XMLTV UK TV Listing Not Working

[bubonic]

As of Friday i have found that XMLTV is not returning any program info (other than channel names) when using the tv_grab_uk_rt grabber. I have checked with sourceforge and a couple of other people have reported the same problem with XMLTV.

Is anyone else finding this, and if so, how / where else can i get a uk tv listing as Bleb doesn't cover all the channels i require?

Many thanks.

[mjp]

Hi,

I've found this as well.
I checked the XMLTV site at sourceforge and the issue has been raised, but not allocated. Im not sure what thier procedures are for bug fixing this, but I assume there are some.
I base this on the fact that XMLTV as a concept is constantly chasing a moving target as they pull from web sites, who's design and layout are not fixed.

Im not sure of any replacement except BLEB , and I have the same issue as you - It only has about half the channels I use.

If I encounter any replacements or an update is released, I'll post it here.

Cheers

Mark

[Guest]

Give this a go:

http://www.alanbirtles.dsl.pipex.com/xmltv/xmltv.htm

It has a flakey GUI, especially the channel config (just ignore the names that go into the right hand side area when you configure it, if you exit and re-enter the config area, you'll see that the channels you picked are listed properly), but it seems to work for me and incredibly quickly compared to the xmltv uk_rt script too.

I've yet to fully test it as I will have to go through the channel renumbering rigmarole again, but a quick check seemed to confirm all the info was there.

[mjp]

Brilliant - Thanks.

I've just tried it.

Excellent, I found the best way to get the correct channels, was select all, assign to the list, and then remove the superflous ones from the bottom up, this keeps the display coherent !

It's massively faster than XMLTV, so long as they don't block this, I'll carry on using it. I've just downloaded 2 weeks worth of data in about 45 mins.

Cheers

Mark

[Guest]

i have now fixed this bug in 1.3.1

[bubonic]

Hi Guys,

Thanks for the info. I have tried out the xmltvrt app you have suggested, but that doesn't appear to work either.... It doesn't seem to matter how many / few channels i choose, it always comes back with the error below:

*****************************************
18:50:00 - Grabbing 1 days of programs for 1 channels
18:50:19 - Error: Radio times returned a zero sized reply for http://www.radiotimes.com/Listing....ror.jsp
*****************************************

Anyone have any ideas??

Thanks,

Chris.

[mwtb]

That's happening for me now too. Looks like RT changed something again. It was working this morning and well, honest.

[fatbaldbob]

Hmm...I'm having similar problems

Do you thin Radio Times are doing this on purpose

Anyone got it going again??
I will keep trying and report back if I get it working....

The fat-One.

[Guest]

they are definately doing it on purpose but i am reluctant to release a fix for the problem as they obviously don't want people to grab their listings (i can't afford for them to sue me)

[mwtb]

Sorry to hear that. Of course it's your decision, although the scraping of pages in this way is a pretty grey area legally and you definitely aren't doing it commercially.

I'm curious about how their PDA service works. 14.95 a year for the listings is a good deal if the file can be extracted to use as per XMLTV files. I think I'll grab a trial and see what it does.

In other words, I understand your choice, and I also understand that RT are protecting their business to an extent, but I'd be happy to pay for the data if they'd bloomin' well let me.