Will there ever be a reliable UK xml listings site

[Spies]

Currently use XMLTV and the RT grabber but it really in slow, 2 days listings has so far taken 30minutes, I'm on 1mbit here, it's just radio time's site is so slow.

In all im grabbing 14 days listings as the HTPC doesn't have a permanent net connection, so it's going to take to rest of the night I reacon.

Say I was to concider making my own feed, where would I pull listings from for the various Sky channels?

[Spies]

7hrs later and I'm still only 12 days in

Is there a reason that nobody cators for the UK?

[nielm]

There are many threads on this issue in this forum...
The main reasons are:
Copyright & Licencing issues (the data source providers don't want any possibility of people being able to retrieve and resell their data, so require encryption)
and Cost (according to Digiguide, UKP15,000 per year for the data alone)


For speeding up tv_grab_uk_rt:
* If using the --slow option, use --limit-details 17:00-02:00
* Consider doing a grab each day for only 1 day's data, for 7 days in the future (--days 1 --offset 7), and keep these in separate daily files, then combine the files into a single file daily You could do this in a batch script (already mentioned here:
http://forums.freytechnologies.com/f...2923#post22923)

This allows you to keep 7 days data, but only doing a grab for 1 day each day...

[nielm]

If you were making your own data feed from an existing web site, make sure that you have access to a good army of lawyers! All the websites that supply TV data tend to have nasty copyright notices attached:

http://www.gipsymedia.com/general/terms.html
http://www.radiotimes.com/popups/terms/
http://www.sky.com/skycom/disclaimer/termsconditions

Also see http://www.bds.tv/register.aspx (which has free - as in cost - listings data available for some channels) and see the remarks if you try to 'register in order to publish the listings'...

The only site that has free (as in both cost and liberty) listings is http://tv.bleb.org, but this is for a limited number of channels. I don't know where he gets his data from, and how he gets around the royalties charges!

[Spies]

When sage tries to update the epg but you're actually using the XMLTV plugin, what actually happens? Anything?

[nielm]

Sage (via the XMLTV plugin) parses and reads the epgdata.xml file, updates the channel lineup and reads the listings data into its internal database. This should cause a short CPU spike, but the UI should respond immediately.

If nothing at all is happening and you do not get new listings data, then you may be using an updated XMLTV plugin that was written for US data... Try the original one at
http://mta.techno.org/epg/
or the one that imports actor and firstrun/rerun info from:
http://forums.freytechnologies.com/f...&threadid=2234
Note also that the XMLTV pluign cannot cope with 'Clumps' -- 2 programs sharing a timeslot (which is generated by the UK grabber) -- see here for a workaround:
http://forums.freytechnologies.com/f...&threadid=3223

[Spies]

What I meant was, you have to run xmltv manually or via a schedule? Sage won't run XMLTV by itself correct? It will only parse the epgdata.xml file that's currently there.

[nielm]

sorry -- misunderstood you!..

yes, sage will only read the epgdata.xml file that is already there.

It will do this either once every 24hrs, or when you change the channel line-up (more here http://forums.freytechnologies.com/f...3827#post43827)

You have to re-generate the epgdata.xml file yourself (I do it at 7am via a Window scheduled task).