VDR Backend... export EPG to Windows client
#1
Greetings,
I've successfully setup a Ubuntu 12.04 VDR backend server (with xvdr and vnsi plugins) with a working Windows XBMC (Frodo RC3) client.

The question is: can the VDR backend server send the epg.data file to the windows client in order to populate the (integrated one - not the addon) TV guide listing? Huh

In other words: where and how XBMC stores the EPG information? Is it possible to inject an updated xmltv (or similar) file and update?

Is the "TV Guide addon" the only way to achieve this?

Thank you very much for your time...
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#2
XBMC stores EPG in memory and, if configured, in a database. When XBMC is started it requests EPG from the backend. I use "do not store epg in database" because it's much faster and vdr already persists epg. XMBC requests an update every configured interval. In addition the addon can request an update. My new version on vnsi does observe the EPG file of vdr and triggers an update whenever there are relevant changes.
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#3
(2013-01-19, 09:15)FernetMenta Wrote: XBMC stores EPG in memory and, if configured, in a database. When XBMC is started it requests EPG from the backend. I use "do not store epg in database" because it's much faster and vdr already persists epg. XMBC requests an update every configured interval. In addition the addon can request an update. My new version on vnsi does observe the EPG file of vdr and triggers an update whenever there are relevant changes.

Hi and thank you for your answer...

I see but how can I make the VDR backend create the epg.data? I mean, I'm just using the backend without a VDR client or GUI in the Ubuntu machine. So, I don't have any epg.data stored in /etc/vdr/ .
By the way, the EPG information taken directly from the SAT signal in my country (Italy), as far as I know, is limited to "now and next" items. With my previous configuration (DVBViewer recording service + client) I used a pre-made xmltv file that DVBViewer could read.

I could use the xmltv2vdr script to import an external file into VDR but, I think, the VDR GUI/client is needed, right?
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#4
There are plugins for vdr which get epg from other sources and populate the epg file of vdr. Once the info is in vdr's epg database, it gets transmitted to XBMC. I know that is it difficult to administrate vdr and its various plugins without a GUI. This is why I have done this:
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=147354

Currently this works on systems with OpenGL and soon on Windows too.
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#5
(2013-01-19, 09:15)FernetMenta Wrote: XBMC stores EPG in memory and, if configured, in a database. When XBMC is started it requests EPG from the backend. I use "do not store epg in database" because it's much faster and vdr already persists epg. XMBC requests an update every configured interval. In addition the addon can request an update. My new version on vnsi does observe the EPG file of vdr and triggers an update whenever there are relevant changes.

YES!
You know you are taking down one by one all the little (very little) problems i see in xbmc-pvr :-D


(2013-01-19, 17:16)Zazza Wrote:
(2013-01-19, 09:15)FernetMenta Wrote: XBMC stores EPG in memory and, if configured, in a database. When XBMC is started it requests EPG from the backend. I use "do not store epg in database" because it's much faster and vdr already persists epg. XMBC requests an update every configured interval. In addition the addon can request an update. My new version on vnsi does observe the EPG file of vdr and triggers an update whenever there are relevant changes.

Hi and thank you for your answer...

I see but how can I make the VDR backend create the epg.data? I mean, I'm just using the backend without a VDR client or GUI in the Ubuntu machine. So, I don't have any epg.data stored in /etc/vdr/ .
By the way, the EPG information taken directly from the SAT signal in my country (Italy), as far as I know, is limited to "now and next" items. With my previous configuration (DVBViewer recording service + client) I used a pre-made xmltv file that DVBViewer could read.

I could use the xmltv2vdr script to import an external file into VDR but, I think, the VDR GUI/client is needed, right?

Italiano:
Zazza, se hai bisogno di una mano con xmltv2vdr.pl chiedi :-D non c'è bisogno del client, non con lo script. poi c'è un plugin che si chiama xmltv2vdr per quello si hai bisogno di un front end.

English:
Zazza, if you need help whit xml2vdr.pl script, just ask.with the script you don't need a frontend while with the plugin xmltv2vdr it's needed aa frontend, but they aren't the same.





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#6
Ciao ZIOLele...
In fact, I'm using the script without a GUI but I'm facing some problems:

using tv_grab_it (xmltv module) to download the TV guide and importing to vdr with the script seems to work but tv_grab is pretty slow. To speed up things I tried webgrab+ , it's faster but unfortunately lacks some information. Anyhow, the downloaded guide is simply ignored by the script and nothing is imported. Probably because the file can't pass the xmltv DTD validation...

If you have any clues, feel free to tell me!... If you want to speak italian it's better (I think) to do it in PM... Thank you!
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#7
I don't think so... if i remember correctly xmltv2vdr.pl doesn't do DTD validation. Check the port used by the script it's changed overtime and the script is quite old. Also to make things faster, since you are using windows, take a look at htpcitalia.it section Guida TV on the forum...
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#8
If you want to import xmltv format data to VDR you want to have a look at xmltv2vdr plugin. You might need to create a grabber for doing this, but as the the data is already in xmltv format it should be pretty simple. I'm pretty sure Jochen Dolze will be more then happy to accept any additional grabber to be used with his plugin/be delivered with his plugin. Performance-wise it should easily outperform anything which is using svdrp to transmit the data like that old script. Another solution is to transform the data to the epg.data format and let vdr import that one - also a lot faster then the xmltv script. Further - if you are using the script you might need noepg plugin to block out DVB EPG (in case there is any).

Regarding monitoring of the epg.data file: VDR is not directly syncing the epg to the epg.data file. It is keeping it in memory and only syncing periodically to the file. New EPG handler in VDR might provide additional possibilities.
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#9
I resume this old thread because i need help with noepg plugin.... how do i configure it? what's channel id? how can i extract it from channels.conf?

Probably the answer is simple, but i can't find it.
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#10
I would think the plugin shows up in the plugin section of the OSD and you can easily configure it from there.
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#11
(2013-05-07, 17:45)FernetMenta Wrote: I would think the plugin shows up in the plugin section of the OSD and you can easily configure it from there.

no, it has a config file (let's says it's old school Big Grin) in the config file ive to input, one per line the channel id... the problem is it's not clear what is channel id....
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#12
either this is dead code or it allows gui interaction with the user: https://github.com/flensrocker/vdr-plugi...ter/menu.c
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#13
(2013-05-08, 07:20)FernetMenta Wrote: either this is dead code or it allows gui interaction with the user: https://github.com/flensrocker/vdr-plugi...ter/menu.c

uhm ok... the readme on github says that all configuration is done within settings.conf ....
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