How well do XML listings work in Canada?

[nscpsteve]

I've been a long time replayTV user. My machine recently has been acting up and I'm looking for an alternative. Sage TV seems to be the best PVR software around based on what I can tell.

I've been using the ReplayTV in Canada with a US Satellite dish (Direct TV) - but I really would rather now run a fully Canadian system.

Question: How well does Sage work with the XMLTV plug-in running? Are there problems with the listing info?

I'm love to hear from someone using the system with Canadian listings before I make the plunge and start building my new Media PC.

I'll be pleased to share my experiences with the board once I decide to proceed.

Thanks!

nscpsteve.

[pawn]

I'm happy with it.

[CanadaNow]

I am using XMLTV in Toronto, Canada for Rogers Digital listings, and it works very well, considering it scrapes a web site for its listings. I have yet to see a channel that is not available, or an incorrect listing. Here are what I consider the caveats:
[list=1][*]Complex setup. There are a lot of files to copy, batch scripts to set up, options to configure, etc. Here is a comprehensive XMLTV How To by robogeek.[*]XMLTV is reported to occasionally break when the web site supplying the data changes their display format, requiring an upgrade of XMLTV[*]No firstrun/rerun status. This is important for setting sage to record only the first runs of a favourite program. Pawn has written an excellent program to let you insert this information into your XMLTV data , if you know when and on what channel the first run is. It has many more uses such as renaming shows, etc.[*]Very long processing times. I schedule my XMLTV to run at 1am, and it is not unusual for it to be still running at 8am. The last step of the processing is very RAM and CPU intensive, and can make video playback very choppy for about 15 minutes at the end. I have an AMD Athlon 1800+ processor, and 512 MB of RAM.[/list=1]

Overall, I am impressed with the developers of XMLTV, but I would much rather have a service integrated into Sage TV.