UltraXMLTV Enhancer Version 2 - Beta

[zehd]

OK this is what I did.
I went home. Stuck USB in and launched Ultra. I didn't chnage anything. I clicked 'Go' and now it is running.

Any chance it had something to do with theTVDB.com being down?

It probably is. I'm sorry. I trapped everything I could think of. It's a good thing though. Even though it may not have trapped your error, for others.

But really, the last few errors were all string reading errors, meaning that there wasn't anything to read as in, not downloaded, and it was stuff from epgtools.com, and it never went down, and I has written in a better download only from epgtools routine...

Oh well

[TomR]

It probably is. I'm sorry. I trapped everything I could think of. It's a good thing though. Even though it may not have trapped your error, for others.

But really, the last few errors were all string reading errors, meaning that there wasn't anything to read as in, not downloaded, and it was stuff from epgtools.com, and it never went down, and I has written in a better download only from epgtools routine...

Oh well

7 fetches
813 failures
The message bar at the bottom indicates "theTVDB.com is offline".

Is it possible if the first fetch is a failure that there could be a NULL arugument being passed? Is it possible a NULL or non-interger value is being passed as a parameter? I'm just guessing at possibilites having not seen the code.

The frustrating part is that ungrading the application is so simple (copy/paste), but I seem to be having such a rough time.

[zehd]

7 fetches
813 failures
The message bar at the bottom indicates "theTVDB.com is offline".

Is it possible if the first fetch is a failure that there could be a NULL arugument being passed? Is it possible a NULL or non-interger value is being passed as a parameter? I'm just guessing at possibilites having not seen the code.

The frustrating part is that upgrading the application is so simple copy/paste), but I seem to be having such a rough time.

813 failures out of 171,000 records? That's pretty good...

I see little reason in changing it that way. In a way, when you see such high failed fetches, it's an indication of what your saving.

If you have 10 occurrences of The Simpsons, and only need to download successfully once, and read ten times, or get 10 failures. It's the same thing. Except when there are failures, there's about a second of timeout time added...

But you know, if theTVDB.com is working again, you really shouldn't be having any failures at all. At all, at all... Only get a failedFetch counter when it can't reach theTVdb.com. Yet having it offline certainly indicates that the mechanism can't find tvdb.com.

Remember, when in doubt, delete the seriesID and let Ultra download a new copy.

You should really sit down and edit that include.chl There's no way you're watching, or even surfing ALL of those channels...

BTW, how are you getting BEV into your computer? STB? Sat tuner card?

[zehd]

Release: Enhancer: 2.0.3377.31148

You MUST copy/overwrite the isocodes.dll and xmltv.dll with this release.

I'm ready to start working on dates...

I have adjusted Zehd's picks to format the data a certain way, for dicussion of dates...

That means, delete _Tag and _title files, copy/overwrite the two dlls and app exe, and run Ultra. Click the tags tab and click zehd's picks...

What you will see in the description are the two dates Date tag and Previously-show tag. They have d. and p. marks when you see them on your screen.

I have PURPOSELY disabled a function that will hide one of the dates, if they are both the same. I'd like you all (especially, mister 'I think there's a problem with dates') to have a look and make sure that both of the dates makes sense to you, and think which of the two would be better to supercede the other...

I want to be sure that the dates are displaying correctly (considering local time zones etc)

Also, I have made doubly sure that four digit dates (year) are displayed in Movies only...

----

We're in the home stretch for Release Candidate...

[LewE]

Release: Enhancer: 2.0.3377.31148

I have adjusted Zehd's picks to format the data a certain way, for dicussion of dates...

What you will see in the description are the two dates Date tag and Previously-show tag. They have d. and p. marks when you see them on your screen.

I have PURPOSELY disabled a function that will hide one of the dates, if they are both the same. I'd like you all (especially, mister 'I think there's a problem with dates') to have a look and make sure that both of the dates makes sense to you, and think which of the two would be better to supercede the other...

I want to be sure that the dates are displaying correctly (considering local time zones etc)

Also, I have made doubly sure that four digit dates (year) are displayed in Movies only...

mister 'I think there's a problem with dates' here....

I looked quickly through some listings at the dates.

I'm not sure what you are looking for. From my experience, in the Schedules Direct generated listings the information in the <date> record is there if there is going to be an original air date. The <previously> record has a date not nearly as often. Have you come across instances where there was a date in the <previously> record but not in the <date> record?

Anyways, I assumed that if you got the original air dates reliable then the placing the * on the listing would be good.

I found one instance where that wasn't the case. Note that "Howie Do It" which shows on April 3 and the <date> record is also April 3.

Here is the XML Before Processing file for the show.

[COLOR="Blue"] </programme>
<programme start="20090404030000 +0000" stop="20090404033000 +0000" channel="I10590.labs.zap2it.com">
<title lang="en">Howie Do It</title>
<credits>
<presenter>Howie Mandel</presenter>
</credits>
<date>20090403</date>
<category lang="en">Comedy</category>
<category lang="en">Series</category>
<episode-num system="dd_progid">EP01112647.0016</episode-num>
<episode-num system="onscreen">217</episode-num>
<audio>
<stereo>stereo</stereo>
</audio>
<subtitles type="teletext" />
</programme>[/COLOR]

I have screen caps showing that it did not put the asterisk on the lisitng, although Ultra did put it on the listings for other shows like the Everybody hates Chris show.

[TomR]

813 failures out of 171,000 records? That's pretty good...

No there were far more failures. This number was only after about 1/3 of the way through or so. It went up higher but I don't remember how high. I was just trying to indicate that I was able to get some fetches, some failures and to indicate that theTVDB.com may still be flaky.

Also, I was trying to think of reasons why it possibly would have failed at work and then 2 hours later at home it ran without any errors. I thought maybe it had to do with the first fetch failing at work and causing problem and the first fetch succeeding at home and being able to continue. I would have sent more in the way of logs but nothing was written even when set to Nuts and to write immediately.


And now back at work...
Without downloading any new versions since it worked last night, without deleting anything, with out changing any configuration in Ultra, running the same version of Ultra (2.0.3377.19160), just launching Ultra and clicking 'Go' it failed again with the same error as before (Argument 'Length' must be greater or equal to zero) with no additional info in the logs.

I will download the new version and give it a try and let you know. If the problem persists is it possible to add additional debugging so that we can possibly track down this error?

[TomR]

Downloaded version 2.0.3377.31148.
Copied all files in new zip file and overwrote all of my existing files.
Deleted _TagSettings.xml, _TitleSettings.xml, _SeriesIDs.txt, TempSeriesID.txt, and _app.log.
Ran RemoveSettings.reg.
Launched Ultra.
On the Tags tab select Zehd's Picks
On the Manual tab, configured Grabber, XML file, and logging.
Clicked 'Go'

After merging series ids I get the same error.

I then restarted my computer and launched Ultra again and had the same error.

What can I do to help you or provide you with more information to get past this problem?

[TomR]

...You should really sit down and edit that include.chl There's no way you're watching, or even surfing ALL of those channels...

BTW, how are you getting BEV into your computer? STB? Sat tuner card?

I want to edit the include.chl file but until this get back to running smoothly I don't want to make additional changes. Also when your nice enough to test with my settings, then we both are downloading the same channel info.

Maybe I can just get you to download the channels and send me an enhanced XML file everyday. :eek: Then I wouldn't need to get Ultra working and you could get on to more exciting things.

I'm getting BEV in using a STB and an HP AVC-3610 Dual Tuner (USB). Currently I only have 1 tuner configured in GB-PVR but the eventual goal is to have 2 tuners configured.

My outstanding tasks for GB-PVR include:

• Getting better video quality for recordings - currently picture skips and is blurry at times
  
• Getting a TV out card for my computer - either a AGP(4x) low profile card, PCI low profile card, or some USB device
  
• As an alternative to a TV out card, find a quick easy way to get the recorded programs to DVD
  
• Increase drive size from 40GB to 80GB so I don't deal with disk space issues daily (ya, I know even 80GB is small, but it comes down to budget and what I can get for free or next to nothing)
  
• Add a second STB to use for recording
  
• But apparently my #1 task is to get Ultra working properly for me.
  

[TomR]

While you're frantically trying to fix my problem with Ultra not running for me...
I thought I would mention a problem I had last night at home after running Ultra.

After successfully running Ultra last night I decided to "Start Update EPG". After completion I went to check my set recordings and noticed they were all messed up. The start and end times were all wrong.

For my 24 records the start and end times are all set to...

<startTime>0001-01-01 00:00:00</startTime>
<endTime>0001-01-01 00:00:00</endTime>

I have attached the recording-dump.xml that Ultra produced for your referrence.

The records were properly set up prior to running the enhance and update.

I had previously ran the update from Ultra before without issues. But now it seems to have messed things up.

[LewE]

I followed your instructions and ran version 31148 last night successfully. Here is the App log from then

[COLOR="Blue"]3/31/2009 9:49:43 PM :1> Creating default settings xml files
3/31/2009 9:56:55 PM :2> 2.0.3377.31148
3/31/2009 9:56:55 PM :1>
=============
3/31/2009 9:56:55 PM :1> Loading XMLTV file...
3/31/2009 9:57:03 PM :1> Loading SeriesID file...
3/31/2009 9:57:03 PM :1> Merging with Downloaded SeriesID file...
3/31/2009 9:57:14 PM :1> Done importing Master _SeriesIDs.txt
3/31/2009 9:57:14 PM :1> 26897 programmes found in file
3/31/2009 9:57:14 PM :1> Enhancing...
3/31/2009 10:07:12 PM :1> Flushing Log File...
* 3/31/2009 9:57:26 PM :2> Fetching SeriesXML: Spring Bling.Series.xml
* 3/31/2009 9:57:26 PM :1> Reading SeriesXML: C:\Programs\EPG\UltraXMLTV_Enhancer\XML_Cache\Spring Bling.Series.xml
* 3/31/2009 9:57:26 PM :1> *** >>> You've found a new SeriesName / SeriesID: spring bling : No Data

* 3/31/2009 9:57:26 PM :1> SeriesID read from SeriesXML: No Data
3/31/2009 10:07:13 PM :1> Writing File...
3/31/2009 10:07:25 PM :1> Complete Parsing XMLTV file.
3/31/2009 10:07:25 PM :1> Committed. Deleting original and moving new in place...
3/31/2009 10:07:25 PM :1> Writing out lists...
3/31/2009 10:07:56 PM :1> Fetches today 1
3/31/2009 10:07:56 PM :1> New SeriesIDs 1
3/31/2009 10:07:56 PM :1> Done in 00:11:00
3/31/2009 10:08:10 PM :1> Temporarily disable UpdateEPG.bat
3/31/2009 10:19:24 PM :1> Re-enable UpdateEPG.bat[/COLOR]

Unfortunately, when it tried to do its normal daily run from UPdateEPG.bat, when I looked at it this morning I found this message and there were no entries n the Applog after those above but that is probably because I didn't have Write Immediately checked.

Obviously, this is related ot the difference between using a shortcut to run Ultra manually and using the BAT files to run it. WHat is different from previously when I didn't have problems running Ultra daily with the BAT files?

I'd suggest that all beta testing be done with Write Immediatley enabled.