New XMLTV Plugin

[rickgillyon]

Anyone here using StephaneM's new XMLTV plugin with Birty's RT Grabber? Looks like a good plugin, but might be a PITA to set up with a system already running with multiple lineups.

Any experiences of it, please share!

[dooferlad]

I gave StephaneM's one a try, but I couldn't get it working. Probably something to do with having the old XMLTV plugin going beforehand, but I never did work it out. I didn't persist for very long because I didn't want to miss a recording.

[rickgillyon]

I think you need to completely redo your lineups too (if you get that far). If I get sacked and have a month to spare, maybe I'll try it...

[dooferlad]

DVB is my main priority at the moment, but even that is not working at the moment :-( I haven't even got around to logging my problems for a decent bug report.

I think I have a free weekend in 2009 when I will take a look.

[rickgillyon]

Originally Posted by dooferlad

DVB is my main priority at the moment, but even that is not working at the moment :-(

What's the problem? DVB is working very well for me, I have four DVB tuners coping with my terrestrial channels.

There should be a new public beta in the next few days (as posted in various threads) so perhaps that will help your DVB problems anyway.

Originally Posted by dooferlad

I think I have a free weekend in 2009 when I will take a look.

2009? You lucky, lucky...

[dooferlad]

Sage won't see my tuner. I have got a frq file, but don't know where to put it and ScanChannelsBDA works fine.

I think part of the problem may be that I haven't done a 100% clean install. I did install to a new directory, but there was still another active installation elsewhere. I would like to be able to upgrade an existing one of course because I have a year or so of viewing history in the profiler now which I don't want to lose. I have been using the not quite beta yet builds that are available.

Even as a person who spends his day writing code and isn't afraid to mess with computers, it would be nice to see an idiots guide to getting it working! You know, pictures, fluffy animated characters...

[rickgillyon]

You have a lineup to apply? Should be a case of just adding the tuner, making sure the FRQ is in the Sage folder and correctly named, apply your lineup, don't tune, remap the channel numbers to those in your FRQ file, and Bob's your uncle. Theoretically.

Or wait for the new beta and just tune it and use the epg data off the stream, but then the channels won't match the ones in XMLTV.

If you want a clean install to play with, just rename your SageTV folder and install. When you want your real one back, rename again. That's the beauty of an app that stores very little in the registry...you can then get a scanned FRQ from your clean install and apply it to your real install. May be worth waiting for the next beta though.

[dooferlad]

How do I add the tuner then? If Sage can't see it in the normal menu system do I have to hack some properties file? Also, what is the correct name for the FRQ file?

[rickgillyon]

What card is it? If you don't see it at all, open sage.properties and look at mmc/ignore_encoders, if it's there remove it and restart Sage. That's normally why it's missing. Best way to get the proper name for the FRQ is tune, then you'll see the file appear. Remove the source and do it again, but without tuning, with your file in its place.

[dooferlad]

Nebula uDigiTV (USB master). It isn't on the ignore list...

Thanks for the FRQ tip.

[rickgillyon]

Originally Posted by dooferlad

Nebula uDigiTV (USB master).

Sorry, didn't get an email notification of the reply! Never heard of the device, are you sure it has loaded a BDA driver? Often cards come with two drivers, but the BDA is the one that you need. Some come with their own TV software and no BDA driver, and will not work with Sage.

[rickgillyon]

Look like your BDA drivers are here:
http://www.nebula-electronics.com/Do...DA_Drivers.asp

Remove the device then re-add it with these, see how it goes.

[StephaneM]

Originally Posted by rickgillyon

Anyone here using StephaneM's new XMLTV plugin with Birty's RT Grabber? Looks like a good plugin, but might be a PITA to set up with a system already running with multiple lineups.

I can't tell you exactly how it will work with Birty's grabber but if your XMLTV file does have episode title or a different description for each episode all should be good.

Is it difficult to set up? I do hope it is not, as it is designed to be straightforward, only the "lineup" part of the setup requires some time (the more channel you have the more time to setup).

Basically the Importer will ask you to create one or more lineups. Then all channels found in your XMLTV file is displayed in a list and you are required to give a name / call sign / channel number and lineup for each of them. You will also be able to create additional channels (either duplicates of existing one or brand new empty channels).

Once it is done, there is nothing more to do.

To be sure it will be working fine with SageTV, run the Importer setup when SageTV is completely shut down (otherwise SageTV will not be able to load the plugin). Also you must be running Java Runtime 1.5.

The setup is working if you can see the lineup you created in the Importer in SageTV. If this is not the case I'll be glad to help.

And by the way : thank you for letting me know you were using a Cinergy card for DVB I purchased one and decided to go for SageTV by reading your posts here.

Also I don't use native DVB support of SageTV, I still use SBDARecorder : because the MPEG files (or TS) produced by SageTV are only playable by SageTV (timestamp are corrupted)


Regards,
Stéphane.

[rickgillyon]

Originally Posted by StephaneM

I can't tell you exactly how it will work with Birty's grabber but if your XMLTV file does have episode title or a different description for each episode all should be good.

Is it difficult to set up? I do hope it is not, as it is designed to be straightforward

Thanks for the response! The grabber has episode titles and subtitles, descriptions etc.

I say that setup will be a PITA not as a criticism - I haven't actually tried it yet. But I have 3 lineups, two of which have probably 150 channels, the other 20, so just mapping those is going to be a PITA...also I have channels that don't come from the grabber, so those are added to the lineups manually, and I'd have to recreate those.

Originally Posted by StephaneM

Also I don't use native DVB support of SageTV, I still use SBDARecorder : because the MPEG files (or TS) produced by SageTV are only playable by SageTV (timestamp are corrupted)

I never normally play the MPGs outside of Sage (just once or twice without problems), but I do generate XviD overnight and need to run VideoReDo to clean up the timecodes first. I always assumed the bad timecodes were general to the signal rather than SageTV. Have you informed Qian/Betatest that it's their TSSplitter causing the problem? They are keen to fix any problems.

Perhaps it's fixed in the upcoming beta anyway.

Does your importer display the actors in the description? Once I have a free weekend I'll go for it! Maybe...

[dooferlad]

I was definitely using BDA drivers or ScanChannelsBDA wouldn't have worked :-) I have switched back to using the standard Nebula front end and associated drivers for now (which is terrible, but I can schedule recordings for it without any problems and watch live TV on it).

I have experienced problems with TS/PS streams dumped by the Nebula app when re-encoding them to H264, which cleaned up when I ran them through ProjectX and created a standard MPEG 2 output. I don't bother to re-encode very often though so in general it isn't a problem.

[rickgillyon]

That makes it a pain to retry when new versions come out, because you have to reinstall drivers etc. rather than just reverting a Sage backup. Next time you try you should send betatest your logs, so that they can look into why it isn't being seen - a hassle but I'm sure they'll get it right in the end. Or you could pick up one of the cards that is known to work.

[dooferlad]

If Sage and the Nebula drivers both conform to a standard then it should just work. I don't see why I should waste money on more hardware! The Nebula hardware is really good, it is just a shame the drivers can be a bit rubbish. They have excellent sensitivity and have a rather neat master / slave system so once it is working I can add a new receiver for £45. It all works over USB as well, which is a good thing because I only have one PCI slot!

Anyway, I am sure I will find some time to take another look soon.

[StephaneM]

Originally Posted by rickgillyon

I have 3 lineups, two of which have probably 150 channels, the other 20, so just mapping those is going to be a PITA...also I have channels that don't come from the grabber, so those are added to the lineups manually, and I'd have to recreate those.

It should be less painfull that with other plugin : here you do have an editor to edit the channel list. For the channels that don't come from the grabber, you'll also be able to add them (in the "Additional channels" tab).

If you have more than one PC, you can install the Importer on a non SageTV PC (the setup may not be happy if it can't find a SageTV directory though) and edit your channels here without disturbing your current SageTV setup. And when you are Ok with your channels list, just save the lineups.xml, channels.xml and clone_channels.xml from the Importer install directory and you'll be able to reuse them later on another PC.

I never normally play the MPGs outside of Sage (just once or twice without problems), but I do generate XviD overnight and need to run VideoReDo to clean up the timecodes first. I always assumed the bad timecodes were general to the signal rather than SageTV. Have you informed Qian/Betatest that it's their TSSplitter causing the problem? They are keen to fix any problems.

Well not yet, I'll do for the next beta round up. I don't know what is doing this. I also noticed that there are more "skips" in the stream than with SBDARecorder (missing a frame or two once in while or some corrupted frames).

Does your importer display the actors in the description?

The Importer retrieve actors from XMLTV data and put them in the appropriate SageTV field. So they are not appended to the description of the show, but you'll see the actor list in SageTV.


Regards,
Stéphane.

[perf]

Originally Posted by StephaneM

Also you must be running Java Runtime 1.5.

This killed it for me. I had to go back to Java 1.4, to get smooth playback. The XMLTV plugin then does not work correctly.

/Per