NFL Sunday Ticket

[Surtr]

Huh, well looks like as of this year, Zap2It doesn't have any guide data for NFL Sunday Ticket. All the channels just show up as "NFL Sunday Ticket" for the programs, 1 hour each. Sucks if I want to record a game. So I went to Zap2It's website and they don't even show the NFL Sunday Ticket channels (701-720 or something).

Lame, lame lame!

[Fluffdaddy]

Bet it's the NFL being D!cks about their NFL-ST program info

[Surtr]

Man, they're doing it again this year. Really sucks not knowing what game is on what channel. Plus, if I want to record a game I have to either set up a manual recording or record 2 episodes of "NFL Sunday Ticket". It looks like TitanTV has the correct guide info, is there any way to pull data from TitanTV into sage?

[ukrunna]

Originally Posted by Surtr

Man, they're doing it again this year. Really sucks not knowing what game is on what channel. Plus, if I want to record a game I have to either set up a manual recording or record 2 episodes of "NFL Sunday Ticket". It looks like TitanTV has the correct guide info, is there any way to pull data from TitanTV into sage?

mc2xml has titantv support but I have no tried it

[kentro71]

Any updates to this? Has anyone tried anything that works, to get the NFL lineup?

[mwhittaker1024]

Originally Posted by kentro71

Any updates to this? Has anyone tried anything that works, to get the NFL lineup?

Each week, someone on DBSTalk.com posts a PDF that contains the NFL Sunday Ticket schedule: http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?t=140523

You could use that to create a timed recording?

[kentro71]

I apprecite the advice, and that's useable for now. Is there a better way to get this information into the epg. I would like to see a full functioning guide. I think with all the time and money we all here put into these HTPC's, and Sage we deserve better.

[SHS]

The problem has nothing to do with SageTV, Zap2It nor TitanTV
It has to with your service provider and channel broadcaster

[kentro71]

I'm not putting any blame on any particular party, simply because I'm not aware of how the data is collected and by whom. I'm sure though everyone here would like to see it better implemented. How is the data collected and by whom? Do the service providers have a system in place to give this data to the EPG services? Who should we all barrage with emails to get this changed? Sage is such a great application, and I would really like to see it fully functional. I realize not every aspect of the application is within there control though.

[dibs]

Anybody know how to get the Ticket channels to show programming correctly? I'm using the directtv Chicago programming and it doesn't even give me an option to ad the redzone channel.

[Surtr]

Nope, still doesn't show any detailed program info for sunday ticket. As for red zone channel; I just manually added it (channel 703) to my lineup.

-Justin

Go Steelers!

[sdsean]

What's bizarre about this is that directv does indeed show the game information in their guide, but Sage using zap2it does not. .

Snaptream's BeyondTV guid does indeed show the games. . .

I'd be willing to be that you can get this data through xmltv. . .

[Fuzzy]

anyone had any success getting proper guide/showid's for NFL Total Access? zap2it doesn't seem to create the id's properly, so I basically have to force manual recordings, otherwise it thinks Tuesday-Thursday are all the same show.

NFL Total Access should really get a new incremented showID every day at 7pm ET, as that is when that days version is first aired.

[Surtr]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

anyone had any success getting proper guide/showid's for NFL Total Access? zap2it doesn't seem to create the id's properly, so I basically have to force manual recordings, otherwise it thinks Tuesday-Thursday are all the same show.

NFL Total Access should really get a new incremented showID every day at 7pm ET, as that is when that days version is first aired.

Hey Fuzzy -

Check this out:

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/down...do=file&id=265

Of course, I'm having probs with it right now; I think maybe the API I'm using returns a max of 1000 shows or something but it was working great for me for a long time...

-Justin

[sdsean]

Well unfortunately sage responded to my bug posting and said zap2it doesn't provide them said data. . .but I'm not buying that simply because BeyondTV does this as well. . .

But it doesn't matter if they don't try, which it doesn't sound like they are going to any time soon. . .

In the mean time I found that the tv listings on msn actually do show the game data for sunday ticket. . . wonder how hard it is to make an epg plugin that adds to /augments current data. . . ? (i'm a software engineer for yahoo so i suppose it can't be that hard).

[Slugger]

Not hard at all, actually. The hard part is getting the data you want to add to the EPG. The data needs to be:

• In some easily parsable format (XML, CSV, JSON, etc.)
• Easily accessible
• Accurate/up to date

You have all of that then actually writing a Sage API program that will update your EPG is rather trivial. The problems are #1 and #3. #1 because no one wants to write/maintain a scraper and #3 because inaccurate/stale data is worse than no data at all b/c bad data ends up in the wrong recordings.

FWIW, my EPG (from Sage) includes the Sunday Ticket info so if Zap2It doesn't have the game info for your lineup then it's because your cable/sat provider isn't providing Zap2It with the info not because Zap2It or the NFL is choosing not to share it with you. Screen shot of my EPG attached just in case you don't believe me (couldn't fit all the ST channels on one screen, but I'm sure you get the idea).

[sdsean]

There must be a difference between directv feed from zap2it in canada and the us. . . but that's really interesting. . .

it has nothing to do with the cable provider though, as I can confirm that zap2it in sandiego doesn't even show the data on their website. . .

i imaging how snapstream is doing it is either searching another source, or b/c the have all the data for all locals. . .they equate show ids, and hence they can show the data. .

it really annoys me that sage basically denied my bug report. . . wonder if i can change that some how. . .

[Clift]

sd,

If you're serious about writing your own EPG plugin, to solve the problem of accurate data, why not get with Slugger? Find out where he is and what data he inputs into SageTV to get Zap2it to give him the EPG info, then write your plugin to basically snoop that data from Zap2it, then join that info into an existing lineup for the tuner(s) capturing from a DirecTV box.

[gplasky]

Or maybe take a look at the xmltv importer from Stephane. Although the only US xmltv data available will cost you $20 a year maybe it has the data you're looking for.
Check out the links in the stickies in this forum. xmltv info

Gerry

[Slugger]

Just to clarify, in Canada NFL Sunday Ticket is available on cable and satellite and we don't get DirecTV in Canada.

My provider is Shaw Direct (Star Choice) satellite. So I really think this is a matter of Shaw Direct is sharing the NFLST info with Zap2It and DirecTV isn't and that's why I have the game info on my lineup and you (DirecTV customers) don't.

Although, now that I think about it, there's no reason you can't just add the Shaw Direct channels to your lineup in Sage and map them to your DirecTV NFL channels. Though there's no guarantee that my NFL1 = DirecTV's NFL1, etc. but if they do happen to lineup properly then you should be set for the season.

Callsign	Z2I ChanID	Oct 11		Oct 18
NFL1SC		44422		CIN@BAL		HOU@CIN
NFL2SC		44423		CLE@BUF		BAL@MIN
NFL3SC		44424		PIT@DET		CLE@PIT
NFL4SC		44425		OAK@NYG		KAN@WSH
NFL5SC		44426		DAL@KAN		DET@GNB
NFL6SC		44427		WSH@CAR		STL@JAX
NFL7SC		44428		TAM@PHI		NYG@NOR
NFL8SC		44429		MIN@STL		CAR@TAM
NFL9SC		44430		ATL@SFO		PHI@OAK
NFL10SC		44431		HOU@ARZ		ARZ@SEA
NFL11SC		44432		NWE@DEN		TEN@NWE
NFL12SC		44433		JAX@SEA		BUF@NYJ
NFL13SC		44434		NO GAME		NO GAME
NFL14SC		44435		NO GAME		NO GAME

If your DirecTV channel is showing the same two games in back to back weeks as I've listed here then you should just be able to map your ST channels to the ones listed above in your Sage EPG. If your channels aren't showing the same two games then Shaw Direct doesn't simply pull the feed in from DirecTV for it's Sunday Ticket package and these channel lineups will be useless to you. Good luck (hopefully you can use them b/c I know how much it sucks when trying to schedule recordings for sports packages)!