Hey BJReplay,

Just wanted to say thanks for the work you're putting into this... I've now got my guide data using tvharvest and quickguide running smoothly

One little issue i'm still trying to think up a work around to is what happens when you have a category defined twice in your categories file. For instance, having "comedy" as a subcategory under movies and also as a subcategory under "shows". If categories.txt is setup like that, everything listed as a comedy goes into the first instance it finds... in this case, under "movies". At the moment i'm getting around that by putting spaces in some of the category names... so all my movie categories are listed as "action ", "comedy ", etc, and i've got my tv grabber configured to use these same categories for movies. This works ok, (apart from the obvious fact that there's extra spaces in program info), but i was wanting to know if you had a better suggestion for how to do this!

Oh, and one more quick thing... is it possible for you to post a sample programme from your xml guide so i can double-check that i've got all the things like sub-title and actors listed correctly?

Cheers, and thanks again for a great utility!

@Grimy (any anyone else watching this show), please post your XMLTV file and your QuickGuide.exe.config file and your channelinfo file if you're asking for support for an error message.

Please post the full error message and stack trace, if you get one.

Please zip them up (and preferably name the zip file with your Green Button user name) and attach them to the post.

While I can sometimes work out what the problem is from the stack trace on it's own, usually I cannot.

If you post the XMLTV files etc, I can usually work out what is wrong - even if I'm not on my MCE dev PC where I can debug the code, and if I can't work out what is wrong from eyeballing the files, I can always work out what is wrong (and improve the program for you and other users) by debugging if you post the XMLTV file, your channel info, and your config (so I can be sure your config is not pointing to different XMLTV or channelinfo files - trust me - it does happen).

@MartinC - I doubt it, and wouldn't attempt it.  If you've got a MS approved guide, and cannot replace it entirely with your own XMLTV source, I would stick with what you've got.

@Everyone Else who asked questions...responses tonight. (jonasfo - I can reproduce your problem, not sure of a workaround yet, VPN-User, I'll debug tonight, Werewolves - yes, you've experienced what I have - you need to try to get categories.txt to match what appears in your source of data - which is trikcy).

@jonasfo - try this (I haven't tested this) - encode your special character (I know they're not that special, but anything that isn't ASCII is a little bit special for MS) in the form Æ for Æ in your categories.txt.

The number you use is the decimal representation of the unicode value for the character - you can see this as the Alt+keystroke displayed in charmap.

BJ

This is exactly the way I solved the problem when trying to use swedish characters in the categories.txt file. And it worked like a charm, so it should, of course, work equally well with norwegian characters.

 

On this site is a useful table with the proper code for every character imaginable: http://zoon.se/ref/html/tecken/isolat1.html

 

Then it's just a simple matter of doing a search/replace in your file to change all æ to æ for instance.

 

Good luck.

@jonasfo, re channel names - I'm not sure if there's a length limitation or not - there's not much space in the display in MCE for a long channel name, so I tend to make the display names (<name> in ChannelInfo.XML) short so that they display well, rather than get truncated.

If you've got channel names that seem to be too long, can you let me know what seems to be the limit, so that I can include a truncate in QuickGuide.

BJ

Is there a way to turn off MCE wanting to download a new guide when there is less than 3 days of data left ? (I have turned off automatic downloads). Or can this value be configured to 1 day ?.

Sorry if there is an option I have missed, i've been told to stop playing with the tv :-)

Cheers,
Rob.

I first encountered a bug that the conversion of the datestring didn't work
somehow with "xmltv tv_grab_nl" generates these kind of dates:

200502101600 +0100

And for these type of datestring there wan't any support.
But i fixed this myself:
in private DateTime XMLTVDate(string s) i added in the if(s.Length == 18 section) another else if block:

else if(s.IndexOf("+") == 13)
// assume yyyyMMddhhMM +XXXX format
s = s.Substring(0,4) + "-" + s.Substring(4,2) + "-" +s.Substring(6,2) + " " +s.Substring(8,2) + ":" +s.Substring(10,2) + ":00";
}

then everything seems to work fine. Quickguide says everything works ect.
But if i go to the guide everything is empty and it is saying Listings out of date download?
If i then say yes i get the normal MCE guide again.

Hi Joco, thanks for the date parsing change.  I'll need to re-work this to make it a bit more robust.  I would have thought you'd need to add in the time zone offset to your string:

else if(s.IndexOf("+") == 13)

// assume yyyyMMddhhMM +XXXX format

s = s.Substring(0,4) + "-" + s.Substring(4,2) + "-" +s.Substring(6,2) + " " +s.Substring(8,2) + ":" +s.Substring(10,2) + ":00" + s.Substring(13);

Re guide downloads - I've found that under Settings, General, changing the Guide Download to Manual seems to have worked for me, but then again I tend to have more than three days worth of guide data in MCE at any time.

From the way you describe it, it sounds like you have a natively supported guide, but you've switched to QuickGuide.  In that case, I'd suggest disabling the guide, rebooting, running the MCE2005_EPG_Enable.reg, then running QuickGuide.  It sounds like MCE is getting confused between the guide you've set up and the guide QuickGuide is trying to feed it.

BJ

Rob, if the settings, general, autodownload guide doesn't work, changing "fGetEpgData"=dword:00000001 to "fGetEpgData"=dword:00000000 in MCE2005_EPG_Enable.reg might prevent MCE looking for guide data, but it might also prevent QuickGuide updating MCE.

BJ

Here you go...

yes here in the netherlands we have a native guide support
But the problem is many channels are missing.

But i have got it to the place where it does import the data.
But my channels are completely screwed up. First of all the they don't follow the virtual channel. What i have described as 1 ,2 3 are at completely different places.
But this i could work out by reordering them (if the next sync didn't mess things up again)
But also the channels aren't tuned correctly anymore.. Almost all the channels are full of snow, yes i know it is the winter season overhere but i don't prefer snow on my tv...

I don't have to calcluated the +0100 to the time i get. I just have to strip it because the time itself is corrent.. But are you telling that i should make from
this: 200502101645 +0100 this: 2005-02-10 16:45:00 +0100

Should it be possible to update te guide when MCE is running? (that we see the new data comming in without restarting MCE?)

@VPN-User

Strictly speaking, your XMLTV data is not compliant with the XMLTV.DTD.

The channel element can have an icon element as yours does, but a mandatory attribute of the icon element is src.

You've got this in your file:

 <channel id="ARD">
  <display-name lang="de">ARD</display-name>
  <icon>C:\Programme\TV Movie\TV Movie ClickFinder\gifs\tvmovie_sender32x32_ard.gif</icon>
 </channel>

But it should look like this:

 <channel id="ARD">
  <display-name lang="de">ARD</display-name>
  <icon src="C:\Programme\TV Movie\TV Movie ClickFinder\gifs\tvmovie_sender32x32_ard.gif"/>
 </channel>

or this

 <channel id="ARD">
  <display-name lang="de">ARD</display-name>
  <icon src="C:\Programme\TV Movie\TV Movie ClickFinder\gifs\tvmovie_sender32x32_ard.gif"></icon>
 </channel>

Anyway, I don't care about the icon element (I can't display the icon in MCE as far as I know), so I've modified my schema to allow your XMLTV.  Provided that it works with the other samples that I've got, then I'll include it in the next build.

In the meantime, if you simply delete the icon definitions from your XMTLV file, it should load.

BJ

Thanks for your help! I' ll wait for the next build. Or can you just send me a fixed version, please?

It' s a bug in the TVMovie2XMLTV converter program, I' ll forward your bugfix info to the author, thanks.

joco,

You're flying solo here:  I have no idea how MCE will handle a native guide an attempting to load a separate guide.  What I can tell you is that QuickGuide calls a routine that tells MCE to reload the guide.  The thing is, when MCE re-loads the guide, it discovers that the new guide information comes from a different provider than the native guide, and has different channels.  I'm not surprised the channels get all messed up, and I'm not sure if it is fixable.

If you re-order your channels, try this (after getting the channel order the way you like it):

1. Reboot (so that MCE re-initialises itself after rebooting.

2. Use dumper to dump out the data, and check that the virtual channels in DerivedChannelInfo match those in your ChannelInfo.

3. If necessary, change your channelinfo to use the virtual channel numbers reported by dumper.

Re the timezone stuff, your approach will probably work because the time is treated as local anyway, then converted to UTC to load into MCE.

Re updating the guide while MCE is running - yes you can update it, but I don't know how to get MCE to recognise that the guide has been updated without exiting MCE and restarting it.

BJ

Here's a PM I received:

Hi BJReplay,

I have any question that I'd like to check with you. I did not post in the forum as I'm not really sure if this is a MCE limitation or a problem with quickguide.

Typically, the xmltv data that I get does not always cover a full 7 or 8 days (usually 6 days). As such, when I schedule a series recording (say Desperate housewives), it will show that there are no other showings for that series. After the program is recorded, the series recording disappears from the "scheduled recording" section and I presume that's because the guide does not have more information to show there there is another showing next week.

A couple of days later when my xmltv guide data catches up, the series recording still does not show up. When you do a search on the guide, there is clearly another episode of Desperate housewives but there is no indication that it'll be recorded.

If I go to the previously recorded episode of Desperate houswives, under "other showing" it will show this next episode but still no indication that it'll be recorded.

Can you let me know what is wrong here? Is there a problem with my xmltv data or is there something that quickguide is missing.

Thanks for your help

I wanted to ask if anyone else has seen this behaviour.  I know I have seen something that might be the same on my Dev PC, but I expect that because I'm loading differnt guides from all over the world 20 times a night when I'm debugging, so I sort of expect MCE to have trouble working out what's going on.  On my HTPC, scheduled series seem to work most of the time.  However, my HTPC is still acting as a bit of a guinea pig, and occasionally it does fail to pick up a new occurence of a series.  However, rebooting does seem to remind it.

In answer to the last part of the question - I don't think it has anything to do with QuickGuide - QG just presents the guide data to MCE, and providing that it is not scrambling titles, MCE should detect a new showing of a series and record it.  If there is a difference in the title from one week to the next, the I don't expect MCE to pick up the second occurrence.

BJ