EPG questions and customization

[Anthony]

I'm using PVRX2 (1.0.16) with my new Schedules Direct account.

I've tried tweaking the skin.xml file in the TVGuide skin folder, but I'm not making much progress since I have no documentation on the format or available commands.

How do I:

1. Modify the TV Listings to show three hours of listings instead of two?

2. Eliminate the logo, and just show the station number and name?

3. Show more stations at once on the screen (maybe 12 to 15 stations)?

4. Have some kind of indicator for NEW shows? An asterisk or small icon maybe?

5. Replace the shaded show selections with solid color show selections?


Basically, I just want to see as many stations and shows on the screen at once as I can. I don't need any fancy graphics, just simple listings.

Thanks,

Anthony

[sub]

How do I:

1. Modify the TV Listings to show three hours of listings instead of two?

Sorry, this is not possible at this stage. I will add this in a future release.

2. Eliminate the logo, and just show the station number and name?

Try setting <TVGuideChannelHeaderType>1<TVGuideChannelHeaderType/> in config.xml.

3. Show more stations at once on the screen (maybe 12 to 15 stations)?

You'd need to tweak the "Listings" Placement in the TVGuide\Skin.xml file. (see rows="7")

4. Have some kind of indicator for NEW shows? An asterisk or small icon maybe?

GB-PVR has no idea if shows are new or not, so this is not possible.

5. Replace the shaded show selections with solid color show selections?

As an example, try replacing the following in TVGuide\skin.xml

<NamedColor name="ScheduledListing" color="Horizontal:#220000-#880000"/>

with

<NamedColor name="ScheduledListing" color="Red"/>

[-Oz-]

4. Have some kind of indicator for NEW shows? An asterisk or small icon maybe?

This depends on your EPG source, YApi2XML can do it automatically with the click of a button, schedules direct can do it like this: http://gbpvr.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Manual/EPG#toc5

So what is your EPG source?

[sub]

Because this data is normally not available (except in the US), GB-PVR just throws it away. It doesnt store it, and there is no functionality that uses it. Some plugins might be able to do something more with the data.

[Anthony]

Sub,

> TVGuideChannelHeaderType

Turns out type 2 (title only) worked better for me, since the station number is already part of the name. Thanks for the tip.

I've "almost" got the EPG skin modified to my wishes, but I'm still curious about a couple of things.

1. Is there any way to directly specify the fonts and sizes of the text used in the listings, the show description at the bottom of the screen, and the station names on the left? They seem to stretch and resize as I change the size of the listings boxes. I'd also like to turn off the bold attribute of some of the fonts. You know, specify something like "Arial 9 point".

2. I've set the "rows" of both the listings and the channel names at the same number, but the channels don't line up exactly, especially near the bottom.

3. Is there any way to eliminate the "TV GUIDE" background and shift my listings all the way to the top of the screen? The TV GUIDE text wastes a lot of screen space, and I already know it's the TV guide...

I'll upload my EPG skin for others to use once I get it tweaked a little better.

Thanks,

Anthony

[sub]

The fonts and whether they're bold etc are defined in the <TextStyle> tags in the skin.xml, and in the baseskin.xml for the default font styles.

You can probably copy the "ScreenName" placement from the baseskin.xml into the TVGuide\skin.xml, and move it to some negative value to push it off the visible screen.