View unanswered posts    View active topics

All times are UTC - 6 hours





Post new topic Reply to topic  [ 10 posts ] 
Print view Previous topic   Next topic  
Author Message
Search for:
PostPosted: Thu May 27, 2004 1:56 pm 
Offline
Joined: Sun Feb 08, 2004 8:03 am
Posts: 71
Location: Switzerland
In Switzerland we have no tv_grab_ch to use. I found http://nxtvepg.sf.net and installed it with a simple apt-get update / apt-get install nxtvepg. Please have a look to the website and make sure you have at least one network on your cable providing EPG data. You'll find a list here http://nxtvepg.sourceforge.net/provnets.html

Might be complicated but at least I found a workaround for me that works so far...

Note: nxtvepg will mostly only work for European users...

You need a standard V4L (BT878) based TV card capable of doing VBI because nxtvepg grabs channel data from the teletext stream. Mine's a WinTV Express. Unfortunately I didn't find a way to use my PVR-350 card to do that. But hey, it didn't matter anyway... I have both plugged in my system ;-)

Start it with:
Code:
#nxtvepg -card 1

(where n is the card number of your standard V4L card, 0 = 1st card, 1 = 2nd card, ...). Don't forget to plug your coax cable from your TV cable provider to the card ;-). Then:

a) do a provider scan
b) merge all found providers (for me it was Kabel1, TSR, TSI, SF1)
c) set acquisition mode to Cyclic: Now -> Near -> All
d) in the control menu make sure acquisition is enabled

If nxtvepg did recognize your TV card correctly, if it supports VBI and if you get at least one network on your cable providing EPG data, then in the status line you should see a message like "".

Now wait some minutes. In the status line at the bottom of the nxtvepg window you will see the progress for each EPG provider and acquisition phase (now, near, all). When everything was at least once at 100% you can stop it. If there are unwanted channels/networks you can disable them in Configure -> Select networks... (left: available networks, right: selected ones).

Note: acquisition does theoretically never stop as there are always new information added during time.

f) now disable acquisition in Control menu
g) export your EPG data to XML (Control -> Export as XMLTV...)
h) exit nxtvepg

If this XMLTV file will be used for the first import using mythfilldatabase, I recommend you to run mythtv-setup before doing so. If you don't, it will probably mess up your channel settings. So run mythtv-setup and answer [no] to the first and [yes] to the second question in order to delete all your previous channel settings and exit mythtv-setup without doing anything else for now. All channels will be added again after the import with mythfilldatabase except that you'll have to use the channel editor afterwards to complete the channel settings.

i) mythfilldatabase --file <source-id> -1 <your_xmltv_file.xml>

where <source-id> represents the source-id you can find in the mythconverg database (select * from videosource;) and -1 tells mythfilldatabase to replace all EPG data in MythTV database.

After the import is finished restart mythtv-setup again, answer [no] to both questions and go to the channel editor. Then complete all channels:

First screen:
j) with a channel name (should be there already)
k) with a channel number (e.g. "01") -> will be displayed in MythTV EPG
l) with a call sign (e.g. same as channel name) -> will be displayed in MythTV EPG
m) with a format (e.g. PAL)

Second screen:
n) with a frequency ID (e.g. S23) that corresponds to your network (e.g. VOX)

Don't now the correct frequency ID of a specific network? Take a look in frequencies.c (see http://cvs.mythtv.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/mythtv/libs/libmythtv/frequencies.c?rev=1.5&view=markup).

o) quit mythtv-setup and start mythfrontend

You should now have your EPG data in MythTV

If the exported XMLTV file from nxtvepg will be used for updating your MythTV EPG data using mythfilldatabase, then just do a "mythfilldatabase --file <source-id> <offset> <your_xmltv_file> from now on.

Replace <source-id>, <offset> and <your_xmltv_file> with the settings of your choice.

Hope this helps someone... for me at the moment its a workaround that works. I think it should be possible to use nxtvepg's command line tools and daemon combined with mythfilldatabase --file and a cronjob to do all this in an automatic manner... anybody out there already did it?!?


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Thu May 27, 2004 2:25 pm 
Offline
Joined: Mon Oct 06, 2003 10:38 am
Posts: 4978
Location: Nashville, TN
Just to let you know the status on vbi for pvr cards. it is supposed to be in the 0.10 release. actually it is supposed to already be in the 0.10pre2 package, so if someone wants to do this with only a pvr card you might try updating the ivtv drivers to that version.


Top
 Profile  
 
PostPosted: Sun Jun 06, 2004 8:53 am 
Offline
Joined: Thu Nov 06, 2003 3:58 pm
Posts: 3
Location: Germany
nxtvepg works with my PVR350 and ivtv-0.1.10-pre2-ck84h drivers. :D


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Sun Jun 06, 2004 1:56 pm 
Offline
Joined: Sun Feb 08, 2004 8:03 am
Posts: 71
Location: Switzerland
Hey claude... sounds good!

Just tried with ivtv-0.1.10pre2 (latest CVS tarball) before seeing your post. After a nxtvepg -cards 0 (this is my PVR350) it waits forever to acquire EPG data... so had no luck with it.

Where can I get this ivtv-0.1.10-pre2-ck84h drivers? Is it a patch to be applied to ivtv-0.1.10pre2? Would you mind to point me to the right direction? Thanks a lot!


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Mon Jun 07, 2004 2:32 am 
Offline
Joined: Thu Nov 06, 2003 3:58 pm
Posts: 3
Location: Germany
Hi Beamland,
i got the ivtv-0.1.10-pre2-ck84h drivers from
http://kmos.org/~ckennedy/ivtv/.


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Mon Jun 07, 2004 2:48 am 
Offline
Joined: Sun Feb 08, 2004 8:03 am
Posts: 71
Location: Switzerland
Great... thanks a lot! I'm quite busy at the moment but will try it out within the next few days and let you know if it works. Just downloaded the latest one (ivtv-0.1.10-pre2-ck85c.tgz)... :D


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Sat Jun 12, 2004 6:49 am 
Offline
Joined: Sun Feb 08, 2004 8:03 am
Posts: 71
Location: Switzerland
hi claude

I finally found the time to compile and test ivtv-0.1.10-pre2-ck85c... nxtvepg is now able to retrieve EPG data using my PVR350! Thanks for this one! :D


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Mon Dec 20, 2004 5:03 pm 
Offline
Joined: Mon Feb 23, 2004 1:08 am
Posts: 91
Location: Switzerland
FYI, I have this running under ivtv-0.2.0-rc3. Seems to work well.

Did anybody setup the command line arguments to have this run "unattended" in a cron?

It seems like you have to make sure not to be recording something while you're capturing EPG data (channel conflict)... So I guess you have to turn mythbackend off?


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Tue Dec 21, 2004 1:46 am 
Offline
Joined: Sun Feb 08, 2004 8:03 am
Posts: 71
Location: Switzerland
In the meantime I switched over to tv_grab_de_tvtoday which does also grab epg data of some swiss channels (at least SF1, SF2 and TSR1). Why? Because when nxtvepg grabs epg data it needs to stay tuned on one of the channels sending epg data. This means, when you're watching liveTV in mythTV every 30 seconds or so nxtvepg tunes back to the channel it was scanning for epg data... which is quite annoying. Didn't figure out whether or not it behaves the same during recording.

However, you can start nxtvepg with the -card option and this way tell it to use a different capture card to try to solve this problem. This of course requires you to have at least 2 capture cards in your system and only works as long you don't watch liveTV and record some thing or have 2 parallel recordings running at the same time.

Didn't put it in a cron job, but I'm sure it's possible to tell nxtvepg to run on card X from let's say 3am to 6am and then to stop.

HTH


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Mon Jan 31, 2005 2:08 pm 
Offline
Joined: Mon Feb 23, 2004 1:08 am
Posts: 91
Location: Switzerland
For reference purpose, here is the answer to my own question:
You will want to first run it normally (X windows) to do the configuration.
Then, do something like:
Code:
/usr/bin/nxtvepg -dbdir nxtvdb -rcfile .nxtvepgrc.dual -daemon -acqonce full -nodetach
/usr/bin/nxtvepg -dbdir nxtvdb -rcfile .nxtvepgrc.dual -dump xml -prov merged > nxtvepg.xml
mythfilldatabase --file 1 -1 nxtvepg.xml

These lines start an acquisition (might take a while) and exit when done. Then, it outputs the xml file, and finally imports into MythTV.
You will probably want to run this from cron.

Note: check your settings. The parameters for mythfilldatabase are very likely to be different.


Top
 Profile  
 

Display posts from previous:  Sort by  
Post new topic Reply to topic  [ 10 posts ] 


All times are UTC - 6 hours




Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 14 guests


You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot post attachments in this forum

Jump to:  
cron
Powered by phpBB® Forum Software © phpBB Group

Theme Created By ceyhansuyu