Very fast Dutch TV listings with NLGrabXMLTV 1.0

[Sheik Yerbouti]

Hi guys,

Sorry I missed these messages. Because of my late response I haven't got the xml files that caused the crash, so we'll have to wait for another crash untill I can investigate it further.

Chris

[cakes]

Hi,

Until earlier this week I was a happy user of xmltv but suddenly found out that tv_grab_be stopped working. Apparantly http://www.teveblad.be blocked the xmltv grabber. A workaround was reported here (http://kristof.vanhertum.be/?p=80#comment-342) but unfortunately with no success for me.

So now I'm trying out this utility but I get these download errors in the log:
16/10/2008 20:37:01.218 ERROR Fout bij download van tv-20081016.xmltv.gz ->The remote server returned an error: (404) Not Found.

Checking on http://xmltv.assies.info/ I see that the most recent listing is for 20081015. Is http://www.tvgids.nl blocking this grabber?

[pz1]

The Assies site indeed is no longer updated since 13 October

[cakes]

so what epg source are you now using in the Netherlands?
I tried xmltv, tvxb and tvgids_to_xml but and now also this one. None of them currently produces a result.

[Sheik Yerbouti]

It indeed looks like http://xmltv.assies.info/ is having some troubles. That happens every now and than, but most of the time it's solved pretty quick. You could take a look at http://mc2xml.110mb.com/, that's a great alternative for NLGrabXMLTV and there's no grabbing from tvgids.nl but from the Microsoft servers.

Chris

[pz1]

Chris,
thanks for the suggestion. I have given the mc2xml a try. After I filled in the country code and the Postal code (only the numeric part) I got the request to "Select lineup:" where I selected the cable provider for my area. mc2xml.exe started downloading from microsoft.com, but ended almost immediately with "Error: EP". No files were saved.

Am I missing a licence? If so how can I fix this?

edit: After reading Hans' post I added the f-parameter, which resulted in a huge xmltv.xml file.
mc2xml.exe -c nl -g XXXX -f (XXXX=numeric part of my postal code)

Pieter

[HtV]

As I understood it, tvgids.nl changed the layout so I think none of the downloaders work anymore.
I think I'll try mc2xml again over the weekend, I did yesterday but couldn't get it to work ok.
Specially the channel names I didn't like, with the frequencies attached to it.
Ned 1 shows like this: 216000 Ned 1
In the xml file there are 3 "display name" keys for every channel.:confused: It uses the 1st one it seems.

edit: I think I found the right parameter to cure the problem: -f puts the channel name first, e.g "Ned 1" instead of "216000 Ned 1".

Hans

[syncpuls]

For those interested. I've got a small xml grabber that no longer has the issues mentioned. I've only just made the modifications to support the completely changed tvgids.nl website, so it's not toroughly tested yet, but so far it seems to work.

http://www.servercare.nl/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=38

[HtV]

@PZ1

Pieter did you also get only a few days epg for Ned 1,2,3? Ned 2 only till tomorrow night.
The rest seems more or less ok for ~14 days

Hans

[pz1]

Pieter did you also get only a few days epg for Ned 1,2,3? Ned 2 only till tomorrow night.
The rest seems more or less ok for ~14 days

Yes the same here. I also still have the long numbers in the channel names.

The other odd thing is that I do get the regional TV Noord Holland instead of RTV Noord. Probably due to the world wide confusion about 'Holland' and 'The Netherlands'

Pieter