EPG-Buddy an EPG Tool with easy usage

[Lehmden]

Hi.
I like to introduce our latest tool, called "EPG-Buddy". This program should make EPG grabbing as easy as possible. Up to now a good EPG is one of the most complicated things to achieve in the HTPC world. Nearly all available sources needs complicated scripting and fiddling with XML files or similar. "On Air"- EPG often is of bad quality or not available at all. Available Sources for grabbing EPG data from online sources are hard to configure, especially if you are new to this topic. Here is where EPG-Buddy jumps in. With EPG-Buddy you can configure your EPG with a few mouse clicks and after you're done your EPG is refreshed completely invisible and automatic on a daily or weekly base. You can use various sources for your EPG data. As EPG-Buddy delivers it’s data in XMLTV compatible format it can be used together with nearly every available TV solution for PC including, but not limited to MediaPortal, Argus TV, NextPVR, DVB-Viewer,… Some features may not be available for every solution but the main features are working with all of them as long as they are able to use XMLTV compatible EPG data..

There is one comfort function, the matching of channel names read from TV Database, that needs to be written individual for every TV engine. That's why this comfort function is not available for some TV engines. But you always can match channel names manually. This way you can use EPG-Buddy together with nearly every TV Solution for PC.

Version 0.5.0.1 (and higher when available) has full NextPVR Support included.

The installation and configuration is described in the manual, available in English and German for download.

Some highlights:
The recent supported EPG data sources are:

Tvguide.com - a fast and free source for North American countries (USA, Canada, Mexico)

TVSpielfilm - a fast and free source for German speaking countries

epgData - a fast but paid source for German speaking countries

Clickfinder - a fast but paid source for German speaking countries

WebGrab+Plus – a free but slow source for nearly every country and language in the World

External XML files - to use XMLTV- compatible XML files from other sources

All sources can be combined as wanted and after data download the EPG can be compared with TheTVDB.com to grep season and episodes numbers often missing in the "raw" EPG data. If there is no description existing in RAW EPG data they are added from TVDB too (if available). Season and Episodes numbers are added in xmltv_ns format understandable by most TV solutions. All is configurable so you can disable the long lasting compare for all channels that are normally not airing series (Shopping , News, Sports,... channels and so on)

Some special hints for usage with NextPVR.
EPG-Buddy is reading the channel names from the npvr.db3 database. Only channels that have set EPG source to something else than "none" are read so you can shorten the channel list this way.

To add data downloaded by EPG-Buddy you don't need to do something special. In Settings simply click on a channel to open the details windows. Here you select xmltv as source and browse to the xml file created by EPG-Buddy. If you've configured anything properly in EPG-Buddy the mapping matches automatically. But you also can map manually, if you missed something in EPG-Buddy configuration...

New versions always can be found here:
https://buddy-tools.000webhostapp.com/downloads
Aside this page they also can be found in Mediaportal and kodinerds forums...


I can't attach the installer here, as it is too big to be allowed.

[Lehmden]

Hi.
A new major version (0.6.0.5) of EPG-Buddy is available. It now is supporting the NextPVR V5 database and a new free and fast EPG source for nearly all of Europe is included too. The EPG Data is prepared in a way that Auto- Map feature will work 100% reliable.

[mvallevand]

I was a bit confused with this post because of another product used on this forum "MCE Buddy" and this is completely different. If it helps I found this page https://modellbahnblog.de/buddy-tools/downloads/ with a link to the english manual currently https://modellbahnblog.de/buddy-tools/wp...Manual.pdf

Martin

[Lehmden]

Hi.
MCE Buddy is an outdated tool to convert WMC TV recordings automatically. It's not written by me and I didn't thought it still is used as Windows Media Center is dead a long time already...
I have written some tools with "-Buddy" in the name.. Aside EPG-Buddy (started in 2015) I'm especially working on "Media-Buddy" a tool to automate all daily work with media files, video and audio files. This project started in 2103 but with the name MKV-Buddy as in the beginning it only could work with MKV files. But in meantime it can work with (nearly) anything and can do nearly everything. It can rename, transcode or remux files, add metadata from IMDB, TMDB TVDB fanart.tv and musicbrainz to the media. And all with a single mouse click for a whole bunch of media files. I will introduce this tool here as soon as I have the final V 1.0 ready. At them moment a few things need to be fixed and/or added so only a pre- release is online. The included functions are stable and reliable but not everything it should do already is implemented.

[Mel]

Lehmden, if you're monitoring this thread, it might be worth taking at look at the following: https://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.ph...514&page=4 Thanks.