DigiGuide alternative to RT XMLTV

[MadAxeMan]

Happy New Year all!

I have been affected like a lot of others by the RT issue. Now, although I'm sure these guys will sort it out TBH I have been frustrated for a while over this issue. If any of you use Sky Digital you will be aware of two issues with RT:

1) Many of the channels are missing
2) There is no way to easily keep up with the remapping of new/moved channels.

So this has been the wake up call I needed.

I have implemented a solution using DigiGuide (www.digiguide.com). Now this is a paid for service, but I think the costs are very very reasonable (£6ish a year I believe) and they provide all the Sky channels with EPG data.

I am currently beta testing this with some people over at DigiGuide but I'd be willing to include all my SageTV instructions with the install if there is enough interest here.

It also uses the excellent xmltvimport plugin from here:
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=12740

[doc]

I'm definately interested as it would allow me to add more sky channels than I currently have set up

I'm not sure how it would work with multiple sources and differing channel numbers on different sources, (ie sky, sky freewiew, sky free to air, DVB-T) but it would be nice to have a play.

[Mark SS]

Are you doing this in co-operation with Digiguide? In the past they have gone to great lengths to prevent anyone exporting their data. Someone created a plugin for BeyondTV some years ago but Digiguide quickly plugged the hole in their software and stopped it working.

The Digiguide data is apparently excellent, far more accurate and detailed than RT. IIRC they have consistent identifiers for episodes so in theory repeat/premiere would work perfectly every time.

I and I would imagine every other UK user would happily pay for Digiguide data in Sage.

[jaminben]

Yep I'd most definatly be happy to pay a reasonable fee for data like that in SageTv.
This year is looking good for Uk tv viewers with the launch of Freesat around spring time and other terrestrial tv channels launching HD services.

[MadAxeMan]

On the DigiGuide front:

I have posted the solution on their forums and one of their team has replied - they seemed helpful and certainly didn't mention anything about not being happy. I certainly wouldn't want to distribute anything they weren't happy with. I initially asked for feedback and so far nothing untoward has been said.

I'm not interacting with the main program to export the data, but the web server they supply as part of the setup (so you can browse listings). This lets you create custom skins and I have merely created a near as possible XMLTV output skin and then an app to download and polish the output to a file. Pretty simple and flexible process.

It currently does this in one big hit, and I have experienced a few server crashes, but this now appears stable. It is outputting a 40MB file for me but the process is pretty darn quick from start to finish.

As for multiple listings:

When you configure DigiGuide it asks you what source you want and there are a number of selections (sky digital/freeview/virgin etc etc).

Now, it appears you can add as many of these channels from these lineups as you want.

The problem would then be seperating these out into different xmltv files.

You can create "categories" to add channels to. So potentially there may be a way to identify different lineups and each category.

Currently there is say: Entertainment, Sport, News as categories. It could be possible to create: Freeview:Entertainment, Sky:Entertainment ... as categories and the exporter to pick up on channel category names such as this and export them to seperate Freeview.xml and Sky.xml files.

That's all in theory, but I don't see why not... ...how you handle it Sage TV side would then be up to you...

[doc]

If it outputs a file as a single XML file I could still use Stephane's importer to create the other lineups such as Sky, Freeview, Freesat, DVB-T.

I find Stephane's a bit fiddly to initially copy the channels to the new lineup, but once done its easy to make small changes.

[John@TunerUK]

I'd be more than happy to pay for this, and I'm installing sage into a few of the houses I'm working on (I'm a self employed electrician), so I'm sure I can get even more custom than just myself.

[Hyperbaric]

It would be a good thing indeed!

[motobarsteward]

This is an interesting development. I exchanged e-mails with DigiGuide a couple of months ago and then put SageTV in contact with them with a view to getting SageTV to support using DigiGuide as an EPG source (rather like they do for tvtv). SageTV's last email to me suggested that the were going to look into working with DigiGuide. The thread of the emails with DigiGuide was that they would not want to provide EPG direct to us and would only deal through a third party (like SageTV). If they have decided to change this policy, then they will do very well, I think as every body in the UK using PVR software whill use their service, I'm sure.

MadAxeMan, I suggest you check with SageTV and make sure that they are not working on native support as you may be wasting your time. However, I guess your work would be very useful to the Myth tv guys out there.

As far as channel sorting is concerned, I think I'd happily pay DigiGuide if it meant the EPGs didn't ned to be re-mapped evry time Sky changed the gannel line up. I payed tvtv £15 the other day to find that I still had to do the channel mapping and, infact, they carry less info than Bleb!

[MadAxeMan]

Native support would be fantastic and a much preferable approach, maybe this is the push they all need - we can but hope

In the meantime this is working for me and is a world removed from the RT approach.

I have contacted the DigiGuide devs and they said they would be able to get back to me when everyone is back from their hols.

I'm not going to release anything to the masses without their approval, although I have dropped a link to a few on their forums for beta testing.

TBH I have much more pressing things to spend my time on, but it's about time us UK PVR peeps had a decent and reliable source for our listings and I'll put in as much effort as is necessary if given the blessing of the companies involved.

[Mark SS]

Any progress on this? More than happy to spend some time testing anything thats in place so far.

[MadAxeMan]

Originally Posted by Mark SS

Any progress on this? More than happy to spend some time testing anything thats in place so far.

I will be releasing what I have some time soon. It is still working peachy for me and I'm just about to sign up for the service now my trial is over.#

In the meantime I will PM you the current version link. It still uses epg numbers for channel IDs which I will change in the next version.

[stryker]

I'd be interested in this too as RT does not carry all the channels my virgin media account receives.

[jflet1]

Hello,

Whats the latest with the Digiguide solution ?

I've been a paid-up member of Digiguide since it launched some years ago.
Just migrated from GBPVR yesterday (wow ! is Sage cool or what )

Just got to get EPG running now. Just a little frustrating that I've got Digiguide but cant use it.

Regards,

Julian

[MadAxeMan]

As above it works fine fine for me at the moment. I am planning a better final release version that where I will endevour to cope with multiple listings output.

Just a bit busy at the moment with about 7 work projects and setting up a reef tank.

If you PM me I'll point you at the latest version which works great with Demitrius 's xmltv plugin.

[brettuk]

Hey, whats the latest? I've used digiguide before and it's very good, and will love to use it in Sage.
Did you get a reply from Digiguide or SageTV after you emailed them in the end?

[MadAxeMan]

Originally Posted by brettuk

Hey, whats the latest? I've used digiguide before and it's very good, and will love to use it in Sage.
Did you get a reply from Digiguide or SageTV after you emailed them in the end?

A few people have this working now. It probably *will not play well with multiple different sources* at this point. However it does support doing whatever you want with the output via XSLT files.

I have done a fair amount of new work but it is not releasable at this point. Unfortunately work is in the way of further dev atm.

So here is the last release for people to use and find bugs/issues with:
http://www.fourcubed.net/projects/dgxmltv/1.0.3.zip
Source and some documentation is included.

The major change from xmltv is this release does not incorporate the original channel ids, instead they are mapped to channel epg. This is now reverted in my dev code. This should help fix multiple different source issues.

[Whitey]

I have been using your digiguide to xmltv converter along woth stephane's xmltv importer and it works great!

One bug I have found though, some channels have the wrong data in them and it seems that it's caused by the channel number in reverse. For example, "sky news" channel 501 shows data for "five" channel number 105. Five shows the correct info. I have about four or five channels showing this problem.

Thank

Whitey

[MadAxeMan]

Hi Whitey, glad it seems to be working - mostly.

Can you check through the epgdata.xml output file and search for a programme tag
<programme
with a
channel="501"
string in it. These programmes should belong to Sky News.

Also, if you want to post the contents of your xmltv properties file that would be handy.

I run the same setup and have those channels importing OK.

[Whitey]

Originally Posted by MadAxeMan

Hi Whitey, glad it seems to be working - mostly.

Can you check through the epgdata.xml output file and search for a programme tag
<programme
with a
channel="501"
string in it. These programmes should belong to Sky News.

Also, if you want to post the contents of your xmltv properties file that would be handy.

I run the same setup and have those channels importing OK.

Yes there are references to channel="501" in the epgdata.xml file and they do belong to sky news. Which xmltv properties file are you refering to?

Thanks

Whitey