EPG Collector for OpenTV (SKY) and others

[Whitey]

Just thought I would let everyone know about some excellent EPG grabbing software that grabs the OpenTV EPG for Sky UK and converts it to an XMLTV file to import into Sage.

The software is called EPG Collector and it can be downloaded from sourceforge.

You can use the EPG Collector.ini file I have attached by replace the default one in the install directory to work with Sky UK. Just rename the .txt to .ini and change 2 lines to suit your needs.

Channels=4097,29 (England East Midlands)

This must be changed to suit your area of the UK. There is a list of codes in the readme.txt in the install directory.

tuner=1

This selects the tuner that you want to use to grab the info.

I hope this helps other users.

Cheers

Whitey

[brewston]

Does this grab the EPG over the air or over the internet ? I assume you just use it in place of Digiguide and feed it into Stephane's importer ?

[Whitey]

Originally Posted by brewston

Does this grab the EPG over the air or over the internet ? I assume you just use it in place of Digiguide and feed it into Stephane's importer ?

That's correct. It uses a tuner to grab it from over the air

Whitey

[doc]

Cheers for sharing this. I look forward to playing with it during my next free weekend

[brewston]

Since it comes OTA - is there any reason why Sage couldn't integrate this directly into their product ?

Otherwise, Doc will you be writing a howto guide ?

cheers

[Whitey]

Originally Posted by brewston

Since it comes OTA - is there any reason why Sage couldn't integrate this directly into their product ?

Otherwise, Doc will you be writing a howto guide ?

cheers

I don't see why sage couldn't integrate this but I don't think it would be high on their priorities.

Why do you need a how to? It's not much more than what I've explained in the op

Whitey

[brewston]

Originally Posted by Whitey

Why do you need a how to? It's not much more than what I've explained in the op

Whitey

Just wondering how to feed its output into Stephane's importer. I will download it and have a play....

[Whitey]

Originally Posted by brewston

Just wondering how to feed its output into Stephane's importer. I will download it and have a play....

Just add it as a new XMLTV source and point it to epgcollector.exe to run the program

Whitey

[rickgillyon]

How's the accuracy? Series, ep numbers etc.

[Whitey]

Originally Posted by rickgillyon

How's the accuracy? Series, ep numbers etc.

It's the same info shown on sky box so the series and episode numbers are just shown in the description as S1 E2 for example. I use this with digiguide for this reason

Whitey

[MCE-Refugee]

Originally Posted by Whitey

It's the same info shown on sky box so the series and episode numbers are just shown in the description as S1 E2 for example. I use this with digiguide for this reason

Whitey

How do you use this with Digiguide? I use Stephane's importer but don't know how you could merge XMLTV sources. How would you know which is the better? I generally find that Digiguide has more accurate & detailed information than the OTA EPG.

[Whitey]

Originally Posted by MCE-Refugee

How do you use this with Digiguide? I use Stephane's importer but don't know how you could merge XMLTV sources. How would you know which is the better? I generally find that Digiguide has more accurate & detailed information than the OTA EPG.

I use Stephane's importer with the two sources, digiguide and EPG Collector. If there are matching channels in both XMLTV sources, then the importer will merge them ie. if only one source has episode information that info will be imported.

You can setup EPGCollector to only import information for missing channels from digiguide if you want.

I also like that EPG Collector in my EPG gives "programmes start at 7:00pm" info rather than "no data" in off-air channels.

Whitey

[MCE-Refugee]

That sounds excellent I must try it out. If for no other reason than that "No data" on off-air channels which always bugs me quite unreasonably