New XMLTV Enhancer and more...

[dshoup]

That makes sense. I do not expect the UltraXMLTV utilities to work at all with any listing service that is native in GB-PVR (SD and CTpvr)

The listings have to be downloaded, enhanced and then imprted. You can't have GB-PVR import/download the listings, save it as an xml file, enhance it and then reimport it...

That's why I provided a great way to get the SD listing using xmltv.exe. (NOT to be confused with I-XMLTV)

Have a look: http://gbpvr.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Utility/Xmltv

Ok...I finally got all of that sorted out (should have been easy, but leave it to me to spend all day on something easy). Thanks for the help.

I now have 3 new issues...although for the most part I have UltraXMLTV working well. The first issue is that UltraXMLTV is changing the value in my star-rating field even though I have told it to do nothing. I like to use TV Listings instead of the built in guide. TV Listings will display graphical stars if the original formatting is preserved...i.e.,

<star-rating>
<value>3/4</value>
</star-rating>

The UltraXMLTV appears to be adjusting the star rating and just reporting it as <value>3</value>, or something like that. TV Listings can not interpret that. I tried deleting the "star rating max stars" value and unchecking the box for the StarRating field, but UltraXMLTV seems to insist on putting them back.

Second problem may be somewhat related. I have tried to set the New Show option to "do nothing" because it messes up some of my recordings (i.e., would need to set 2 recordings to get all episodes of any show, one for when the title has the star and one for when it does not). Unfortunately, UltraXMLTV keeps changing this value back as well.

Lastly, I wanted the TV listings to list the first 4 actors and first 2 guests. I thought I had set that up in the settings for the program, but nothing is getting displayed. Do I have to do something to make it append to the end of the show's description or something?

I have included my original and modified xml files, a screen shot of the UltraXMLTV settings used to modify these files, and then some screen shots from the TV Guide in GBPVR showing the problems. I also included the UltraXMLTV log file in case it is useful. Please let me know if I can provide anything else to help.

Again, let me say thanks for making this utility...it is a great concept and I'm hopeful I can figure out my problems as this will really enhance my EPG! I understand how much time and effort something like this takes, so I want to make sure you know we appreciate your work!

[zehd]

Ok...I finally got all of that sorted out (should have been easy, but leave it to me to spend all day on something easy). Thanks for the help.

I now have 3 new issues...although for the most part I have UltraXMLTV working well. The first issue is that UltraXMLTV is changing the value in my star-rating field even though I have told it to do nothing. I like to use TV Listings instead of the built in guide. TV Listings will display graphical stars if the original formatting is preserved...i.e.,

<star-rating>
<value>3/4</value>
</star-rating>

The UltraXMLTV appears to be adjusting the star rating and just reporting it as <value>3</value>, or something like that. TV Listings can not interpret that. I tried deleting the "star rating max stars" value and unchecking the box for the StarRating field, but UltraXMLTV seems to insist on putting them back.

Second problem may be somewhat related. I have tried to set the New Show option to "do nothing" because it messes up some of my recordings (i.e., would need to set 2 recordings to get all episodes of any show, one for when the title has the star and one for when it does not). Unfortunately, UltraXMLTV keeps changing this value back as well.

Lastly, I wanted the TV listings to list the first 4 actors and first 2 guests. I thought I had set that up in the settings for the program, but nothing is getting displayed. Do I have to do something to make it append to the end of the show's description or something?

I have included my original and modified xml files, a screen shot of the UltraXMLTV settings used to modify these files, and then some screen shots from the TV Guide in GBPVR showing the problems. I also included the UltraXMLTV log file in case it is useful. Please let me know if I can provide anything else to help.

Again, let me say thanks for making this utility...it is a great concept and I'm hopeful I can figure out my problems as this will really enhance my EPG! I understand how much time and effort something like this takes, so I want to make sure you know we appreciate your work!

I've been trying out TV Listings too and couldn't get the stars. Maybe I couldn't get it working because something's wrong. You've explained it wel. I'll have something soon...

If you do not want a new show marker, then select - (dash) in teh New Show Marker drop down...

I need to clarify about the cast. Assuming that you do NOT enhance the xmltv, Does an Unenhanced XMLTV file work with TV Listings. I think not as there is no way to store the extra data (xmltvextra doesn't gather cast credits yet)

So I assume that you want to see Cast and Credits in the section folowing the Desc.

To be clear, it's not really a separate section. It's still part of the description. The Cast is just appended (plus anything else you want appended) You can separate the appended section from the Description with a Carriage Return etc...

Now sometimes, the description is so big that there's just not enough screen real estate to display the show description AND other stuff like actors... So you might want to limit the Description.

In TV Listings, you can have a long description because you are allowed to scroll so this may not be the problem...

For the actors and Guests, are there correct tags present in the text box just to the right... Actors: [Actor] or Guests: [Guest]... If you want some help putting them back, click Validate tags...

When you process a fresh XMLTV file, do you see checks in the bolded checkboxes to the left of Actors, Guests etc? (That indicates that during the scan of your file, it found cast tags...

[nsti2tion]

zehd:

Open a browser and paste in this URL

Code:

http://thetvdb.com/interfaces/GetSeries.php?seriesname={[SeriesName]}

Replace the [SeriesName] with whatever you want to search for. Remember the rules, you can't use colons and ampersands. But it will auto adjust spaces and other characters.

and Whurlston:

Works for me with simply replacing spaces with "%20". You can also replace ":" with "%3A"

CSI: NY
Code:

http://thetvdb.com/interfaces/GetSeries....=csi:%20ny
http://thetvdb.com/interfaces/GetSeries....esid=73696

I don't know anything about anything... and maybe this means nothing, but if I try it this way, I get a valid result:

"http://thetvdb.com/interfaces/GetSeries.php?seriesname=CSI: NY" (without the quotes)

(Note it's using a colon and space, and no {} around the show title).
Would that make a difference as to whether or not it returns valid info thru the enhancer?

-- nsti2tioin

[zehd]

zehd:

and Whurlston:


I don't know anything about anything... and maybe this means nothing, but if I try it this way, I get a valid result:

"http://thetvdb.com/interfaces/GetSeries.php?seriesname=CSI: NY" (without the quotes)

(Note it's using a colon and space, and no {} around the show title).
Would that make a difference as to whether or not it returns valid info thru the enhancer?

-- nsti2tioin

Way ahead of you... A couple of posts, showed me it worked. But last night it wasn't. It was actually a database problem...

New version works. I removed '{' and '}' from the query strings, and it also works great for other things (Everything I tried, BUT Blade: The Series.... But the series sucked, so who cares...

[zehd]

Second problem may be somewhat related. I have tried to set the New Show option to "do nothing" because it messes up some of my recordings (i.e., would need to set 2 recordings to get all episodes of any show, one for when the title has the star and one for when it does not).

Unfortunately, UltraXMLTV keeps changing this value back as well.

On this point you are correct you would have to set two recurring record events to get all shows for a season, even Repeats, if the New Shows are tagged differently.

Now, I've already told you how to turn off the New Show tag, but I do have something in the works you might like...

I'm about to release another program that among other things (cool things) will alphabetize the recording schedule so that you can easily see whether you have set recurring shows for both New and Repeats. Previously, you may have one, and then down the list you have another and you miss it so you set yet a third...

And I just got another idea. I might make a macro that takes one recurring event to catch new shows and duplicates it to catch repeats, with a single click...

See, I think having New Show tags are important. Many people do not want to record Repeats.

For me though, when I want the Simpsons, I want all the Simpsons... so that needs two events, yes...

[ATTACHMENT NOT FOUND]

[nsti2tion]

What a way do waste a day After Ghosting my PC back, I couldnt get the new enhancer version to do the the colon and ampersand shows again (no matter what I did). Long story short - I think it was the WinXP prefetch files (.pf) for the enhancer. After searching for and deleting those, everything seems to be going well. If anyone is having problems with added features/fixes not working after downloading new versions of the enhancer, keep that in mind. For me at least, just running the RemoveSettings.reg wasn't enough.
--- nsti2tion

[zehd]

What a way do waste a day After Ghosting my PC back, I couldnt get the new enhancer version to do the the colon and ampersand shows again (no matter what I did). Long story short - I think it was the WinXP prefetch files (.pf) for the enhancer. After searching for and deleting those, everything seems to be going well. If anyone is having problems with added features/fixes not working after downloading new versions of the enhancer, keep that in mind. For me at least, just running the RemoveSettings.reg wasn't enough.
--- nsti2tion

That is strange. Glad you got it sorted...

[dshoup]

...So I assume that you want to see Cast and Credits in the section folowing the Desc.

To be clear, it's not really a separate section. It's still part of the description. The Cast is just appended (plus anything else you want appended) You can separate the appended section from the Description with a Carriage Return etc...

Now sometimes, the description is so big that there's just not enough screen real estate to display the show description AND other stuff like actors... So you might want to limit the Description.

In TV Listings, you can have a long description because you are allowed to scroll so this may not be the problem...

For the actors and Guests, are there correct tags present in the text box just to the right... Actors: [Actor] or Guests: [Guest]... If you want some help putting them back, click Validate tags...

When you process a fresh XMLTV file, do you see checks in the bolded checkboxes to the left of Actors, Guests etc? (That indicates that during the scan of your file, it found cast tags...

Thanks for the tip on the new show "*". The "-" fixed the problem.

As for the actors issue, you are correct...I want to see the cast and credits in the description, but the way I have configured UltraXMLTV it is not accomplishing this. Processing a fresh xml file, I do get check marks for these categories when I load in the file with "gather categories" checked. Any idea why the program is not appending these to the description with the way I have it configured? Look back at the files and screen shots I uploaded in the first message for an example UltraXMLTV screen shot and the before/after xml files. You will see UltraXMLTV correctly trimmed off any <actor> tags beyond the first 4 I requested it to show, but then it left them as separate tags and did not append them to the description tag. Is there something more I need to do to get it to append these to the description tag?

[dshoup]

One more thought...for the wish list of new features, I like the idea of the new episode "*". While I can see advantages to having the "*" put on the title (i.e., can set up a recording program that only records new episodes), it would be nice to have the option to prepend or append this to the episode, description, or some other field. 'Not a big deal as I have set things up with the previously aired field being displayed so I can manually see if the record date and this field match, but the "*" is a nice quick way to see this information. Again, I can see how busy you are by the rate of updates...so feel free to save this one for the future if there are bigger fish to fry in your life right now or if it is complicated to implement.

[zehd]

In the latest version, I have changed the Gather Categories feature. There isn't one.

Now the categories are only and always stored in the Genres table of GB-PVR.

That means that if GB-PVR is a fresh install, (and not necessarily a fresh install of the Enhancer) you will have no categories to start with. But I've included a hint. Basically after the first EPG Update, you will always have the categories list populated.

You never have to worry about having 'gather categories' checked or unchecked. (It was way slow anyway...)

Also, I've included better support to work with xmltvextras (and TV Listings) although I'm waiting on Ailbert on the possibility of a bug and fix...

And every time you press go, your current registry settings are saved to a small text file in your app directory. You can send that to me when you troubleshoot...