Plugin: Sage Recording Extender 4 (SREv4)

[Slugger]

Well you soccer fans got lucky.

I was able to use my favourite web site for writing monitors and so World Cup support was relatively quick, easy, and painless. The FIFA World Cup monitor is now active. Existing scheduled recordings may not show the status until the recording starts, but then it will find the monitor and do its thing.

Based on my EPG, a title of '2014 FIFA World Cup' is the title being used and it's the title required. Any other title will not trigger the monitor so if that's not the title in your data feed you will need to create overrides to monitor the games. Also, you may need to create an override with the specific team data -- probably not an issue for the group play, but will likely be necessary in the knock out stage as EPG feeds aren't likely to update with team info in time.

Enjoy...

[voorhees]

Slugger, I was noticing that I have a college football game that is scheduled to record this Saturday, however SRE says that it is not monitoring the event. Is SRE setup and ready to go to monitor the NCAA college football season that is starting this weekend? Thanks.

[Slugger]

Thanks for the nudge. NCAAF monitor turned back on for another season. May take up to 24 hours for SRE to see the events. SRE will also re-poll the service for data when a recording starts so should be good if there are games tonight.

[Slugger]

A certain web site felt it necessary to release a new look & feel today. In theory that should result only in CSS changes, but obviously they changed a lot of the HTML as well. This change broke many of the monitors:

MLB
CFL
NFL
NBA


I've managed to move MLB and NFL to alternate sources, NBA is out of season and CFL remains broken. I'm out of town for a few weeks and rewriting monitors is not a priority at this time. So expect CFL to be broken for some time. All others should be fine. I'll continue to swap among my existing monitors as necessary, but that's about the best I can do until I return home.

[wayner]

But NHL is still good? The season starts in a little under two weeks - I think on Oct 8.

[Slugger]

Hockey is good. I completed a summer mini-project to move hockey to a new source last week. If you go to livepvrdata.com and have a look you'll notice that not only is NHL available but there are new hockey monitors for the AHL and the CHL. IIHF (i.e. World Jrs.) will also be available from my new source when the time comes.

[wayner]

Good Canadian boy - hockey is top priority!

[wayner]

I see a green check mark beside the NHL games starting next week so it looks like we are up and running for the start of the NHL season.

[emveepee]

I've finally added SRE-like support with Slugger's web site to NextPVR http://forums.gbpvr.com/showthread.p...porting-events and hockey has been working fine except for problems when the same teams played home and away.

Martin

[jvonbokel]

Originally Posted by Slugger

If you go to livepvrdata.com and have a look...

When I go to livepvrdata.com, I get prompted for a Google account, and then once I select mine (same e-mail as configured w/the plugin), I'm told I don't have permission.

Error: Forbidden

Your client does not have permission to get URL / from this server.

[Slugger]

Most pages on the site are admin protected. This one isn't, which is the one you're interested in:

http://www.livepvrdata.com/events.groovy

[jdezur]

Just added 2014 World Series into sage's favorites for recording. SRE came back with a red ! sign. I know the teams haven't been picked yet, so the EPG still says teams TBA. I'd tell you what SRE says for an error, but I haven't had to mess with the logs in over a year and forgot where it's stored!

I'm assuming that it's fine, but just wanted to drop a note. I know maintaining SRE has got to be a huge pain, but its why I still use Sage, and will never buy a Hopper, TiVo, or the cable companies' junky DVR. Thanks Slugger for all you do!

[Slugger]

Actually, maintaining the web service really isn't a big deal. I simply don't touch what isn't broken. And when I wrote the web service, I wrote it to basically run itself out in the cloud, which is exactly what it does. The very little maintenance it does require I wrote as web modules meaning I maintain it from a browser, again keeping it as simple and hands off as possible

Because of that motto, there are many features I just never got around to implementing. The one I really miss is the feature I thought of that would automatically attach a monitor to a game if there was only one game on the schedule for that day regardless of the team info provided (since the assumption is that must be the game you're trying to monitor). The main use case being league championships/playoffs. However, that and a few other ideas never managed to get completed and I'm so far removed from the code now that it's just not likely to happen (again don't break what ain't broken). So the red mark is expected since the teams aren't known. And when they are known, if the EPG doesn't update to list them then you may need to create an override in order for SRE to monitor the games.

Just for giggles, I took a quick look. I've made exactly two code changes to the web service in the last 3 years or so. And I see the last release of the SRE plugin for Sage was made back in Jan 2012. Not sure if that speaks to the stability or my laziness. Either way, I'm so far out of touch with both code bases that changes to either are quite unlikely at this point. But I still use it many times a week for MLB, NHL, NFL, NCAA, etc. so it still gets the job done. And I still tweak the monitors -- maintain existing ones and add new ones. The monitor code is separated out from the core web service so I can mod the monitors without touching any of the core service code. For example, I switched sources for all things hockey this year, which allowed me to add support for various additional leagues. Another PVR package is also using the service and is looking to add some monitors for NASCAR and F1, which seems like it should happen in the near future. So although there are no new code changes planned for the engine or the plugin, there are still some new monitors coming down the pipe, perhaps.

[Slugger]

A new mointor for NASCAR Sprint Cup racing has just been deployed to the web service.

Should be considered beta, it may do some weird things to your NASCAR recordings this weekend, but let me know if it does (and let me know if it works).

Only supports Sprint Cup races for now; extending it to other series is rather trivial once I know this one works. F1 and IndyCar is also possible going forward. There are some issues to be worked out and if they can't be then this monitor may be dropped without notice (the original requester for this monitor will be investigating those issues and if they can't be solved then I'll have to drop the monitor).

Anyway, it's live now and should be active on any Sprint Cup race recordings (qualifying and practice sessions are ignored and not monitored).

[tmiranda]

I'd like the F1 monitor and am willing to test and help develop.

[Slugger]

Ok. I enabled the F1 monitor. But now you're on the hook to test it and let me know if it actually works -- I can't bring myself to sit and watch these races (NASCAR/F1/etc.) so the racing monitors are enabled, but they should be considered beta until people test them and provide feedback. There is one outstanding issue that needs to be addressed with these racing monitors before I'll feel comfortable leaving them enabled permanently:

What happens when a race is postponed or cancelled? The web page must denote this condition somehow so that the web service can signify to users that the race is over/postponed. If that can't be done, I have to take the monitors down otherwise perpetual extensions becomes a concern.

Here's the site being used to monitor all of these race types:

http://sports-ak.espn.go.com/rpm/rac...d=201410040343 (same page format used for F1)

[wayner]

This may be because the game is too far out in the future but my Upcoming Recordings shows an NBA game in 10 days on Oct 29 but there is no monitor enabled. Is NBA monitoring working?

[Slugger]

NBA monitored turned back on for another season...

(Might take SRE up to 24 hours to see it.)

[wayner]

It is good now - I see the green checkmark.

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by Slugger

Ok. I enabled the F1 monitor. But now you're on the hook to test it and let me know if it actually works -- ...

Deal. Next F1 event is 10/31. I'll let you know how it goes.