Fixing the sports plugin

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jachin99

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#101

Post by jachin99 » Fri Mar 24, 2017 5:18 pm

Last night, I tried using loamxf at the command line to load sports.mxf into the guide but I kept getting a message that said something to the effect of loadmxf is not a valid command. What could I be doing wrong?

jachin99

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#102

Post by jachin99 » Fri Mar 24, 2017 6:33 pm

Still browsing around at guide stuff around the forum, and I stumbled on this,

If you wish to download the mcupdate guide, you may try to run the mcupdate.exe file at the following location: C:\windows\ehome\mcupdate.exe.
The Mcupdate scheduled task downloads the following data packages. These data packages are used by Windows Media Center in Windows 7.
Directory Service: The Directory Service package lists the packages that are available in a region. The Directory Service package also provides information about how to obtain packages, about how frequently to download packages, and about when to download packages.
Client Update: The Client Update package contains updated regional information.
Sports (United States & Canada Only): The Sports package contains information about sporting events. This information is integrated with other Electronic Program Guide (EPG) information.
Net TV (United States only): The Net TV package contains information about videos that are available on demand.
MCESpotlight: This package contains information about Online Spotlight applications that are available.
You may also refer to the following switches with their definitions:
mcupdate.exe –MediaCenterRecoveryTask : brings TV setup back to factory default.
mcupdate –uf : forces a new package to be downloaded.
mcupdate.exe -uf -pscn0 –dbgc : full guide to update & clean database.

This was in response to a question posted on this page: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/win ... d35?auth=1

I'm wondering if the normal mcupdate we still get downloads the sports folders.

vaju0503

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#103

Post by vaju0503 » Wed Mar 29, 2017 1:48 pm

I would think that some but not all sports data is contained in the guide data. That is why the sports tab that shows what's currently on for sports isn't broken... However I don't think it contains all data. I'm sure in order for the sports tab to fully work there is probably some sort of a live connection to a database somewhere that is housing live scores. How else would it be able to show current scores of games in real time without constantly doing mcupdate. At least I assume it showed live scores of games and if so then there must have been some sort of a feed that this was receiving that has been shut off (Likley from msn as that's what it says on my sports screen).

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#104

Post by krustyreturns » Wed Mar 29, 2017 3:43 pm

Hi Guys,

If you need access to the wmc guide data, the link below points to a stripped down version of the code I use in serverwmc (Epg.cs). If you have questions or problems using it let me know. Good luck with the project!

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

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Crash2009

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#105

Post by Crash2009 » Thu Mar 30, 2017 12:16 am

Thanks Krusty, we are honored that you came to visit.

Oh yeah, and Thank-you for ServerWMC. Don't remember where I first used it, might have been Frodo or Gotham. ServerWMC was instrumental in my LiveTV WAN project. Got that one going in 2014, I use it daily at work in the truck. I especially like it when the CableCo App says: "You can only watch that channel in your home Wifi" I got some bad news for ya CableCo....

Thanks again!
Last edited by Crash2009 on Thu Mar 30, 2017 12:44 am, edited 1 time in total.

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#106

Post by krustyreturns » Thu Mar 30, 2017 12:41 am

Thanks, good to hear. It was actually jachin99 who asked me to help out here.

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Crash2009

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#107

Post by Crash2009 » Thu Mar 30, 2017 12:49 am

I am just sort of hanging out here, Tester of sorts. Not much of a programmer.

What did you have in mind for us in using the code from ServerWMC?

jachin99

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#108

Post by jachin99 » Thu Mar 30, 2017 1:04 am

Thanks a lot krusty, I'm glad I got your help, and hopefully, this leads to a working sports plugin. I have been contacting developers everywhere I can find them hoping to build this into a team effort, and krusty knows how to work with the guide database. Building off of what Niall said, there is quite a bit of functionality in the guide we don't see anymore in WMC, and now we have a program that can talk to the guide, and modify it hopefully we can translate what we have into sports specific guide data that displays in its own page within WMC. If you use other programs then possibly in the future, a product can be built that will allow all of these media center programs, or at least WMC, to gain useful new functionality. Add to this that schedules direct can send sport scores notifications, and there has been an attempt in the past to construct a plugin that is capable of displaying 4 games at once, and there is at least the potential to really get this whole thing going. I don't want to build too much excitement because my skills are pretty limited for the time being but as long we all stay on the same page, something good could come of this.

I can't promise that I'll be able to pull this off but if I do, it could be a really good thing. Right now I'm at a stage where I am trying to bring people on board, and learn as much as possible about development with what little bit of time I do have to devote to it.

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DavidinCT

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#109

Post by DavidinCT » Thu Mar 30, 2017 1:36 am

Loving the progress, Now if we can put the puzzle together and see where we go from here.

If the END goal is still trying to revive the old Scores feature (one I am after, loved that app during baseball, hockey and football seasons, yea, pretty much most of the year). I think the next step is to see if we can find the DB browser and see if there is section that is for the sports data. Then see how it's formatted, then figure out how to import it.

Yep easy, 1, 2 3, right ? LOL but, I think we are going down the right path but, We would need someone with DB skills to understand what it's looking for. Once you get data imported, it would be nice to see it !

Maybe it's me, but, it's what I picked up from a few experts here, We ARE ON the right path, it's fining the correct route to the path, is the tricky part.
-Dave
Twitter @TheCoolDave

Windows Media Center certified and WMC MVP 2010 - 2012

jachin99

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#110

Post by jachin99 » Thu Mar 30, 2017 1:39 am

Right, and maybe if we can't repair the old scores functionality, I have MSVS 2010, the WMC SDK, and some templates so maybe I can build a new plugin. MAYBE.

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#111

Post by krustyreturns » Thu Mar 30, 2017 2:42 am

What jachin said. If you are writing your own sports plugin, the database stuff I posted gives you access to all the guide data. This database shows which 'ScheduleEntries' are sports and which are live sports, etc. So you could use it to show which channels have which events on 'now', on 'next' on 'tomorrow', etc. You could even add the ability to record the show from the plugin rather then going through the wmc guide.

True confessions time, I never used the wmc sports app so what all it did I don't know. And (probably obvious) my family uses Kodi/Emby instead of wmc for our viewing since my first version of swmc. I just thought I could help with database access if writing your own plugin is where this ends up.

jachin, before I started work on swmc (years ago), I had written a few wmc plugins. So I might be able to answer some questions there if you get stuck, although it's been a long time...

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#112

Post by jachin99 » Fri Mar 31, 2017 4:29 pm

I thought of something we haven't tried yet, Has anyone who has been able to restore the sports strip checked their media center event log to see if there are any exceptions being thrown. There might be some hints in there about what used to be loaded as a part of the sports experience. I'm thinking the lack of a visible error message does not mean there isn't some kind of internal error being logged that has been taken out of the user experience.

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DavidinCT

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#113

Post by DavidinCT » Fri Mar 31, 2017 8:01 pm

jachin99 wrote:I thought of something we haven't tried yet, Has anyone who has been able to restore the sports strip checked their media center event log to see if there are any exceptions being thrown. There might be some hints in there about what used to be loaded as a part of the sports experience. I'm thinking the lack of a visible error message does not mean there isn't some kind of internal error being logged that has been taken out of the user experience.
If I remember correctly (at work now), If you open the scores app, it will just sit there forever and never time out. I do know I let it sit overnight (forgot about it) one time.

If it does not time out, I dont think it will error out and cause an event.
-Dave
Twitter @TheCoolDave

Windows Media Center certified and WMC MVP 2010 - 2012

jachin99

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#114

Post by jachin99 » Sat Apr 01, 2017 1:47 am

Your probably right but I'm still kind of wondering if it throws any errors. I checked my event viewer, and it said it loads all the sports stuff correctly. The only error I get is for nettv, which is old news anyway. I know it doesn't throw an error on a machine with the sports strip reenabled but I'm wondering if it does throw an error on a machine without the sports strip.

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garyan2

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#115

Post by garyan2 » Sat Apr 01, 2017 5:54 pm

I haven't been paying too much attention to this, but I have looked into some things since jachin99 brought up the idea. I don't believe it is going to be possible to restore the original sports strip and be useful. It appears to me that the primary source of information was a RSS feed, or something similar, to populate the strip. The current scores, period/quarter times, team possessions ... none of that is stored in the guide database. It is LIVE.

I think a huge difference, and something to think about, is the sports you've managed to see in the strip to this point is only the sports events you have access to, i.e. what is currently in your guide. You're not going to see sporting events for past, present, or future that are not available in your market and in your guide. I believe the only way to get full functionality back in WMC is to create your own plug-in. What is promising is someone mentioned that ESPN has a free API that may make it possible?

Looking at it with that perspective may even make the whole effort easier... you're not constraining yourself to the existing WMC methods which are dead. Krusty showed you how you can access the guide data for shows that are available to the client for viewing. A live feed from possibly ESPN will give you the live, juicy stuff.
- Gary
Keeping WMC alive beyond January 2020. https://garyan2.github.io

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#116

Post by rkulagow » Sat Apr 01, 2017 6:52 pm

Schedules Direct also has access to a sports feed. If you're a developer and you're interested (and know how to create a custom plug-in) then contact me and we can hash-out the details.

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#117

Post by jachin99 » Sat Apr 01, 2017 9:53 pm

Developing a separate plugin probably is the better solution. My problem right now is that I'm not a developer and I'm still figuring out media center itself, visual studio, databases, and C#. I'm looking at all of the documentation I have for wmc almost daily and I'm playing around with both visual studio and c# itself but I constantly hit beginners snags. I'm sure at some point ill get the hang of most of this but I just don't have the experience yet. If anyone wanted to step forward and write this or take it in their own direction then that would most likely end with a better result. I'll help out however I can but if I could do this own my own then it would already be finished. Right now I'm using Microsoft virtual academy to learn c# and a step by step I found for a wmc xp plugin to learn my way around programming.

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#118

Post by DavidinCT » Tue Apr 04, 2017 12:25 am

OK, baseball season started today... lets' get this going ! :)
-Dave
Twitter @TheCoolDave

Windows Media Center certified and WMC MVP 2010 - 2012

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#119

Post by jachin99 » Tue Apr 04, 2017 7:40 pm

Sorry bud, no new updates. I did figure out the loadmxf utility so I added it to PATHS and tried loading sportsschedule.mxf into my guide but I got an error message. I'm wondering if there is some undocumented way to add a new datastore through loadmxf. I know others have mentioned a similar capability was built into the guide but I have not read through this thread recently. I didn't much time to spend in front of my machine last night, and i don't think that approach was worth too much effort. On another note, programatically I'm wondering how I should try to slice and dice a new plugin once I figure out the whole software writing thing. Here are some ideas

Should I make a call to the existing guide data, and have my plugin show me only sports data? I would think this would be the simplest approach, and once I figure out MCML, I can display it on some arrangement either on top of the screen how it is now, in guide or some other way. A way to sort by locality, or specific sport categories would be nice, or even both. Inclusion of streaming sporting events would be a plus but, I'm not sure how that would change my plugin, and If I can write something that sorts the existing guide, I would be happy with that as a first step.

-I could also try to do basically what I have been doing up to this point, and manipulate the existing guide with a new store, and have my plugin read from this.

-Showing some kind of scores summary either through a web page, or an rss feed would be cool. I keep thinking rss feeds but showing something like espn.com in wmc might also do the trick. I might be able to accomplish both by allowing users to click on a box or icon somewhere that loads a detailed webpage about a particular game.

-I like local sports a lot as well, so something that allows me to see local sporting schedules, news etc would bring something new to the table.

-My last idea is to somehow let users buy tickets within the plugin. I have no idea how to do this but at a bare minimum, I might be able to include a buy tickets thing somewhere in there.

Watching mulitple games at once still sounds cool but in my testing, I have only been able to view multiple channels at once in the Win 7 HDHR view app, and I'm thinking I could only display one drm'd game at a time. Even then, this was only in windows 7. I was hoping I could run more than one instance of the Win10 HDHR app but so far, I have not found a way to do that. The only advice I have been given is a pointer to a developer page saying that W10 apps can have mutliwindow functionality built into them.

Right now this is a list of hopes and dreams but i work at it a little more everyday.

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#120

Post by Sharks » Tue Apr 04, 2017 7:59 pm

Hello jachin99,
Unfortunately, I don't have a lot time to help out but I'm happy to see someone restore this functionality.
jachin99 wrote: Watching mulitple games at once still sounds cool but in my testing, I have only been able to view multiple channels at once in the Win 7 HDHR view app, and I'm thinking I could only display one drm'd game at a time. Even then, this was only in windows 7. I was hoping I could run more than one instance of the Win10 HDHR app but so far, I have not found a way to do that. The only advice I have been given is a pointer to a developer page saying that W10 apps can have mutliwindow functionality built into them.

On that note you mentioned multiply streams done at once. This has been achieved before with this plugin below. I'm not sure if it will help but hey maybe somewhere to start if you want multi-game functionality. I have successfully used this but is quite clunky.
http://www.thegreenbutton.tv/forums/vie ... =Sportsbar

I hope it helps.
Thanks for putting so much time into this.
-Sharks

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