XMLTV guide data

[nickk]

Fixed.

[EddieP]

Thanks Verified ....

<programme start="20230322170000 +0000" stop="20230322173000 +0000" channel="US127676.hdhomerun.com">
<title>America's Court With Judge Ross</title>
<sub-title>Baby's Gotta Eat Too; Cloudy With a Chance of Lawsuits</sub-title>
<desc lang="en">Emotional distress and moving expenses; TV meteorologist.</desc>
<date>20141024</date>
<category>Series</category>
<category>Reality</category>
<category>Law</category>
<language>en</language>
<icon src="https://img.hdhomerun.com/titles/C8224483ENRXRI.jpg" width="360" height="270"/>
<series-id system="cseries">C8224483ENRXRI</series-id>
<episode-num system="dd_progid">EP01309893.0840</episode-num>
<previously-shown/>
</programme>

[mkolek99]

The AuthCode changes several times a day and is good for up to 24 hours.

You need to pull the AuthCode each time you request guide.

How do I do that when tivimate wants a URL to the EPG? Or can you make mine static so it doesn’t change?

[EddieP]

I see the guide data provides 7 days of XMLTV is this by design ... ?

[nickk]

I see the guide data provides 7 days of XMLTV is this by design ... ?

It provides the full 14 days.

[kyl416]

Some software like Kodi only uses the first category to do things like EPG genre colors for News, Children, Action, Sports, Comedy, Drama, Reality, Game Shows, etc. Putting Series or Movies first broke that functionality.

So ideally, the added "Series" or "Movies" category should be last, and the rest should be in the order provided by your guide data supplier Gracenote.

i.e. the example of America's Court with Judge Ross should be:

<category>Reality</category>
<category>Law</category>
<category>Series</category>

[tmm1]

Most examples I have seen use Series and Movies first. My software relies on it appearing first.

[kyl416]

Which specific software requires the movie/series category to be first? It goes against what xmltv.org's grabbers do, so you should probably file a bug report with the devleopers of your software.

Mythtv is the big one that requires the presence of a series or movie category, and is the reason why the XMLTV project's tv_grab_na_dd and tv_grab_zz_sdjson grabbers have code to manually add that category, but all of them don't put it as the first category, they use the genre order specified by Schedule Direct's upstream data supplier (also Gracenote) and insert Movie/Series last.

i.e. this is what I have from tv_grab_na_dd:

<category lang="en">Comedy</category>
<category lang="en">Movie</category>

and this is what tv_grab_zz_sdjson has:

<category>Comedy</category>
<category>movie</category>

[EddieP]

Which specific software requires the movie/series category to be first? It goes against what xmltv.org's grabbers do, so you should probably file a bug report with the devleopers of your software.

Mythtv is the big one that requires the presence of a series or movie category, and is the reason why the XMLTV project's tv_grab_na_dd and tv_grab_zz_sdjson grabbers have code to manually add that category, but all of them don't put it as the first category, they use the genre order specified by Schedule Direct's upstream data supplier (also Gracenote) and insert Movie/Series last.

i.e. this is what I have from tv_grab_na_dd:

<category lang="en">Comedy</category>
<category lang="en">Movie</category>

and this is what tv_grab_zz_sdjson has:

<category>Comedy</category>
<category>movie</category>

LOL He is the developer of Channels DVR.... a great piece of software.

[kyl416]

My point still stands. If the widely used tv_grab_na_dd and tv_grab_zz_sdjson grabbers that are bundled as part of the official XMLTV project lists Movie/Series last, their software shouldn't expect it to always be the first category. They should look for the presence of those categories to determine what is a series or movie like Mythtv has been doing for the past 2 decades.

The standard every other XMLTV grabber uses is to present the genres in the same order their upstream source has them, and, if it's not already listed, insert any content type categories at the end, since a lot of xmltv based software uses the first/primary genre to set colors on the EPG and only display the first genre in places like an information box that changes as you move around the grid, or an info banner that appears as you change channels.

[tmm1]

We can adapt. I'm just pointing out that making the change may break existing software as well.

It's too bad the xmltv spec doesn't let you specify category and genre separately.

[nickk]

Two ideas come to mind...

1) App could search the category tags for the following categories we use regardless of the location in the list:
Series, Movie, News, Special, Sport, Shop, Audio, Adult

2) We could add an attribute to the category tag to indicate the high level category vs genre.

Nick

[emveepee]

Two ideas come to mind...

1) App could search the category tags for the following categories we use regardless of the location in the list:
Series, Movie, News, Special, Sport, Shop, Audio, Adult

2) We could add an attribute to the category tag to indicate the high level category vs genre.

Nick

XML and JSON shouldn't really be considered to have order for de-serialization.

I don't think you need to do anything though, what I do for movies in my SiliconDust XMLTV JSON parser is map all MV identifiers to two fields,

<category>Movie</category>
and
<episode-num system="dd_progid">MV015462730000</episode-num>

Martin

[nickk]

Best not to use the Series or Episode ID to determine type. The guide data for Australia does not follow this convention for example.

[emveepee]

Best not to use the Series or Episode ID to determine type. The guide data for Australia does not follow this convention for example.

Thanks for that, as long as you don't use MV as your identifier for non-movies it probably isn't going to cause a problem. Is there sample JSON anywhere?

Martin