Phillie14586

TV Guide not updating

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hmph. I keep getting missing user in -J

Reminder .... : Unauthorized redistribution prohibited.

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Reading ..... : mc2xml.dat

Missing user in -J

Any ideas?

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6 hours ago, Honza said:

...it took really long time? It took for me like 2-3 minutes before EyeTV communicated with me. There is, in my case, something like 50k or so records, so it takes forever. That is why I set the updates for 4am... 

Honza,

Note that the mc2xml program allows you to limit which channels are output in your xml file.  See the "General information" section of the web site.  In my case, I went from a ~72MB file to a 23MB file.

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41 minutes ago, markl said:

hmph. I keep getting missing user in -J

Reminder .... : Unauthorized redistribution prohibited.

Reminder .... : If this software is useful, please donate!

Reading ..... : mc2xml.dat

Missing user in -J

Any ideas?

Delete the "mc2xml.dat" file and try again.  Per the web site, that file stores your lineup selection (and user/password).

Edited by DC Rackerby

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Thank you so much for this thread on creating a Schedules Direct solution.

It was so frustrating trying to get TV Guide to work until I read this thread.

Had to make a minor modification to make EyeTV Program Guide to work.  In Honolulu, we have some four digit channels and I had to assign a truncated three digit number for the channel to show up in the Program Guide.

Thank you Millstadt Weber!

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I took the bonehead approach. I went to the XMLTV website, signed up for their 14 day free trial, downloaded the file for my area. I waited until EyeTV wasn't busy recording, set the guide preference to none, and quit. I dragged the XML file onto the EyeTV icon, it started, and beavered away a while. There wasn't much sign of any change, but every time I changed a station in Channels to xmltv, I got a list of stations in my area. These weren't the same as the listings in Channels, but it was fairly easy to figure out which ones corresponded. As soon I clicked assign, a schedule for that channel propagated for that channel. Bob's your uncle. If I want to undertake automating this some day, I may do so, but it isn't that much trouble and for now it seems exactly like the TVGuide schedule. Let me know if by some miracle it returns.

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I too want to thank everyone who's contributed, I plan to implement Schedules Direct tonight or tomorrow. Just 2 points of clarification to make sure I am clear, since I am not a programmer (but I do have 2 sons who are by profession, so will run the composite solution by them to see if they have any suggestions and report back if they do).

#1 For using mc2xml, the -T flag does NOT have season/episode data, but the -J flag does, correct?. Therefore better to use the -J flag. And does that software have other option flags that might be useful to know about/try?

#2 I am in a rural area with a OTA antenna (using a now-ancient EyeTV Hybrid which is still working fine). My channel lineup in EyeTV/TV Guide is for the nearest big city (60 miles away); I assume I should use a zip code for that city, not my own residential zip code, right?

Thanks again! - the advice here has been invaluable. I wonder if anyone will ever write a GUI front end to integrate the various software components in this EPG solution.

 

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On 2/6/2019 at 6:02 AM, geedee said:

For those of us with the Silicon Dust HDHR tuners, we can also try Geniatech's competition - https://www.silicondust.com/dvr-service/

That has no scheduling/EPG capabilities at all.

 

Better then is to switch to TV-Mosaic. Nearly identical with the features of EyeTV but good and fast support.

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Th http://mc2xml.awardspace.info has a detailed description of all the flag options for mc2xml, so check out the site. I haven't checked it out fully yet.

The ./mc2xml -J username:password -c us -g 62260 does give me the season and episode numbers, whereas the ./mc2xml -T username:password didn't. Also, when I used the -T option my schedule filled out to about 7 days in advance. Now that I am using the -J option my schedule extends out 17 on all stations and even longer on some stations.

I also use an OTA antenna and live in a rural area near St. Louis (with about 70 HD stations) I can only pick up 51 of the stations. I used my hometown zip code and everything works fine.  

markl I can't reproduce the -J getting a missing user error.  Could you past the ./mc2xml line that you use in "Terminal" or in the the getup.sh procedure file?

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34 minutes ago, Ton said:

Better then is to switch to TV-Mosaic. Nearly identical with the features of EyeTV but good and fast support.

Ton,

I'm not familiar with TV-Mosaic.  Does it have editing capabilities?  It would be nice to use something that's supported.

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I want to emphasize the value of using an inclusion/exclusion list as described in the "General Information" section of http://mc2xml.awardspace.info/.

My Comcast cable system's listing delivers 857 channels in total. After processing, this creates a 260 MB xmltv.xml file that eyeTV has to absorb when it reopens under script control. It takes many (agonizing) minutes for that to complete. But I reduced the range of channels in the data file to the few dozen or so that I record by creating an mc2xml.chl text file (for those with eyesight issues, the file extension is Charles Hotel Lima) for the scripts directory (where all the other files reside). If you list channels to be included, all others are excluded. (As far as I can tell, all the channels are downloaded from the server, but only those passing the filter are added to the local xml data file). Therefore, my mc2xml.chl file begins as follows (first line is a comment):

# include only my channels
2-10
12-13
15-17
22
24
33-51

My xml data file is now down from 260 MB to less than 10 MB, and the eyeTV reopening and reconstitution of the program guide takes about 15 seconds.

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Wow!  Thank you so much to everyone for the their expertise for this fix. Eye TV without TV guide is an awful way to live!  I've bombed Genitech with support requests and have gotten radio silence.   They're either being sued, going-out-of-business, or ditching their North American market.  I do have a couple of questions and I apologize in advance that I am not as smart as you guys are.  Please bear with me.  FYI. I'm running a dual boot system 10.8.5 and 10.12.6 in OSX.  Eye TV 3.6.9 (7520) with 2 HDHomeRun Tuners.

1. I would like to get the seasons/episodes as well from Schedules Direct but running:

./mc2xml - J username:password -c us -g zipcode#

doesn't get me that.  Schedules Direct seems to hint that you don't need to select a lineup for your "program" if you use the SD-JSON service.  I do have a selected lineup.  I've got all the channels I set at xmltv in Eye TV.  What am I missing?  I've cleared the EPG before putting in new listings that hopefully show episodes/seasons, but still nothing.  Any suggestions?  Things to try?

2. Finally, I did play with Plex and while it might be a great solution in the future, it seems to lack editing and exporting functions right now (in addition to clunky playback while a show is recording).  The remove commercials as the show records function almost works (you get some residue).  It only liked one of my 2 HomeRun HDs, even after firmware upgrading both.  In addition it saves as MPEG 2 transport streams locally.  Is there a way to import those MPEG 2 Transport Streams into EyeTV without holding down the command key and doing a real-time import when you select "Open Quicktime File" - waiting the length of your recorded program just so you can use it in the Eye TV editor?  I did see that you could edit and convert the PLEX MPEG 2 transport streams fairly quick in Adobe Premiere and export (to Apple TV, IPhone, etc.) through Adobe Media Encoder too.

Thanks for all the great help!  You guys are awesome!

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On 2/9/2019 at 11:55 AM, Millstadt Weber said:

Step 3: on the "SD-DD Subscribed Lineups: Add a new lineup   Report Lineup Problems  " line click "Add a new lineup" and select the appropriate channel service you need. I have an HD Antenna which picks up 54 stations in the St. Louis area.

 

I get my TV OTA as well and I have a question:

I receive 55 channels at the moment from 2 markets, Providence and Boston, some are duplicate networks such as CBS boston - channel 4 and CBS providence- Channel 12 but the sub channels may not be the same. Some are unique to each market. So my question is, is it possible to set that up in schedulesdirect?

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Ton (above) suggested TV Mosaic. Never having heard of it, I went to their web site, impressive. It looks like an EyeTV DVR/EPG ecosystem in the making, with several types of software and a hardware tuner. Based in Netherlands; the tuner is DVB only, so that won't work in US. But software supports all platforms (Mac, Windows, even Raspberry Pi!). Still under development, software is in version 1.0. Claims to support HDHomeRun, but EyeTV Hybrid (for those of us who have it) is not on the list. The EPG problem being solved in this thread is our short-run problem, but what happens on the Mac after Mohave (i.e., OS 10.15) is a much bigger long-term problem for Mac owners. If Geniatech fails to deliver on its promise to convert EyeTV from 32-bit to 64-bit, TV Mosaic might be our way out for the future. For those of us with big EyeTV libraries (like me, 500+ programs) the only option I see is to keep my 2010 Mac Mini when I replace it this summer (with a 2018 model) as a dedicated EyeTV server. Clunky solution, but I'd hate to throw out all those programs I recorded (many are edited).

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15 minutes ago, WisconsinEric said:

 For those of us with big EyeTV libraries (like me, 500+ programs) the only option I see is to keep my 2010 Mac Mini when I replace it this summer (with a 2018 model) as a dedicated EyeTV server. Clunky solution, but I'd hate to throw out all those programs I recorded (many are edited).

Why not export them in another format. I have almost 2000 some going back 9 years. A lot of "This Old House" but many others as well. it could take awhile.

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On 2/8/2019 at 1:39 AM, Earl Noe said:

You shouldn't be concerned about sleeping your macmini, except, of course, not doing it absent mindedly when EyeTV is actually recording. EyeTV has worked flawlessly for me in waking up to record scheduled programs. It doesn't wake the display when it does this.

If my MacMini goes to sleep, sometimes that happens while holding a button too long on the Apple Remote, when it gets woken up the Apple Remote (actually EyeTV) is all goofed up...

The volume does not work properly and scrolling thru recording will produce a clicking sound and the volume will go up and down. The only way to fix it is to restart EyeTV.

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WisconsinEric, the -T flag does not have Season:Episode information. The -J tag does. As for other tags I am not sure. Both had repeat tags but can't say how accurate each are. TVGuide was good but not perfect with tis tag either. I also noticed in the -J tag the episode number is appended to the beginning of the episode name. As far as zip code goes I wold try your own and see what it gets you. If that doesn't work then try the zip code of the larger city.

 

VideoButcher, Did you first make an .xml file with the -T tag? Try trashing the .xml and .dat file then rerun with eh -J tag. It is also difficult to tell but do you have a space between the "-" and the "J"? Make sure there is no space.

 

I did rerun with the -J tag and the second time it does not ask for the listing choice so no need to try to automat that selection. Now I just need to make the automated.

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4 minutes ago, Russ One said:

As an alternate you can try "LaunchD", which I've been using foe a couple years.

I got Calendar to do the job. Hardly intuitive (and not much like the instructions I found around the Web for iCal), but got it going fine. If someone needs help, post here, and I'll tutor it.

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1 minute ago, dannyg said:

I got Calendar to do the job. Hardly intuitive (and not much like the instructions I found around the Web for iCal), but got it going fine. If someone needs help, post here, and I'll tutor it.

I tried that once maybe twice, .... Then I switched to LaunchD which very easy and intuitive.

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VideoButcher, Did you first make an .xml file with the -T tag? Try trashing the .xml and .dat file then rerun with eh -J tag. It is also difficult to tell but do you have a space between the "-" and the "J"? Make sure there is no space.

----------------------------------

Well, I did as you said and trashed both the .xml and .dat file.  Now the script has been running for 30 minutes with no end in sight (automator says its running, but I've got no progress bar).  It hasn't recreated the files I trashed.  Do I need to delete the channel lineup in schedules direct?  There was a space and fixed it between the J and the dash.  Many thanks in advance!

cd ~
cd scripts
./mc2xml -J username:password -c us -g zipcode#
open -a EyeTV xmltv.xml

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did you do this sequence in terminal?

cd ./scripts

./mc2xml -J username:password -c us -g zipcode

If this is the first time running this line it should return a list of lineups to choose from. find the one you want then type in that number and hit return. It should download the xml file.

 

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Let me know if you can figure out one of these automated scripts. I tried automated/Calendar but the automator kept throwing errors and when I tried to make it repeat in calendar kept adding one more instance of the alarm every day. Launchd is just as confusing. I have no idea how that file is supposed to be created.

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