Privacy Police

stuartf

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Content Count

    40

  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    3

Posts posted by stuartf

  3. Posted · Edited by stuartf · Report reply

    There is still no fix for the xmltv project tv_grab_uk_tvguide grabber

    Recent attempts by xmltv project members to use the new API seem to have been blocked by the owners of TV Guide.

    In the interim I have been looking at the pay service provided by Schedules Direct. This supports the xmltv grabber  tv_grab_zz_sdjson.

    Schedules Direct  offer a 7 day free trail of the service. You have to sign up to get a login. Then a $35 annual charge (the underlying data is provided by Gracenote)

    https://www.schedulesdirect.org

    (I have no affiliation with SD)

    My experience so far is that it seems to work with a few minor issues (such as no BBC1 HD listing), probably a config issue by me likely to be resolved by running config with a different option

    It was simple enough to configure by simply switching out the tv_grab_uk_tvguide in my xmltv_refresh.sh script for tv_grab_zz_sdjson

    and running tv_grab_zz_sdjson —config to set up for the first time

    The data seems good over a 10 day period and has successfully updated over the past couple of days. Based on this I plan to subscribe once my weeks trial is over next week

    EyeTV 3 lives on for a bit and possibly this will even work with EyeTV 4. Although I doubt the latter will ever be updated for Apple Silicon Macs 

    Stuart

     

    Edit: I forgot to mention that the download time for listings from SD  is really quick!

  4. Posted · Report reply

    There still seems to be no resolution in sight for the issue with the UK xmltv grabber from TVGuide

    If you are thinking about trying EyeTV 4 don't. I did that experiment for you

    The guide is as expected broken there too! The server never responds

    The DVB option only grabs the next on air program, not the week it should process and add. Plus it does not run automatically making this useless too!

    If you are on Apple Silicon the program will crash frequently. It seems OK on my old Intel Man mini.

    So pretty much every problem that has been raised in the topic area is still not fixed

    I have challenged support on these issues and asked for a refund they cannot or will not be fixed

    Stuart

  6. Posted · Report reply

    19 hours ago, alaninbelfast said:

    @stuartfLooks like tvguide may be dying ... the website (and the screen-scraping feeds) run out of data at the end of August.  Have been trying to get my head around SchedulesDirect but ... nightmare!

    It came back this morning. I reran my my download script about 09:30. Just a week of listings so far with some data missing

    I'm wildly speculating that the person responsible for this was on holiday for the past two weeks!

    It was enough of a scare to make my weekend project buying and setting up a HD Homerun Quatro on my Plex server. Works flawlessly but zero option to edit the recording (one of the best features of EyeTV 3). I did first try to connect my NetStream 4 Sat but just could not get it to work this time around. It previously seemed to work. At least now I have options for recording from Sat and DTV!

    Stuart

  9. Posted · Report reply

    On 8/16/2022 at 6:27 PM, geeji said:

    I have finally achieved half-success with tv_grab_fr, see the attached screen copy 😀.

    Note that the number of french XML guides available thru telestar.fr is far, far below the 1000+ XML guides available in the UK.

    The only problem is that I achieved this by copying and executing manually SOME of the Terminal commands given by Stuart in his script, while the "automated" shell script "xmltv_refresh.sh" continues to fail abysmally. Furthermore, I finally got the xml listing executing from the Terminal "/opt/local/bin/tv_grab_fr", but sometimes I can reproduce it, sometimes I cannot !

    Apologies I missed a # from the first line of xmltv_refresh.sh

     

    should be  

    #!/bin/bash

     

    See OldGoat's post above

     

  10. Posted · Report reply

    1 hour ago, Elsässer said:

    @STUARTF would/could you help me for a german grabber. I changed uk vs. de vs. gr but it did not work.

    thx

    martin

    tv_grab_eu_epgdata is the grabber name but I just went to their site and it looks like they have stopped providing the EPG

    I must be lucky that the EPG in the UK is provide by TV Guide and free of charge

    The full list of grabbers installed by xmltv is:

    tv_grab_ar

    tv_grab_eu_epgdata

    tv_grab_fr

    tv_grab_it

    tv_grab_na_tvmedia

    tv_grab_uk_tvguide

    tv_grab_ch_search

    tv_grab_fi

    v_grab_huro

    tv_grab_na_dd

    tv_grab_pt_meo

    tv_grab_zz_sdjson

    tv_grab_fi_sv

    tv_grab_is

    tv_grab_na_dtv

    tv_grab_tr

     

    • Like 2

  13. Posted · Report reply

    I managed to get XMLTV working in a couple of hours after some trial and error

    Hopefully just enough detail to get people going. I'm sure I reused previous knowledge from posts I found here and on Google

    This is all done in the terminal. If you are not comfortable with this I would avoid this option

    Pre-req is to install xcode and add-on's when prompted 

    Google and Install macports (there is a package but I installed from the source tar. I recommend you do too as it will compile the version for your macOS). I'm doing this on an old mac running Sierra. Old OS and old shell

    https://www.macports.org/install.php

    Follow the instructions on the website including adding /opt/local/bin to your path or terminal will not find "port" once installed

    Once macports is installed:  Install xmltv using 

    sudo port install xmltv

    It may take a while as it takes care of all the required dependencies. 

    This creates a series of tools in /opt/local/bin. I'm using the UK grabber but there are others. Then I ran 

     /opt/local/bin/tv_grab_uk_tvguide --configure

    This creates the .xmltv directory in your user home and defines the cache location. You do want to go through the pain of selecting the channels in this config as selecting all will take the grabber forever to run. For the UK I had to say no or yes over a 1000 time. Yes it was pain but worthwhile

    One configured I created myself a script file in 

    vi ~/.xmltv xmltv_refresh.sh 

    Use your editor of choice. In this file I entered the following:
      

    !/bin/bash

# Run the grabber, limit detail for speed 14 days, pass to sorter and output to an xml file

/opt/local/bin/tv_grab_uk_tvguide --nodetailspage --days 14 | /opt/local/bin/tv_sort --by-channel --output ~/.xmltv/uk-tv-listings.xml

# load xml EPG in EyeTV by passing the file

/usr/bin/open -a /Applications/EyeTV.app ~/.xmltv/uk-tv-listings.xml

    Make the above file executable by running 

    chmod u+x ~.xmltv/xmltv_refresh.sh

    Test the grabber by running the above script you saved:  

    ~/.xmltv/xmltv_refresh.sh

    You can test this is eyeTV by selecting xmltv as the guide against a channel. You will instantly see the channel listings if it has worked

    Once happy you can add an entry to your crontab like: 

    #

00 05 * * * $HOME/.xmltv/xmltv_refresh.sh >/dev/null 2>&1

00 17 * * * $HOME/.xmltv/xmltv_refresh.sh >/dev/null 2>&1

    This will run the script twice a day ay 05:00 and 17:00. Choose times to suit

    Good luck. Hope this helps some people while we wait ..

    Stuart

    • Like 1
    • Thanks 2

  14. Posted · Report reply

    On 8/9/2022 at 5:02 AM, bobbyb said:

    Looking at their blog, all the posts have 9 Aug as the post date. Maybe they had a system failure, and they are just getting it back up ... sort of. No reason not to let us know tho.

     

    The dates on the Geniatech website have been all over the place for years. Most just seem to show the current date

    • Like 1

  15. Posted · Report reply

    I have stopped receiving updates to Gracenote for the  (UK) EU. I am getting "Update failed (could not connect to server)"

    I completed the checks on certificates at:  https://www.geniatech.eu/faq/epg-gracenote-cannot-connect-to-server/. The last one fails due to an expired certificate

    My EPG subscription is valid for another month

    I also noticed that the option to buy an EPG subscription in the Geniatech shop is gone and now links to buy EYETV4 software

    Anyone else having issues?

    Is this finally the end of support?

    I did use xmltv for a while but when the API changes a few years back I could no longer get it to work

    Thanks in advance for any advice

    Stuart

    EYETV 3.6.9 (7524) on an old Mac mini running Sierra (as I found EYETV on High Sierra to be unstable)

  21. Posted · Report reply

    I gave up trying to get EyeTV too work on 10.13

    Despite what Geniatech say it simply doesn't work reliably and they seem to have no interest in fixing the application

    I went back to running EyeTV 3 on an old MacMini with 10.12 and it has been completely stable

    EyeTV 3 is as good as abandonware since Elgato sold it to Geniatech. An absolute shame as I have used the hardware and software since first released and recommended it to many of my friends. Not any more

     

     

  22. Posted · Report reply

    3 minutes ago, JasonH said:

    After I though that I had got it back working, the very next update from Gracenote has left gaping holes in my EPG again.  Had enough.  Switched back to DVB to see how I get on.

    Please keep us posted on your experience with DVB. When I tried it a few weeks ago I only got a few hours of updates.

    In the past I woudl get 7-8 days after a few hours

  25. Posted · Report reply

    The problem with missing schedules is still happening after yesterdays update to EyeTV

    There is nothing showing after next Friday for me.

    I used to use xmltv for my listings which was flawless and free. Unfortunately the Radio Times feed was switched off a couple of years ago and I have failed to get the xmltv coder to work with the replacement (mostly my lack of patience)

    Also the DVB feed has been broken for a while too, so no option at the moment that this appalling Gracenote service


    Stuart