XMLTV - Resetting Channel Names

[johanp]

I've been trying out the XMLTV plugin, and it seemed to work great. I was using the Windows XMLTV binary with tv_grab_dk. The I switched to using a combination of the UK and Swedish grabber (using the XMLTV source). I now have approximately the same channels but with different names. I replaced the old epgdata.xml with the new one. However it seems that somebody is still remembering the old channels and channel names. The new names would not show up in channel setup. I tried removing the source in SageTV and then going through the setup wizard again. Now I have a combination of the old and new channel names. Also, some channels show up with "No Data".

Is there a way to get SageTV/XMLTV-plugin to completely reset the channel list and read it again from the XMLTV xml file?

Johan

[nielm]

The XMLTV plugin uses the XMLTV channel ID (eg bbc1.bbc.co.uk) to generate an internal ID for the channel, and once this ID is loaded into Sage, it never goes away. So you will always see the 'old' channels. (I have 3 copies of each channel in my channel list from trying different grabbers -- 2 of the 3 (those with 'No Data' in the guide) are disabled. It took some effort to determine which was which!

The only way to delete all the old channel IDs is to delete thw wiz.* files (losing all favourites, Sage recordings info etc)

If the channel name associated with an XMLTV ID is changed/updated, this will be changed in Sage at the next EPG update, which you can trigger by enabling/disabling a channel.

[johanp]

Thanks for the info. I deleted wiz.bin and wiz.bak and now I see only the new channels. I still get "No Data" for all channels produced by the tv_grab_se grabber though (except in a few isolated spots) Any idea what the problem could be here? I'm using XMLTV 0.5.30.

Johan

[nielm]

have compared what is in the XML file to what is in the TV Guide (if the xmlfile and xmltv.dtd are in the same directory, Internet Explorer is good at displaying, and debugging XML -- load the XML file into IE, and check that it is all displayed.)

The importer will die as soon as it detects any problems in the XML. This could be unexpected characters, invalid date/time format, and in the case of the most recent plug-in, not having the program name in the format:
"number - name"
(use the oldest XMLTV plugin to avoid this last issue!)

If the data is sorted by channel/program then this could give you a hint at what is failing. (tv_sort can re-sort the data)

If you are running the 2.0 beta, any plugin errors will be logged in the sage_0.log file. There is also a plugin tester in this forum that can run the plugin outside of Sage to see any errors generated.

I know the tv_grab_uk_rt produces good data (I am using it and have made recent mods to it!), so the problem may be one single program in the tv_grab_se grabber...

(problems to check for are loose '&' or '<' or '>' symbols -- these need to be &amp; &lt; and &gt; in XML... Internet explorer will detect these problems and log them as the last line of the output...)

[johanp]

Originally posted by nielm
The importer will die as soon as it detects any problems in the XML. This could be unexpected characters, invalid date/time format, and in the case of the most recent plug-in, not having the program name in the format:
"number - name"
(use the oldest XMLTV plugin to avoid this last issue!)

I think I'm running the latest plugin. What is the "program name"?

If you are running the 2.0 beta, any plugin errors will be logged in the sage_0.log file. There is also a plugin tester in this forum that can run the plugin outside of Sage to see any errors generated.

I'm running 1.4.10. I tried the plugin tester and it returned "true", and I saw nothing strange in its output. Does this mean the XML and the plugin are OK?

I was pleasantly surprised by how simple the plugin code was. If there is a problem there I could probably tweak it myself. If there is a problem in the XML I can probably hack XMLTV. But I need to know what the problem is. So I'm stuck at the moment.

[johanp]

I've noticed that the output from the Swedish grabber does not have stop times. Could this be a problem?

[nielm]

I think I'm running the latest plugin. What is the "program name"?

Sorry, that should be Channel Name. Some of the later versions of the plugin expect a channel number.. but the fact that the plugintester returns 'true' means that the input is OK... And I assume all your channels are showing up in the chanel lineup

I've noticed that the output from the Swedish grabber does not have stop times. Could this be a problem?

This is probably it... The plugin will ignore any programs without the stop time... Run the XMLTV file through tv_sort to generate a stop time for all programs based on the start time of the program after it.

A while ago, I also posted a different plugintester here which is a bit more verbose about what it sees...
The plugin code is very simple, just not very robust about when it catches an error, and has no way of reporting the error!