UK: Radio Times EPG data chaging it's source.

[martint123]

Spotted on a mailing list.



Hi



As part of the recent relaunch of RadioTimes.com, RadioTimes have handed over responsibility for the maintenance and support of the feed used by tv_grab_uk_rt to us here at MetaBroadcast. This switchover has already happened, so the feed is now being generated by us.


Chris from RadioTimes sent a message to the list that doesn't appear to have made it through, so I thought I'd send a followup to introduce ourselves and make sure everyone is aware of the changes.


The RadioTimes have posted a blog post about the changes here:


http://www.radiotimes.com/blog/2011-12-1...tv-service


And we have more information on our blog here:


http://metabroadcast.com/blog/providing-...from-atlas


Please do let us know if you spot any issues with the feed or you have any questions or comments. We're excited to be getting involved with the communities who use this data and would love your help in further improving it over the coming months.


If you'd like to work with us on improving the feed, please get in touch on the discussion group for Atlas, our global index of video and audio data. Atlas is an open source project and we’d love you to contribute, be it ideas or code. The group is also the best place to report any problems with the feed. We hope there won’t be any, but it’s good to have a way to let us know how you’re getting along.


The Atlas discussion group is here:


http://groups.google.com/group/atlasapi/


All of us here at MetaBroadcast look forward to seeing what we do together!


Cheers
Jonathan


MetaBroadcast
http://metabroadcast.com

[bgowland]

Interesting, thanks. According to that, the hand-over has already taken place but it seems to have had no impact on my daily xmltv downloads. I've just taken a look at the XMLTV GUI forums and it's not even mentioned so I assume Alan Birtles isn't concerned about it.

Cheers,
Brian

[Pob]

Thank you for the info - I did notice that I had lost all the star ratings from all the films in the guide, which I do miss, and last night I had no guide info for BBC1 HD. Unless it comes back I guess I will have to clone the BBC1 guide data onto BBC1 HD but have no idea if this can be done in xmltvgui!

[martint123]

from the mailing list

We'll be doing some work on both enhanced film data and better genres for the feed early next year, so hopefully that should improve both of these.

I think the BBC 1 HD list has been restored - delete cache and re-download seems to find it now.
Hopefully the new provider will be monitoring the forum of their own and be able to respond to problem reports faster than the Beeb did last year when the data almost ran out at one point.

[Pob]

Great I will try that, thanks.

[ACTCMS]

from the mailing list

We'll be doing some work on both enhanced film data and better genres for the feed early next year, so hopefully that should improve both of these.

It looks like they are currently not tagging movies with the word 'Film' in Category... PITA at this time of year...

[gEd]

Thanks for spotting this Martin.
Agreed, it is a complete PITA that the film rating has vanished a week before crimble. How am I supposed to find out whether or not to record The Nutty Professor now!

[bgowland]

I've posted a message on the XMLTV GUI forum alerting Alan Birtles about the lost 'Film' category. It appears there's a true/false field in the RT .dat files generated by MetaBroadcast which indicates if a programme is a film or not.

I've asked Alan if it would be possible to have an XMLTV GUI post-processor to modify the Category to 'Film' if this field is 'true'. I don't know if it's possible for any of us to write our own post-processor - or at least from a personal point of view, I've never really got the hang of lua so wouldn't really know where to start.

Cheers,
Brian

[martint123]

I don't know if it's possible for any of us to write our own post-processor - or at least from a personal point of view, I've never really got the hang of lua so wouldn't really know where to start.

I have looked at it in the past to try to tweak channel names and gave in. LUA is a language that seems to require a brain wired differently to mine ;(

[steeb]

I have looked at it in the past to try to tweak channel names and gave in. LUA is a language that seems to require a brain wired differently to mine ;(

Channel Names changing in a post processor with xmltvgui (and LUA)?

I just have to check myself here because I am reading things here by those that I consider masters!

Have I missed something? Renaming channels post xml grab and before import of final xml file into NextPVR?

Bet I'm not reading this right (wouldn't surprise me!)

If I'm not I have been doing this for years with xmltvgui...

Can I assist?

cheers

steeb