Ability to select channel via EPG when EPG blank

[djtaylor]

When the EPG doesn't update (like now I have half my channels with no information for some reason), it would be handy for the TV guide cursor to still navigate through the guide and highlight the chosen channel and to be able to choose the channel for live TV viewing regardless of whether there's EPG info or not.

Lack of EPG channel info shouldn't be a barrier to choosing the channel from the EPG.

Yes I can do it by choosing channel numbers but I don't know what numbers my channels are, the EPG shows channel logos, I have no clue without looking them up as to what number each channel is.

David.

[HtV]

Yes I can do it by choosing channel numbers but I don't know what numbers my channels are, the EPG shows channel logos, I have no clue without looking them up as to what number each channel is.

David.

You could always look them up in gbpvr-config-channels.

[djtaylor]

Yes I could but that's not the point. Just because there's nothing in the EPG shouldn't (IMHO) prevent selection of that channel.

It shouldn't be necessary to have a printed sheet of channel listings to hand around to family members when there's a menu onscreen.

David.

[Babnik]

I second this!

[stefan]

If you use tvxb to download the EPG, you can tell it to enter the show "no program data" (or something like that) when there is nothing on. That way there is always a show in the EPG...

[stefan]

Which, when I re-read your post, might not do you any good if the download failed, I guess...

[ricklous]

A bit of blue-sky-ing here (i hate that phase but still,). I've got a vague idea that may or may not work...

I use tvxb too, but i use it to import what XMLTVGUI has grabbed, and amend two channels to the xml that have no online epg source. So rather than two channels which are un-selectable in the guide, i have hourly blocks that are titled 'BBCi 301 1pm till 2pm', 'BBCi 301 2pm till 3pm'. These can then be used in the usual manner to either view the channel or book recordings. Its not perfect but it works a whole lot better than blank lines in the guide.

Now obviously you don't need this if the grab works and you have channel data, but it would be useful if tvxb stepped in on the occasions that the grabber fails.

So maybe with some jiggery-pokery in the updateepg.bat, you could have something (an AutoIt script maybe?) that checked the size of your xml after the grabber has run, and if its below 50% of the size you would expect for a complete epg, delete the xml and run tvxb to generate an alternative xml of dummy data for the current date, GBPVR picking it up just as if it was your usual xml file, allowing the folks at home to still have something in the guide to select for the day until the grabber starts working again.

If you have 'complete epg reload' id *assume* that as soon as your grabber started working again, then when this is loaded into gbpvr your dummy data would disappear and you'd be back to normal.

I have no idea what would happen to your season recordings though...

[djtaylor]

something (an AutoIt script maybe?) that checked the size of your xml after the grabber has run, and if its below 50% of the size you would expect for a complete epg, delete the xml and run tvxb to

The problem I had was that I had 3 0x0b characters in the XML data so it wasn't that the download of data failed, rather that there were 3 instances of a character that was invalid so looking for the filesize wasn't enough.

A pre-processor would do it I guess but at least for now, i've gone past the dates with the duff data so it's all good again - until next time

David.