[mwkurt]

jtucker1972,

I have a question/request for you concerning the mixed playlist for TV Shows. They work great by the way as they are...kudos to you!
Anyway.....I was wondering if there was a way to get the shows to be played randomly. What I mean is in the way they are listed in the smart playlist. It seems that they play in the order that they are listed in the smart playlist all of the time. I have tried numerous configurations and they always play in the order that they are listed in the playlist. So, is there any way to get them to play randomly but still play in aired order? I appreciate all of the work that you are putting into this for us.

Thanks again,
Mark

[jtucker1972]

jtucker1972,

I have a question/request for you concerning the mixed playlist for TV Shows. They work great by the way as they are...kudos to you!
Anyway.....I was wondering if there was a way to get the shows to be played randomly. What I mean is in the way they are listed in the smart playlist. It seems that they play in the order that they are listed in the smart playlist all of the time. I have tried numerous configurations and they always play in the order that they are listed in the playlist. So, is there any way to get them to play randomly but still play in aired order? I appreciate all of the work that you are putting into this for us.

Thanks again,
Mark

Currently no, but I will look into it.

[mwkurt]

Currently no, but I will look into it.

Don't really fret over it. It's not that big of a deal. Thanks for looking at it anyway.

Mark

[itssuresh]

Hi, I have a basic question regarding TV time settings.

Under TV Channel settings, If I choose NBC , How does it work. Does it uses my NBC add-on or Do I have to have a TV Tuner card? .

I am using xbmc 10.1 and Transparency skin and I was not able to enable EPG. When I press Enter it giving me option to exit .( Ok / Cancel )

Thanks
Suresh

[mwkurt]

Hi, I have a basic question regarding TV time settings.

Under TV Channel settings, If I choose NBC , How does it work. Does it uses my NBC add-on or Do I have to have a TV Tuner card? .

I am using xbmc 10.1 and Transparency skin and I was not able to enable EPG. When I press Enter it giving me option to exit .( Ok / Cancel )

Thanks
Suresh

Hello,

This and PseudoTV only work with whatever local content you have on your computer or server. It doesn't work with any live feeds or tuner cards. If you were to choose NBC, it would look foe what TV Shows that you have on your pc that were NBC shows and create a channel lineup of those shows.

Mark

[mwkurt]

jtucker1972,

Hello again...I have another question/request. :o)

I know that the current behavior of a channel that comes up empty is to just skip that channel and go on to the next channel. This may cause some confusion with members of the family who are not as pc savvy as others may be. So I have a question. Is it possible that when a smart playlist comes up as empty and the channel would be skipped, that instead of skipping the channel, some sort of placeholder is inserted in the channel EPG instead, so that the channel is still there but with no content. Perhaps the placeholder could be a jpeg file that says "Currently off the air", "Channel not broadcasting", "Currently experiencing Technical Difficulties" or "No Content Available" or something similar. Maybe even with the ability to display a jpeg when the channel is selected, so we could make use of those old Indian Head Test Patterns that say "Please Stand By".
If something like this could be done easily, I think it may add to the experience of old time TV stations that went off the air at midnight. If not, don't worry about it.

Thanks,
Mark

[itssuresh]

Hello,

This and PseudoTV only work with whatever local content you have on your computer or server. It doesn't work with any live feeds or tuner cards. If you were to choose NBC, it would look foe what TV Shows that you have on your pc that were NBC shows and create a channel lineup of those shows.

Mark

Thanks for the clarification.

[whyjustin]

First thanks; I've had the idea for a similar application for years but never had the time to perfect it (my .NET GUI was always a bit sluggish and confined to my computer). Being an XBMC user since it truly was XboxMC I was ecstatic to learn that someone had implemented this.

Anyhow, I wanted to echo the sentiments from this previous post. On the ATV2 only a few episodes load per channel. I can't find a pattern in which episodes load but it seems to be consistent through every refresh. I've included my XBMC.log below but there doesn't seem to be much information to go off.

[EDIT: Wrong URL previously]
http://pastebin.com/6hsVJybk

It looks like there is more logging possible, but without much knowledge of the XBMC framework I'm not sure where

log('TVOverlay: ' + msg, level)

logs to.

I ran

find . | xargs grep 'TVOverlay' -sl

but couldn't find any logs which included TVOverlay.

[Edit 2: looks like only error messages elevated to xbmc.LOGERROR log to xmbc.log. I could rebuild and elevate all to messages to xbmc.LOGERROR if needed]

Anyhow, I'd love to provide as much help as possible as it would be nice to have full channel loads on the ATV2. Just let me know.

Apple TV 2: The script loads up and plays, but I'm encountering some weird glitches I can't seem to work out. Each of the TV based channels will only load the same 5-10 episodes, even after multiple forced channel resets. I'm using the same library on all my devices, so I'm not sure why the ATV2 is the only one with this problem. The only difference I've noticed is that when loading channels, the ATV1 will display something about determining the duration of files (can't remember the exact wording at the moment), while the ATV2 doesn't. Also, switching to movie based channels takes several minutes, and when they do finally load, I get an error message about invalid channels and the scripts quits even though the file is playing in the background.

[jtucker1972]

jtucker1972,

Hello again...I have another question/request. :o)

I know that the current behavior of a channel that comes up empty is to just skip that channel and go on to the next channel. This may cause some confusion with members of the family who are not as pc savvy as others may be. So I have a question. Is it possible that when a smart playlist comes up as empty and the channel would be skipped, that instead of skipping the channel, some sort of placeholder is inserted in the channel EPG instead, so that the channel is still there but with no content. Perhaps the placeholder could be a jpeg file that says "Currently off the air", "Channel not broadcasting", "Currently experiencing Technical Difficulties" or "No Content Available" or something similar. Maybe even with the ability to display a jpeg when the channel is selected, so we could make use of those old Indian Head Test Patterns that say "Please Stand By".
If something like this could be done easily, I think it may add to the experience of old time TV stations that went off the air at midnight. If not, don't worry about it.

Thanks,
Mark

If we had some default video, I could make use of it for "off the air" channels. Let me know if you can find some good ones that could be used for this. I am doing a major rewrite based on Jason's latest version so now is the time to get new ideas in.

[jtucker1972]

First thanks; I've had the idea for a similar application for years but never had the time to perfect it (my .NET GUI was always a bit sluggish and confined to my computer). Being an XBMC user since it truly was XboxMC I was ecstatic to learn that someone had implemented this.

Anyhow, I wanted to echo the sentiments from this previous post. On the ATV2 only a few episodes load per channel. I can't find a pattern in which episodes load but it seems to be consistent through every refresh. I've included my XBMC.log below but there doesn't seem to be much information to go off.

[EDIT: Wrong URL previously]
http://pastebin.com/6hsVJybk

It looks like there is more logging possible, but without much knowledge of the XBMC framework I'm not sure where

log('TVOverlay: ' + msg, level)

logs to.

I ran

find . | xargs grep 'TVOverlay' -sl

but couldn't find any logs which included TVOverlay.

[Edit 2: looks like only error messages elevated to xbmc.LOGERROR log to XBMC.log. I could rebuild and elevate all to messages to xbmc.LOGERROR if needed]

Anyhow, I'd love to provide as much help as possible as it would be nice to have full channel loads on the ATV2. Just let me know.

If you put XBMC into debug mode it will produce a LOT of logging to help identify any issues.

[whyjustin]

First thanks; I've had the idea for a similar application for years but never had the time to perfect it (my .NET GUI was always a bit sluggish and confined to my computer). Being an XBMC user since it truly was XboxMC I was ecstatic to learn that someone had implemented this.

....

Just an update on this, I switched the default log level to ERROR and got a much more verbose output. I've included it below.

http://pastebin.com/7nqUGacU

As a previous user pointed out, it appears that many of the videos are returning a duration value of 0 and therefore not getting added to the collection. Being able to view these videos through XBMC's default player, I can assure you the videos have a duration longer than 0.

[whyjustin]

If you put XBMC into debug mode it will produce a LOT of logging to help identify any issues.

I guess that would have been easier than altering the python script. My other post didn't seem to go through (needed moderation?) Here's the debug info... seems the durations of the clips are 0 even though I know they aren't (available for playing through XBMC's default player)

http://pastebin.com/7nqUGacU

[jtucker1972]

I guess that would have been easier than altering the python script. My other post didn't seem to go through (needed moderation?) Here's the debug info... seems the durations of the clips are 0 even though I know they aren't (available for playing through XBMC's default player)

http://pastebin.com/7nqUGacU

Weird. If the XBMC duration is 0, then the script should get duration using the Parsers.

Can you grep the log for AVIParser: to see if it is being called?

[whyjustin]

Weird. If the XBMC duration is 0, then the script should get duration using the Parsers.

Can you grep the log for AVIParser: to see if it is being called?

AVIParser is never called in the debug logs. I've included the logs after the channels are loaded below.

http://pastebin.com/ms7msLj1

I also noticed that shows which report a low duration (i.e. "duration" : 1326) are not loaded into the channel either.

[mwkurt]

Hello,

I have another question, hoping someone can answer. If I create a mixed smart playlist with 50 tv show smart playlists and set the <limit> to 25, upon the initial creation of the channel, I get the first 25 shows. When those shows run out and the channel recreates itself, will I get the next 25 shows or will it use the first 25 shows again?

Thanks,
Mark