mc2xml

[jdg]

Well to be fair I sent a lot of debug info when I wrote to him. I was under the impression it was the same author. No need to bash me because the software is buggy and the author is not interested in assuring that it works in all cases it's intended for. So yes, if he wants his software to be used by a lot of people I guess I do expect him to install mythtv to test it, since that is one of the things for which people are reasonably going to use it. It's called having a testbed. But maybe he's not interested in that, for all I know.

And of course the mythtv people are not interested in the least in helping with projects like these, because they want everyone to donate to the pay service, whatever it's called. This just seemed like one of the more knowledgable forums around, and since it is an mc2xml thread, I thought I would try it. Sorry if I offended anyone.

But it's not really a big deal to me. I'll just keep using zap2xml. mc2xml can keep suffering from bugs when mythtv users attempt to use it, if that's what he's cool with. Shutting out a potentially large user base doesn't make much sense to me, but it's not my software to make that decision. I tried my best to report it and debug it myself. There's not much more I can do.

To be fair, I did a simple google search and read of people successfully using mc2xml with mythtv, gbpvr and orb so I think it is your setup and not the software that is the problem.

[userlander]

I have an mc2xml MythTV howto here:

http://www.mythtvtalk.com/forum/viewtopi...highlight=

It works flawlessly for me!

thanks for the feedback. that's basically the same method I used, save creating the subdirectories for the data. I gave it shot anyway, but still not working. there must be something out of whack either in my mythtv or mysql installs. everything else works perfectly though, including zap2xml, so I really don't want to mess with it too much just to get an optional function to work. thanks again for the link, appreciate it.

[userlander]

To be fair, I did a simple google search and read of people successfully using mc2xml with mythtv, gbpvr and orb so I think it is your setup and not the software that is the problem.

yes, I think it must be something in my setup. thanks for the input.

[drlava]

Thanks for the program, author!
It has all the details of my GUI-based MSN_XMLTV 'scraper' but downloads the program details much faster Must look into this source...

[SLR_65]

Is there any way to set the number of days worth of data it downloads or is the default of 14 the only choice?

Which service, zap2it or titan has the better listings?

[whurlston]

Is there any way to set the number of days worth of data it downloads or is the default of 14 the only choice?

Which service, zap2it or titan has the better listings?

Microsoft provides 14 days and it is not configurable. mc2xml could be programmed to output less but it would still have to download the full guide, so there's not really much point. Also, the data is supplied by TMS (not Zap2It) or Titan depending on the region so that is also non configurable.

[SLR_65]

Well, it downloads fast but GBPVR takes it's sweet time loading it! I usually pull down 4 days from schedules direct and it goes pretty fast but 14 days took almost 15 minutes to load in! No biggie I guess though.

The author gave a switch of -t for Titan listings, why would he do that if which source wasn't configurable?

[whurlston]

Ah, something must have changed on Microsoft's side since I wrote MCE2XmlTv then. Either that or he is just pulling the data from Titan directly and it has nothing to do with the MS data.

[smajor]

Does the -d flag work? That sets the guide in hours, I think. e.g. -d 48 is two days of listings, etc...

[SLR_65]

Yeah, that works! I was reading the GBPVR wiki on it when I should've been paying more attention to the plugins home page!

Here's the current command line options available:

mc2xml options (case sensitive):

-f = force download
-a = append " *" to new programs
-A = append " *" to live programs
-F = output channel names first (rather than "number name")
-L = output "<live />" tag (not part of xmltv.dtd)
-u = output date/time in UTC (default = localtime)
-U = output UTF-8 (default = "ISO-8859-1")
-d <#> = set listings duration (in hours)
-s <[+/-]#> = set listings relative start position (in hours)
-c <code> = set country code
-g <code> = set postal/zip code
-t = use titantv service (instead of media center)
-D <filename> = set dat filename (default="mc2xml.dat")
-C <filename> = set channel file (default="mc2xml.chl")
-o <filename> = set output file (default="xmltv.xml")

Also, it appears that it does download directly from TitanTV also:

Service Differences:

*) Vista Media Center and all previous versions use a TV listing service that supports Satellite/Cable/NTSC in many countries, but the service doesn't fully support ATSC with subchannels in the US.
*) TitanTV supports Satellite/Cable/NTSC AND ATSC, but only for the US market. The listings are good and the ATSC service is complete, but the program details are not quite as robust as the media center service.
*) Media Center Fiji (an upgrade for Vista Media Center aka TV Pack 2008) and Windows 7 use a newer TV listing service that does support ATSC and subchannels as well as more detail in the TV listings (writer and producer credits, some season info, etc) and some other features.

The current version of mc2xml supports the first 2 services.

Hmmmm, wonder why M$ is using a new listing service for Figi?