UK XMLTV recommendations?

[BrettB]

It's not about paying for a monthly service, I'm just aiming for simplicity like the good ol' days.

I think that you will find that far and away the simplest solution would be Schedules Direct. It is fully integrated with NextPVR so you don't have to have any scripts or extra "stuff". You can get a 7 day free trial and test it out.

[bgowland]

However I was highlighting the cast and crew screens on the left/rigt arrows that often aren't included in XMLTV that don't necessarily add value to a description.

Yes, I saw what you were highlighting - nice to have a bit of extra info occasionally but not necessary. XMLTV does in fact have fields for writer, director etc if my memoryis correct but whether or not they're populated is another matter.

Cheers,
Brian

[bgowland]

It's not about paying for a monthly service, I'm just aiming for simplicity like the good ol' days.

I think that you will find that far and away the simplest solution would be Schedules Direct. It is fully integrated with NextPVR so you don't have to have any scripts or extra "stuff". You can get a 7 day free trial and test it out.

Yes, for extra info I agree but the simplest of all is to live with the OTA DVB guide data. Free of charge and no need to subscribe to a third party provider.

Things are still in a testing stage - my quadHD card is fitted in my desktop and I won't get the parts for my new server until Wed. I'll wait until the server is running and try the free trial.

Cheers,
Brian

[boringgit]

It's not about paying for a monthly service, I'm just aiming for simplicity like the good ol' days.

I think that you will find that far and away the simplest solution would be Schedules Direct. It is fully integrated with NextPVR so you don't have to have any scripts or extra "stuff". You can get a 7 day free trial and test it out.

Yes, for extra info I agree but the simplest of all is to live with the OTA DVB guide data. Free of charge and no need to subscribe to a third party provider.

Things are still in a testing stage - my quadHD card is fitted in my desktop and I won't get the parts for my new server until Wed. I'll wait until the server is running and try the free trial.

Cheers,
Brian

I tried to get by on OTA DVB guide (in the UK) and it was average at best. Theoretically you had 7 days data, but in practice it could be less - the scheduled recordings were not particularly reliable as names might change a little etc. 
Its been a few years since I last tried - Schedules Direct since then. They don't even auto renew - they send you an email when your subs are going to run out telling you that you need to pay them again if you want the service to keep going. Quite a refreshing approach these days!

[johnharrisondev]

Yeah, the OTA synopses over here are pretty thin - one line if you're lucky. Disclosure: I run epgwise.com, which does UK XMLTV, so take that as you will. You get a private gzipped URL, paste it into NextPVR's guide settings and hit refresh. If a channel comes up blank, the assign/auto-map sorts it. Listings only, no streams.

[michaellewis]

BrettB, that reliability point is worth weighing before the trial: if OTA names drift and recordings get missed, the free route can cost more time than money. Michael, do the one-line synopses you mention also limit the search and duplicate-detection in NextPVR? Curious whether guide text quality affects how well series rules and first-run flags behave.

[mvallevand]

BrettB, that reliability point is worth weighing before the trial: if OTA names drift and recordings get missed, the free route can cost more time than money. Michael, do the one-line synopses you mention also limit the search and duplicate-detection in NextPVR? Curious whether guide text quality affects how well series rules and first-run flags behave.

AI you are the Michael on this thread, so you are asking yourself a question.

Martin