Introducing EPG123

[HTBruceM]

Gary,
Is there a way to make EPG123 use the existing lineup constructs in WMC? That way we could have the right side of Guide Tool working, the "Edit Channel, Edit Listings" feature in WMC would work, and we wouldn't need another tool like Lineup Selector.
Or is this not technically feasible?

BTW that's another side effect of EPG123... The WMC Edit Channel -> Edit Listings is broken; if you select that, it goes to a spinning circle for about a minute then just times out.

[STC]

... Edit Listings is broken; if you select that, it goes to a spinning circle for about a minute then just times out.

Just tested this and it's working fine here. A small delay. All 10k channels have not been deleted.

[HTBruceM]

... Edit Listings is broken; if you select that, it goes to a spinning circle for about a minute then just times out.

Just tested this and it's working fine here. A small delay. All 10k channels have not been deleted.

OK I stand corrected, delay but no timeout here now. You get the channel numbers showing up, but none of the listings. This is one of those functions that you lose when you use EPG123, right?

[STC]

They are listed but towards the end. You have to punch in '10000' and even though the '@' sign shows, it takes you to the beginning of the real listings.

[STC]

To add, it will help considerably with the large channel list if you are using a SSD for the OS.

[garyan2]

They are listed but towards the end. You have to punch in '10000' and even though the '@' sign shows, it takes you to the beginning of the real listings.

Quicker way that I use it to just simply type the call sign and hit enter. If you want the beginning of the epg123 listings, just type 'A' and hit enter ... should skip you over the blank channels and put you at the beginning of the epg123 listings.

[STC]

Or....cableCARD users (assuming your lineup uses 3 digit convention): Leave the unused <1000 channels unchecked and do future adds, moves and changes in GuideTool

[garyan2]

Ask, and you shall receive. Now this is how it was designed to work. If you want something like that with episode, then I would have to tear that apart and just append the episode description with "Title: Season XX, Episode XX."

Any luck implementing this feature? I see the season number now, but not the episode number.

Haven't done anything with it yet. I'll throw out some questions later to determine if/what we want to do. There are pros and cons so I'll present that to everyone as I understand it.

[Scallica]

Gary - Would a sub-forum here dedicated to EPG123 make it easier to field requests/issues/complaints/etc ? Each item would have it's own thread instead of being commingled in this thread.

We have offered the same option to other developers for other applications (Media Center Cast).

[STC]

Sorry Scallica I was creating one as you typed your message... is this okay?

It appears there are many developing avenues starting to come up in this topic and it's becoming very noisy.
We should now have individual topics for each field of discussion, it will be easier for us all.

[garyan2]

Sorry I've been quiet all day/yesterday. Long day at work and then I've been working hard on the program. I will be releasing a new version later Friday after I do some more testing on it. This is a big change in code, thanks to the revelations by jbf154 (http://www.thegreenbutton.tv/forums/vie ... 00#p102500), we can get rid of the cache folder and have much quicker updates. There were a few gotchas that I have bandaids on right now, but it is fully functional.

Also, I will be changing the checkbox on the GUI from "Include station logos from Schedules Direct" to "Remove station logos from Schedules Direct." This option will be for this build only and then will be removed completely in subsequent builds. This is so everyone will have the opportunity to remove the logos without starting over or purchasing MCL (though MCL is pretty nice to have).

[Space]

Nice!

I am wondering if you will still have the option available to create a file with the full guide (maintaining the cache) for the situations like you mentioned earlier (downloading on one system and distributing to multiple others within the household). I suppose you could just purge the md5 cache before every update, but that would cause it to have to download everything from SD again.

Have you verified that loadmxf.exe will return a proper failure code when it is unable to load the MXF file 100%? Is it an all or nothing type situation where if it fails, it fails to load everything (no partial update) and if it succeeds you can be assured that everything in the MXF file was loaded? Because you only want to update the md5 cache if you are sure that everything in the file was loaded successfully. Assuring that the md5 cache and the database are in sync at all times is critical to making sure the database doesn't miss updates.

Also, I am curious how you went about removing the logos, did you just de-reference them somehow? There doesn't seem to be any way to explicitly delete anything in the database when using the MXF file (as far as I can find), so I assume the garbage collection is the primary way of deleting old data (it just deletes everything that is no longer referenced).

Thanks!

[STC]

^ Aren't the logo tweaks a DLL adjust?

[Space]

^ Aren't the logo tweaks a DLL adjust?

My understanding is that the logos are natively supported by WMC and require no changes to the DLL.

MCL modifies the DLL to enable other features such as adjustment of the grid (adding more days or hours) and some other features, but displaying the logos does not require the DLL to be modified.

[garyan2]

^ Aren't the logo tweaks a DLL adjust?

My understanding is that the logos are natively supported by WMC and require no changes to the DLL.

MCL modifies the DLL to enable other features such as adjustment of the grid (adding more days or hours) and some other features, but displaying the logos does not require the DLL to be modified.

That is correct, and removing the channel logo wasn't as difficult as it could have been. I just need to change the GuideImage imageUrl attribute to an empty string. That actually worked.

FROM

Code: Select all

    <GuideImages>
      <GuideImage id="i1" imageUrl="file://\\theblackbox\epg\logos\KVOADT.png" />
    ...
    <Services>
      <Service id="s1" uid="!Service!EPG123_42676" name="KVOADT (EPG123)" callSign="KVOADT" logoImage="i1" />

TO

Code: Select all

    <GuideImages>
      <GuideImage id="i1" imageUrl="" />

[garyan2]

Put a couple releases up on the epg123 website. http://epg123.garyan2.net

First was v0.7.3 which now uses a descriptive name for the channels instead of CALLSIGN (EPG123). This post also includes a small utility which will remove all channel logos for you guys that don't have MCL XL to do it for you...get rid of those SD logos.

Second is v0.8.0 which does delta updates instead of creating the entire guide in one file. Makes for less downloads, quicker updates, and no need to cache any files on the drive. I believe it might morph into a hybrid of some type to allow either the delta or the full updates. We might just call this one a proof of design.

[garyan2]

Put a couple releases up on the epg123 website. http://epg123.garyan2.net

First was v0.7.3 which now uses a descriptive name for the channels instead of CALLSIGN (EPG123). This post also includes a small utility which will remove all channel logos for you guys that don't have MCL XL to do it for you...get rid of those SD logos.

Second is v0.8.0 which does delta updates instead of creating the entire guide in one file. Makes for less downloads, quicker updates, and no need to cache any files on the drive. I believe it might morph into a hybrid of some type to allow either the delta or the full updates. We might just call this one a proof of design.

For those of you that have already downloaded the program, I may have gotten the file versions reversed. If in the epg123 folder, there is now a epgCache.xml file ... that is v0.8.0. If you do not have that file, you are using the v0.7.3 version.

So Sorry.

[KenL]

For those of you that have already downloaded the program, I may have gotten the file versions reversed. If in the epg123 folder, there is now a epgCache.xml file ... that is v0.8.0. If you do not have that file, you are using the v0.7.3 version.

So Sorry.

Downloaded and ran v0.7.3 about 45 minutes ago... looks like it is v0.7.3. Just launched config again to check the version... also no epgCache.xml file that I can see.

The descriptive call sign names look great. Thanks much!

[choliscott]

Just a quick question on v0.8. Is the Process program under "Retrieving Programs from local cache & SD" supposed to be slower compared to v0.7.3 ?

Reason why I ask is when I tried running it, it would get to program 5000 or 38400 & it would stop for a minute or two, then to program 12000 of 38400 & then stop for a couple of minutes. it also seemed like the "count up" was slower, compared to 0.7.3 which counted up pretty quick

Not sure if this is how v0.8 is supposed to work , but I figured I would check

Thanks!!

[garyan2]

Just a quick question on v0.8. Is the Process program under "Retrieving Programs from local cache & SD" supposed to be slower compared to v0.7.3 ?

Reason why I ask is when I tried running it, it would get to program 5000 or 38400 & it would stop for a minute or two, then to program 12000 of 38400 & then stop for a couple of minutes. it also seemed like the "count up" was slower, compared to 0.7.3 which counted up pretty quick

Not sure if this is how v0.8 is supposed to work , but I figured I would check

Thanks!!

The initial run of v0.8 will be longer than you are used to because it is building everything from scratch and not leveraging off the cache directory or the guideImages.xml file. The maximum number of programs I can request at a time from SD is 5000 so that is what you notice with the pause being waiting on the server response with the next 5000 programs. The slower count up was due to making api calls for sports and movie images individually (I do all the series images at once). So what is the advantage of v0.8? Still up for debate, but all your daily updates will only be for the new days program and no longer have 45000+ files in your cache.