New XMLTV Enhancer and more...

[zehd]

-Oz- and Zehd are developing a new XMLTV enhancer.

We're looking at making it quite robust. We want it to include XML parsing and validating, Episode Number searches, enhancing displayed information, Recorded Filename renaming and much more.

I'm starting this thread so all of us can discuss publicly some logic and design ideas.

If anyone has ideas or comments, feel free to chime in.

It's an ambitious idea. We're hoping that it will be universal enough that many other XMLTV users will be able to streamline their configuration. It will start out to work with GB-PVR specifically, but we're trying to make the design compatible with other PVR apps that use an XMLTV file for EPG data.

(Being in Australia, I've already noticed some difference in the XMLTV guide data available here, compared to Zap2It/Schedules Direct XMLTV data)

We're working on individual components right now, with the intent on merging the work when appropriate.

Right now, -Oz- is working on a universal EPG grabber/downloader.

Zehd is working on the Data Enhancer component.

Soon we will be creating a new component that will scrape extra data from online databases, like 'episode num', and 'first aired date'

Our goal will be a central configuration screen to select data source, and enhancement choices.

Each night, it will call the grabber, modify the data, and call GB-PVR to update its EPG.

Also, when each recording is complete (PostProcessing) it will go online (either immediate or deferred) to fill in some details of the show, and optionally rename the recorded show's filename.

And we are trying to do this without the user needing to bother with Batch files.

Any thoughts are welcome...

[whurlston]

I've been working on a program to enhance my SD listings. I have an XMLTv serializer if you guys want to use it.

[JavaWiz]

I've got code that scrapes IMDB.com and TheTvDb.com in the WizWebHelper.DLL. I'd be glad to share if you think it might be useful.

[zehd]

Thanks guys. I'm going to be asking for lots of help thinking through things.

Whurlston, what does your serialzer do? I would imagine it's command line...

Javawiz, -Oz- and I are working with VB6. I'd be interested in seeing the code for your plugin, though I think you're not using VB6? I can sort some out of the languages code sometimes...

ZRename scrapes epguides.com. If you remember I lost the code, but it's quite simple how it worked and will be able to recreate that code. It downloaded the html for TV show, (just the straight html) and then parsed through it searching for episode titles. This assumes that the information is correct and matches of course. But that's the nature of scrapers...

Epguides uses a simple URL convention. If I wanted to look up the Simpsons, I would search http://www.epguides.com/simpsons. Same for stargate and several other shows...

I have always wondered what was the convention for imdb and tvdb.com I couldn't seem to get it working.

I have also noticed epnumbers in the ScheduleDirect XMLTV data that I couldn't seem to find a source that correlated with. (like SH000192090000)

I would love to offer several choices to scrape (or all...)

[agerdin]

Zehd, I am not 100% sure what your tool will do, and I am wondering if it will help me. My XMLTV provider today gives me all kinds of information (tags) that are not supported by GBPVR and in order to show it I need to postprocess my XMLTV file with a XMLparser (msxsl.exe). This solution is not very flexible and I would love to have a tool allowing me to "re-design" the XMLTV file, by choosing the tags to be included in other tags.

Please let me know if your new endavour will be something I could use for my purposes further described in this thread.

http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php?t=23950

Thanks,

\\Agerdin

[zehd]

Zehd, I am not 100% sure what your tool will do, and I am wondering if it will help me. My XMLTV provider today gives me all kinds of information (tags) that are not supported by GBPVR and in order to show it I need to postprocess my XMLTV file with a XMLparser (msxsl.exe). This solution is not very flexible and I would love to have a tool allowing me to "re-design" the XMLTV file, by choosing the tags to be included in other tags.

Please let me know if your new endavour will be something I could use for my purposes further described in this thread.

http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php?t=23950

Thanks,

\\Agerdin

That's exactly what the XMLTV Enhancer will do, among other things.

I believe I will have something to test soon. We are currently working on the modules as separate programs that should stand alone, but the intention is to have the suite of tools either merged or integrated...

[zehd]

\\Agerdin

What I would love is a cut down file of one of your XMLTV files.

Just a single snip from your XML in a text file. Open your file in Notepad (not wordpad) and snip a show that has the most info for a given show. (Actors, Airdate, previously shown, etc). Get the whole entry from <Programme...> to </Programme> For the moment I won't need any of the channels or the file header.

EDIT: I also see in the other thread that your having issues with Swedish Characters. Take note what the downloaded xmltv file's encoding is and grab a record that uses the characters... eg <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

[whurlston]

The serializer is just a class that strong types the XMLTv data and will read and write XMLTv files. It's in C# but I can make it a dll so that you can access it from VB6.

[Koenie]

I do some postprocessing of the xmltv file to correct some systematical errors and to fix some titles (sometimes titles and subtitles are together hampering season recordings).
Further I substitute the channel numbers with the actual channel numbers of my cable provider (this makes setting up multipe tuners easy, especially if there are changes in the channels and one has to reimport the EPG from the config app).

The utilities I use are actually replchanid.exe and epgfilter.exe which I found trough this forum: http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php...replchanid

This site has a number of tools together, nice for some ideas: http://www.prize.nl/software/pvr/

Would be nice to get this functionality bundled in a single app.

[JavaWiz]

Javawiz, -Oz- and I are working with VB6. I'd be interested in seeing the code for your plugin, though I think you're not using VB6? I can sort some out of the languages code sometimes...

Sure, no problem, I used to code in VB6, but got pushed into Java at work . When I saw GBPVR, I thought it would be fun to learn a new language, so I picked up C#. Actually it was an extremely easy transition, as it is kind of a cross between Java and VB and C++ (sort of...)

ZRename scrapes epguides.com. If you remember I lost the code, but it's quite simple how it worked and will be able to recreate that code. It downloaded the html for TV show, (just the straight html) and then parsed through it searching for episode titles. This assumes that the information is correct and matches of course. But that's the nature of scrapers...

Epguides uses a simple URL convention. If I wanted to look up the Simpsons, I would search www.epguides.com/simpsons. Same for stargate and several other shows...

Similiar on my approach, although I load all titles up front into a hashtable so once loaded it is lightning fast.

I have always wondered what was the convention for imdb and tvdb.com I couldn't seem to get it working.

I used to use the brute force method to scrape imdb, but i stumbled across HtmlAgilityPack and now use that. It turns the page into an XML object and you can use XPath query to locate just about anything in just about any html. A little bit of learning curve, but definitely worth it.

TvDb.com has a straight XML interface, so you don't have to scrape a web page. Check it out here: http://thetvdb.com/?tab=xml . My scraper gets pretty good results.

I've sent the code to your email address, feel free to ping me with any questions (or suggestions )