMC SageTV script. In fact if you have that script running you can simply copy the settings.xml file and it will work.

It's not the final version yet but for the time being it is good enough. Issue is that it is using the video/movie settings from XBMC - I've mapped some of the fields but it's far from perfect. What bothers me most is that I cannot delete a show using this one.

Just unpack the zip and put it in video plugins then add it as a source.

Also related to the skinnable PVR frontend is the program guide: BBB has changed his MyTV to version 1.18 which can be skinned - problem is that the SageTV datasource is broken. He changed to urllib2 which doesn't allow passing the id+pwd in the URL and for the 'search' datasource a dateformat is not as he expected so that is broken also. I'll try to work on this one a bit when I have some time although I will not be upset if someone manages to do it before I get round to it.

Jhh

Cool, i just installed SageTV yesterday. If I put this in my video plugins folder on my xbmc and set it as a source it should work? Or do I have to enable something on the Sage box? New to Sage, but want to keep using my good old Xbox.

[jhh]

Originally Posted by w84no1

Cool, i just installed SageTV yesterday. If I put this in my video plugins folder on my xbmc and set it as a source it should work? Or do I have to enable something on the Sage box? New to Sage, but want to keep using my good old Xbox.

yep - on the xbmc side that's all you need to do. On the SageTV side you need to have Nielms webserver installed - I forgot to mention that as it was so obvious to me.

[w84no1]

Originally Posted by jhh

yep - on the xbmc side that's all you need to do. On the SageTV side you need to have Nielms webserver installed - I forgot to mention that as it was so obvious to me.

Cool, I will try it when i get home today.

Thanks!

[brandypuff]

What is ths plugin for?

[w84no1]

Couldn't get it to do anything. I installed Nielms webserver and copied the plugin to my xbox and made it a source. It asked for IP address and username and password, once I entered all the info it just shows an empy directory. Is there something else that I need to do?

thanks

[kricker]

So, how does this differ from the script? Is it only the fact that it is now a video plugin? I am helping BBB with a new logo for myTV, maybe he'll be willing to help us with the Sage portion of it.

[jhh]

Originally Posted by kricker

So, how does this differ from the script? Is it only the fact that it is now a video plugin? I am helping BBB with a new logo for myTV, maybe he'll be willing to help us with the Sage portion of it.

It's very different from the script - in the sense that it has only half the functionality. The purpose was to get a dump of the recordings in XBMC and keep the XMBC look and feel. It still needs work - you can't delete a recording, you cannot search for a recording, and so on. The only advantage is that you get everything what XBMC has in terms of skinning for free.

[jhh]

Originally Posted by w84no1

Couldn't get it to do anything. I installed Nielms webserver and copied the plugin to my xbox and made it a source. It asked for IP address and username and password, once I entered all the info it just shows an empy directory. Is there something else that I need to do?

thanks

Go in the webserver - select Program guide / search EPG

tick search for recorded TV files

click search button.

in the browser click view / source and send that output as a PM

In the list that you see click any recording to see the detailed information and send the source for that as well.

That way I can check my regular expressions filtering out the bits and pieces that I need to pass on the info to XBMC

[sagetvkid]

worked very nicely...was only able to retrieve recording list with no program information...recordings played OK! nice start

[jhh]

Originally Posted by sagetvkid

worked very nicely...was only able to retrieve recording list with no program information...nice start

That's a bit strange - if you use the context menu on one of the items then you can select movie information. That should give you all the meta data that Sage has.

If you have a recording for which the detailed information screen on the webserver has text for 'Description:' then that should be taken in XBMC. If it does not PM me a view/source of the page and I can check.

Because it is the movie object the mapping is a bit odd: Plot is description, studio is channel that aired the recording, etc.

As I only record favourites and you can pass on a thumbnail through the plugin I was thinking of putting a folder on the webserver with an icon per favourite and retrieve those. Unless someone has a way of getting to the thumbnails that SageTV generates through the webserver? I thought the advantage of linking them to favourites would be that the thumbnail would be correct and easier to recognize for my kids.

JHH

[w84no1]

Originally Posted by jhh

Go in the webserver - select Program guide / search EPG

tick search for recorded TV files

click search button.

in the browser click view / source and send that output as a PM

In the list that you see click any recording to see the detailed information and send the source for that as well.

That way I can check my regular expressions filtering out the bits and pieces that I need to pass on the info to XBMC

It is working now. Needed to record some shows. I thought it would find the files in my recording directory that where made from just watching TV. i was hoping to fake it into a semi Live tv viewer.

[jhh]

this is a bit odd - I received in my mail:

This thread is located at:
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...5&goto=newpost

Here is the message that has just been posted:
***************
Shouldn't the title really be a "SageTV plugin for XBMC"?
***************

but I couldn't see this in the thread?

And yes - you have a point but I couldn't change the title of my post when I edited.

Jhh

[kricker]

Hehehe yeah. I had some strange posting error, and didn't feel like re-posting it and having it maybe show up twice.

I had a chance to try it out. I get my shows listed, but nothing plays. Should they play?

[jhh]

Originally Posted by kricker

I had a chance to try it out. I get my shows listed, but nothing plays. Should they play?

Yes - they should - normally if you play using smb paths you can simply use the SageTV script settings.xml file. If you have no paths in the xml it should stream. I think it shows an error in the xbmc log file if playing the file/stream does not work. Also the detailed info screen shows how it will play where it shows the location of the media.

p.s.: I have a fix for MyTV 1.18 but will send it to BBB first.

[kricker]

I tried it on my win32 XBMC, so that's probably why the files didn't play. They are smb paths, which the win32 port has issues with I think. I'll try it on the Xbox and see what it does.

[jhh]

hm - could be - on the emulation with the win32 tool that is how it behaves. On that one it also does not show the icons. On the Atlantis port I'm not sure what it does.

[kricker]

I am running the full port, and that is exactly what happens. I'm gonna play with it a bit and see if I can get anything to happen.

[kricker]

Okay, I just tried it on my xbox and it plays back the files. I do not get any thumbnails like you show in the screenshots though. I get a mix of folder icons and the SageTV icon. Also none of my recordings are "grouped" together. All my episodes for different series are all together in one big list, not grouped by series. Do you think this would be possible to do?

[kricker]

Kinda good news. I changed Sage's recording path to use the IP instead of the computer name. Then I changed the plugin's settings accordingly. Now the win32 port of XBMC can playback the files

I looked in the log and I noticed when the scan for files happens it tries to make thumbnails from this path:

http://192.168.0.4:8080/thumbs/####.jpg

Where #### is some number. Is this something this script is doing? Can we add in a setting that maps to Sage's GeneratedThumbnails folder? Which for me would be

\\192.168.0.4\apps\HTPC\Sage\SageTV\GeneratedThumbnails