UK RadioTimes XMLTV returning blank data. Plus more channels

[martint123]

Damn! - Just as I prepare to get npvr running on the main machine live, I find my EPG data has gone

After much searching I found this on one of the unixy pvr mailing lists.

After yesterday's addition of over 100 new channels to the XMLTV
service, the listings generated were empty files. This has been
rectified in today's update, so listings should be working again
normally. The main beneficiaries of the new channels would seem to be
Freesat and Sky Digital users.

I have just committed an update to channel_ids which makes the new
channels available to tv_grab_uk_rt. Updates to the regional channels
and platforms mappings will follow over the next few days - this means
the new channels must be added manually to the grabber configuration
in the meantime if you want to use them.

A cursory glance over the data this morning and noticing a significant
increase in the number of scheduled recordings leads me to believe
that fairly significant changes have been made to many programme
descriptions, which may break duplicate detection in applications such
as MythTV. If you see a lot of programmes flagged to record in MythTV
which have been recorded previously and marked as duplicates, mark
them as "Never Record".

Additionally, many more programmes now have series/episode numbering
provided. The processing routines in the grabber handle most of these
but will need some tweaking to handle new formats seen today.

[Pob]

Thank you for this info - I first had the empty files problem on Thursday this week, using Birtle's XMLTVgui and the RT data.
I assumed it was a temporary hitch, and on Friday it did work fine and I got my EPG back. But today it's not working again.
So what does this mean for the future - do I need to hope that Alan Birtle updates the grabber?
This has taught me a lesson - not to keep only one copy of the xmltv data! I have a dual-boot PC but both installs use the same single file, so when this happens I am left with no EPG at all.
I think I read on the forums that someone had got their epg update batch file to make a backup of the xml data before saving the new one? Would welcome some tips on how to do this.

[steeb]

me exact mirror of everything Pob said! Noticed Thursday, back Friday, gone today! No back-up :eek:

Now just a mainly empty EPG

I subscribe to Digiguide and most of the 'missing channels' that RT had (but now seem to have added) get pulled into XMLTV GUI. I could obviously add all of the channels into Digiguide for now but very laborious, particularly if only as a temporary solution. It's been sooo long since I really played with my XMLTV GUI set up I've forgotten where to begin! And why don't I use digiguide for all the listings anyway? 'cos I really like the long winded RT listings

Doesn't appear to be any mention of this on Alan Birtle's main site?

cheers

Steeb

[martint123]

The forum on AB's site has always seemed to be quiet and never gets much traffic. I found that text above on (I think) a Sourceforge mailing list for a perl RT grabber for mythtv - ah, here it is. https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/list...mltv-users
I've subscribed for the time being and this is the latest post from someone who supports this grabber. It seems a shame that the Radio Times seems to hav escrapped their XMLTV forum where you could keep up to date with what was happening.

I'm glad the xml data is backed up daily on my system. I'd be happy to post it, but different channel setups cause all sorts of gbpvr problems from what I remember.

Yes, all the .dat files on the radiotimes website are currently empty. I
noticed this, this morning. Hopefully it's only temporary and will be resolved
soon.

Empty listings files were generated on Thursday and Saturday (today)
morning. Friday morning's update recreated listings content (although
with only 13 days of listings), so your grabber should have been able
to get listings again. By today, existing listings will provide 12
days of listings as Stephen mentioned if you were able to grab them
yesterday (Friday).

If you are trying to get completely new listings today, you will be
unable to do so. If you have an archived copy of the source listings
(from ~/.xmltv/cache/) from Friday and run CVS, update to current
CVS[1], restore the cached files, and rerun the grabber. You will not
receice any "new" listings wbut will be able to take advantage of
consistency updates from the last few days.

The Radio Times added a /lot/ of new channels in Thusday's update, so
the current issues may be related to that. I've been in touch with
them over the past few days and they know that there have been issues.
Listings do not normally update on Sunday morning, so it may be
Monday/Tuesday before this is resolved.

Also note, as nospam312 mentioned, the RT have made changes to the
subtitle/descriptions which is causing issues with the series
numbering detection - this should be fixed in CVS later
tonight/tomorrow. As I mentioned in my last thread on this list, the
descriptions for many old programmes have also changed, so you may
have a lot of "Never Record"-pressing to do as the new listings come
in.

Cheers,
Nick

[1] the "empty" source files contain a text header which subtly
changed format, and requires the current CVS version of the grabber in
order to ignore the empty file and preserve an existing listings file.
Release versions of the grabber will unfortunately clobber any cached
listings files.

[steeb]

I'm glad the xml data is backed up daily on my system. I'd be happy to post it, but different channel setups cause all sorts of gbpvr problems from what I remember.

I for one would be very happy if you could post it anyway, then I could have a look and see if I could do something with it

So martin123 as per Pob and moi how do you back up the xml

cheers

Steeb

[martint123]

OK, I'll zip up the xml file and also the dat files in the cache directory. From the dat files, if you can set their date/times to "today" and copy them to the cache directory and if you have cache turned on, the xmltv should create an xml file to your channels for what is available ??

Backup is done by Acronis - monthly fill backup and daily incremental ones. In theory I can go back to any day on the last six months for anthing, other than recordings. I think it was someone else who had a cascade of xml backups in an updateepg batch file.

ah - too big to attach - slowly going to rapidshare.......

http://rapidshare.com/files/410258743/cache-and-xml.zip
MD5: FF053ABE11F104BE77E676F339952B3C

[Jaggy]

I backup ten days worth of guide....why I went for ten days I have no idea looking at it now as I only get seven days of data...huh? Anyway with my really really out of date batch programming skills this is what I did

Code:

c:
cd\
cd c:\progs\tvguide
if exist tvguide.10 del tvguide.10
if exist tvguide.09 ren tvguide.09 tvguide.10
if exist tvguide.08 ren tvguide.08 tvguide.09
if exist tvguide.07 ren tvguide.07 tvguide.08
if exist tvguide.06 ren tvguide.06 tvguide.07
if exist tvguide.05 ren tvguide.05 tvguide.06
if exist tvguide.04 ren tvguide.04 tvguide.05
if exist tvguide.03 ren tvguide.03 tvguide.04
if exist tvguide.02 ren tvguide.02 tvguide.03
if exist tvguide.01 ren tvguide.01 tvguide.02
if exist tvguide.xml ren tvguide.xml tvguide.01
cd "c:\program files\devnz\gbpvr"
DvbToXMLTV.exe

[steeb]

thanks guys!

Investigation now!

[steeb]

So many thanks Jaggy,

I so often forget the worth of a simple batch file!

in the end using yours as a template I got this (and why not ten days of back up, seems like a good length of time to me)

(Obviously suited to my set up!)

Code:

E:
cd\
cd E:\EPG\
if exist data.10.xml del data.10.xml
if exist data.09.xml ren data.09.xml data.10.xml
if exist data.08.xml ren data.08.xml data.09.xml
if exist data.07.xml ren data.07.xml data.08.xml
if exist data.06.xml ren data.06.xml data.07.xml
if exist data.05.xml ren data.05.xml data.06.xml
if exist data.04.xml ren data.04.xml data.05.xml
if exist data.03.xml ren data.03.xml data.04.xml
if exist data.02.xml ren data.02.xml data.03.xml
if exist data.01.xml ren data.01.xml data.02.xml
if exist data.xml ren data.xml data.01.xml

I'll just call that as a schedule 15 mins before the full EPG download at some horrendous early hours time of day when I set it

So now I've got a way to back it up (which I never thought I had a need for until Mrs Steeb said to me the other night, where's all the TV Guide gone!!!) just need to work on the other stuff provided by martin123, thanks martin123!

Once again many cheers, never forget the power of a .bat

Steeb

[Jaggy]

Glad it helped, I just have it at the beginning of my updateepg.bat & it works fine.