[mythtvnz] Epgsnoop and freeview

[Hadley Rich]

On Thu, 05 Apr 2007 15:14:53 Steven Ellis wrote:
> Has anyone been trying out epgsnoop on the freeview channels. I know at
> the moment their data appears to be less reliable than Sky's, but given
> how close we are getting to the launch it might be an idea to take a look..

I haven't really looked as I can't tune horizontal while watching Sky yet. I'm 
waiting a bit longer to see what happens, I guess I might have to get a new 
LNB and do some more cabling.

> Anyhow some initial feedback.
>
> 1. Some issues with the rating data. If I run the output through tv_split
> I get the following error
>
> missing 'value' element inside rating at /usr/share/perl5/XMLTV.pm line
> 1503

This is a little bug that I knew about and have fixed in my testing version. 
Basically the rating tag would get printed without anything in it which 
breaks the xmltv spec. I've bumped the version on the site with this fix, 
that's the only change.

The ratings codes that freeview are using appear to be different to Sky's so I 
may need to do some adjusting for that once we figure it out. They look 
pretty random from a quick look.

Also the data doesn't seem to be categorised at all unfortunately.

[snip]
> 4. Reliable way to run dvbtune + epgsnoop at regular intervals
>
> Anyone worked out a good reliable way to do this, preferably one that
> checks to make sure that the DVB interface is available and not in use by
> MythTV.

I use the script pasted below. I don't really care if mythtv is using the 
interface as that means it's tuned and I can grab data from it anyway. It 
works for me because I am still only using Sky's transponder for 1 & 2, it 
may not for others.

----------------------- script -------------------------
#!/bin/bash

TMPFILE="/tmp/listings-$$.xml"
USER='hads'
export HOME="/home/$USER"

(dvbtune -f 1921000 -s 22500 -p v -m -tone 0 2&> /dev/null &)

/usr/local/bin/epgsnoop --user=$USER --database --imdb --quiet > $TMPFILE
/bin/gzip $TMPFILE
/bin/rm $TMPFILE.gz
/usr/local/bin/mythfilldatabase --quiet

killall dvbtune 2&> /dev/null
-------------------- end script ----------------------

There are other parts to the script as it does the uploading to the webserver 
etc. but this is the interesting bit. This also uses the new grabber I've 
been playing with instead of using mythfilldatabase with the --file option.

hads

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