Is a minimal website programming interface in the pipeline, somewhere?

[HawkeyeLonewolf]

My thoughts would be something along the lines of...

Either a brute force web page hosted on Personal Web Server or IIS that takes a time/channel and adds it to the record queue. If SageTV had an API or could poll and read a script file, then this would work. The app-page could write a special file to a special directory and SageTV would poll for this file and import the information.

OR

A central website where you login, pick a show and it stores it for SageTV to "check" every so often -- user can set the polling time. So long as you add the show within the polling window, you should be ok.

OR

You can open a port in your firewall and the site can send a message to your machine. This is less effective with dynamic IPs, etc.

[shodge]

I guess I am in favor of letting Jeff do what he does best - adding features, new card support and etc. The wave of future direction seems to be to let the user community deal with user interface issues. In that light, I would support a "official" programmers interface SDK to SageTV. This could take the form of a active X component with the type of calls outlined by 'bodgadle'. With this supported extension, the user community can design WEB servers, WEB pages and GUI to thier hearts content and post them [maybe to a new form]. This provides most of us with a eventual solution [a great one, since many WEB programmers will be designing them] and should not slow Jeff down too much in the long run.... A real good model of this can be seen in the X-10 controller software called HOMESEER. Good core software and great user community support.

-Stan

[mlbdude]

I doubt Jeff could do anything to allow us to expose the guide data. I would be surprised if there were not licensing issues.

I also agree this is a "fluff" feature that should take a seat to the more important PVR base features.

[HawkeyeLonewolf]

Originally posted by mlbdude
I doubt Jeff could do anything to allow us to expose the guide data. I would be surprised if there were not licensing issues.

I also agree this is a "fluff" feature that should take a seat to the more important PVR base features.

Not sure who you're agreeing with... It's quite important to many.

[justme]

I doubt Jeff could do anything to allow us to expose the guide data. I would be surprised if there were not licensing issues

That's easily gotten around by XMLTV. Sage has already done it once by alowing that plugin. I have already found scripts to turn sorted and grep"ped" XMLTV xml files to html. This puts the issue of guide data out of play.

As for this particular feature...I would love to have it(mainly for PocketPC TVGuide, remote control). Still as Shodge pointed out all Jeff has to do is provide us users with the neccessary access. In other words we need a method to find out exactly what Sage is doing. And also a way to then alter that behavior on a level below the current GUI*. It's obvious that's the way Sage is heading. The only question is "How much access will we get?" I quess we'll have to what til Sage2 to find out. But has Jeff ever really let us down, where ever humanly possible.



*Girder could be one possible meduim for this constant two way feedback to take place. I have to admit that ActiveX is way over my head, but if Shodge can see how to make it work then I'm sure it would.

[HawkeyeLonewolf]

Originally posted by EncoderHouse
Would it keep you from buying it?

That's why it's called a "deal breaker"

[jptaz]

Honestly Snapstream has close to the best solution.

Login to a central so server that I do not need more than basic access too as
my work firewall prevents access to anything but port 80.

The polling architecture works well. Half hour polling time or greater.
A welcome addition to the Snapstream approachwould be to push
the scheduled recordings to the server ( favorites and manual recordings )
so that they would be available for conflict management on the central server.

In an ideal world this is what I would like.

I have been considering getting Snapstream just for occasional remote recordings.

Now if the fastest way for this to happen is for Jeff to create an interface for third
party developers to be able to create their own solutions that would work, but
for less tech savvy users a more turn key solution will eventually need to be developed.

For the most part SageTV and SageTVClient are very user friendly and once the studio version
is available the GUI will be really nice. I now do all my TV watching using SageTVClient on my
Media player PC. It is easy enough that my Fiancee can use it.

Oh yeah and this is not a deal breaker for me since I have purchased SageTV and SageTVClient wihtout it and I will most likely purchase another client relatively soon.

John

[KJake]

I did a quick webpage using the export feature (http://www.kjake.net/record.asp). I would love to be able to add programs to the list too. If the showid was exported too, it would be really cool because I could hyperlink the show to the Zap2It description.

[Narflex]

Cool.

[justme]

Very Very Cool.

Kjake: If you want descriptions you could use XMLTV to get the info. I found a perl script at this site that converts XMLTV xml to html. You can sort and "grep" the file first so that only the shows you are interested in are used to build the html. I have so far only been using tv_grep maually, but some one who knows Perl better could parse the recordings export file to automate the grep process.
I have to admit that the perl script link I provided is way over my head but maybe it could inspire some more experienced people.

There is also another script at this site. In some ways simpler yet more elegant. The problem I have with this script is that it never builds the guide to the right time zone. It is always 4 hours off. Also part of the generated html looks german, but thats easy to fix.

Hope these tools inspire someone more skilled than me. It seems like we almost have all the parts to kludge our own website. All that's lacking is a little more two way comuncation with Sage. Hint Jeff (Cough)

PS:Kjake would you mind posting your method to convert the export to html. I would really appreciate it. I hope it's a perl script.

[KJake]

Yikes! I never got an email that someone replied to this...well it's not exactly what you were hoping for but here's the code:

Perl dumps the data into a MsSQL table....

use DBI;
use Data:umper;
$dbh = DBI->connect("DBI:ODBC:webstuff", "me", "passwd") or die("Couldn't connect to database! Reason: $DBI::strerr");
open (FILE, "<c:\\schedule") or die("$!");
$dbh->do("truncate table schedule") or die("can't truncate");
while (<FILE>)
{
if (! /Encoder/)
{
$_ =~ s/\'//;
($encoder, $start, $stop, $duration, $chan_name, $chan_num, $title, $junk, $junk2) = split(/\t/);
$dbh->do("insert into schedule(title,chan_name,chan_num,start,stop,duration) values('$title'\,'$chan_name'\,$chan_num\,'$start'\,'$stop'\,'$duration')") or die("can't insert");
}
}
close FILE;


ASP formats it on the fly...

<%
set conn=Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Connection")
conn.Open "webstuff" 'database name
set rs=Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Recordset")
rs.open "select title, chan_name, chan_num, start, duration from schedule",conn
%><% do until rs.EOF %>

<%
for each x in rs.Fields
if x.name="chan_num" then%>
<td align=right>
<%Response.Write(x.value)%>
</td>
<%elseif x.name="start" then%>
<td width=100 align=right>
<%Response.Write(x.value)%>
</td>
<%elseif x.name="duration" then%>
<td align=right>
<%Response.Write(x.value)%>
</td>
<%else%>
<td><%Response.Write(x.value)%></td>
<%end if
next
%>

[justme]

That's cool, I appreciate the reply and the code.

[KJake]

Here's quick and dirty non-tested perl just to write the table that I produce on my page.

print "

<table border=0>
<caption> Current TV Recording Schedule (can change at any time) </caption>
<tr><th align=left>Title
<th>Channel
<th>(Num)
<th>Date/Time
<th>Duration
<tr>
";

open (FILE, "<c:\\schedule") or die("$!");

while (<FILE>)
{
if (! /Encoder/)
{
$_ =~ s/\'//;
($encoder, $start, $stop, $duration, $chan_name, $chan_num, $title, $junk, $junk2) = split(/\t/);
print "
<td>$title</td>
<td>$channel</td>
<td align=right>$chan_num</td>
<td width=100 align=right>$start</td>
<td align=right>$duration</td>
";
}
}
close FILE;
print "
</tr>
</table>";

[casperse]

Hi All

I travel alot and the possibility of scheduling a recording buy a webserver or HTML interface is crusial for me!

More and more feat. in software can be controlled by the net or on the move with a 3G mobilephone or GPRS etc...
All this is done through normal webpages and with a Opera browser for a Nokia phones its easy to use

I really like SageTV but I think ill have to give the new release of BeyondTv a go and see if this solves my problems regarding the use of remote recording schedules.

So yes in my case it could be a deal breaker
Cheers

[mlbdude]

Originally Posted by casperse

Hi All

I travel alot and the possibility of scheduling a recording buy a webserver or HTML interface is crusial for me!

More and more feat. in software can be controlled by the net or on the move with a 3G mobilephone or GPRS etc...
All this is done through normal webpages and with a Opera browser for a Nokia phones its easy to use

I really like SageTV but I think ill have to give the new release of BeyondTv a go and see if this solves my problems regarding the use of remote recording schedules.

So yes in my case it could be a deal breaker
Cheers

Sage is currently targetting the use in front of his PC\TV. BTV may be the right choice for you right now.

[nielm]

... A web-interface for Sage may appear as a third-party add on some time after 2.1 is released...

I will say no more than that!

[Steve2112]

Just install VNC on your computer for free & call it day. Connect remotely to your PC from anywhere via Java. pcAnywhere will do the same thing, but cost you money.

Anyone using this method to add shows when at work?

[nielm]

yep (once I set up an ssh port-tunnel), but with 128kbps uplink speed, the UI is painfully slow!

[remmy925]

I am falling in love with using my PC as a HTPC. Although this feature may not yet be something I must have, I can see where it could be a major decision in which PVR product to buy. I would all day and watch what little TV I can at home. If a web interface were enabled, I could set my scheduled records up from work! That would be perfect for my needs. I am also toying with the idea of building a Mini-ITX box just to be my HTPC. Would be nice to use a web interface to make changes to that box from my PC in another room. Would be alot easier than using Remote Desktop or walking into the other room. I'm lazy and easy remote administration would be wonderful!

[jgw]

I'd like to see something in the style of MythTV's MythWeb. A simple, web-based EPD interface that allows you to browse programming for the next two weeks and arbitrarily schedule recordings.

MythWeb is awesome and I never really knew the power and usefulness of it until I actually used it. It was especially handy when I was at work and forgot to schedule recording of the presidential debates. I can see the same usefulness for sports events, etc.

It's not a "deal breaker" for me, but if I were able to get MythTV running more stable on my machine, I'd quickly jump ship because of its web interface.