Single guide entry for a channel

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Kick4U

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Single guide entry for a channel

#1

Post by Kick4U » Mon Dec 31, 2018 8:03 pm

Hello!

Is there a way to get a channel to display a single 24 hour entry? I have a few modulators that connect to media players that randomly play cartoons for my little one and since I have a few tuners available, I'd like to have them also connected to my MCE server so we can watch these on extenders instead of a single TV.

So the channels won't need to grab anything from SD. I've seen it possible to create XMLTV files like this with WebGrab+. Is this easily achievable? I've been playing with the custom lineup and was able to add the channels within customLineup.xml but have no idea what else I could do :(

Thanks again for making the MCE guide enjoyable!

Kick4U

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#2

Post by Kick4U » Wed Feb 27, 2019 2:49 am

Been using the 'customlineup' feature and am really happy with it. I think I found a solution for my request above that could use the 'customlineup' to clean up MCE guide data for channels that don't have data.

Here's my idea:
Within the customlineup.xml file, use stationID=0 for channels that will show the channel name instead of guide data. It will populate the call sign as usual and add a 24 hour (duration="86400") listing of the channel name.

I was able to manually add these listings into the mxf file, but it takes a lot of time doing it and well I figured if anyone could help automate this, EPG123 could!
Here's the uid listings I used for testing that gave worked for me.
Channel uid: used the same structure as all the other channels
Service uid: '!Service!EPG123_0_CALLSIGN'
Program id: I just incremented by one
Program uid: '!Program!CALLSIGN_0000'

Interested in your thoughts :D

Kick4U

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#3

Post by Kick4U » Sat Mar 02, 2019 11:17 pm

Does anyone know how I can include the EPG entry for CBSNews? I have been able to make an XMLTV file from scraping https://www.cbsnews.com/cbsn/, but can't come up with a simple way to get it into the guide.

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#4

Post by jachin99 » Sun Mar 03, 2019 12:30 am

What tools have you been using to do all of this work. Way back when I was toying around with custom guide data (I was never too successful) I came across the guide editor. I know there is one tool that will dump the guide as a table, and there was some other tool where I could edit the guide but I can't remember the name. I have some stuff siting on a file share if you want to take a look.

Kick4U

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#5

Post by Kick4U » Sun Mar 03, 2019 4:22 pm

I'm not using any tools, just fiddling with the mxf file and using https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd776338.aspx for documentation. I'm creating the mxf manually and creating about a month of information at a time, but it takes a few tries and so far about an hour of time.

Please share if you have any ideas that will make it easier. THANKS!

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#6

Post by jachin99 » Sun Mar 03, 2019 9:39 pm

Glugglug made quite a few tools for playing around with the guide including...

The MXF Importer viewtopic.php?f=99&t=10197&p=109666#p109666
The Object store explorer - I like this because it dumps the guide as a table - viewtopic.php?f=9&t=10221&p=109771#p109771
You can also visit gary's site and go to the downloads page. You can download the guide tool on this page under useful programs

Here is a dump of what was in my file share. This is a random collection of different stuff I have come across that looked useful. I can't explain all of it but I do remember there being a few posts I pulled off of the web archive where users have opened the guide in C#. Some of the files in here are for vista and wont work with 7. https://drive.google.com/open?id=1sETIU ... gH6v8VrrWC

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#7

Post by jachin99 » Sun Mar 03, 2019 10:56 pm


Kick4U

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#8

Post by Kick4U » Mon Mar 04, 2019 3:05 am

Thank you for these tool recommendations!

The MXFLoader looks promising with the mxf files that I manually made, but I run on x86 and it seems he only compiled it for x64. The others seem to be more for managing the channels and I couldn't find a simple way to add TV Schedule data for specific channels. Maybe I'm missing something?

I have found MCImportXMLTV https://mcefun.nrossen.dk/, but it is miserably slow. I might have to use MCImportXMLTV on a different (faster) computer to create the MXF and create a second schedule so EPG123 can import it. I'll follow up in a few days when I get around to setting it all up.

Thanks again!

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#9

Post by jachin99 » Mon Mar 04, 2019 3:17 am

Start looking around on the open source repositories. I have another idea if the guide thing doesn't work out.

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garyan2

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#10

Post by garyan2 » Mon Mar 04, 2019 5:06 am

I don't think any of this needs to be that difficult. Once you add the tuner channel for your modulators (either WMC's Add Missing Channel or EPG123 Client's Add Channel), then you just need to import a MXF file for "guide" data... something like below. You will just need to change the "startTime" attribute on line 92 to the current date and you will have 21 days of the 24 hour program. For the program, you can add a description and short description for your pleasure.

Code: Select all

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<MXF>
  <Assembly name="mcepg" version="6.1.0.0" cultureinfo="" publicKey="0024000004800000940000000602000000240000525341310004000001000100B5FC90E7027F67871E773A8FDE8938C81DD402BA65B9201D60593E96C492651E889CC13F1415EBB53FAC1131AE0BD333C5EE6021672D9718EA31A8AEBD0DA0072F25D87DBA6FC90FFD598ED4DA35E44C398C454307E8E33B8426143DAEC9F596836F97C8F74750E5975C64E2189F45DEF46B2A2B1247ADC3652BF5C308055DA9">
    <NameSpace name="Microsoft.MediaCenter.Guide">
      <Type name="Lineup" />
      <Type name="Channel" parentFieldName="lineup" />
      <Type name="Service" />
      <Type name="ScheduleEntry" groupName="ScheduleEntries" />
      <Type name="Program" />
      <Type name="Keyword" />
      <Type name="KeywordGroup" />
      <Type name="Person" groupName="People" />
      <Type name="ActorRole" parentFieldName="program" />
      <Type name="DirectorRole" parentFieldName="program" />
      <Type name="WriterRole" parentFieldName="program" />
      <Type name="HostRole" parentFieldName="program" />
      <Type name="GuestActorRole" parentFieldName="program" />
      <Type name="ProducerRole" parentFieldName="program" />
      <Type name="GuideImage" />
      <Type name="Affiliate" />
      <Type name="SeriesInfo" />
      <Type name="Season" />
    </NameSpace>
  </Assembly>
  <Assembly name="mcstore" version="6.1.0.0" cultureinfo="" publicKey="0024000004800000940000000602000000240000525341310004000001000100B5FC90E7027F67871E773A8FDE8938C81DD402BA65B9201D60593E96C492651E889CC13F1415EBB53FAC1131AE0BD333C5EE6021672D9718EA31A8AEBD0DA0072F25D87DBA6FC90FFD598ED4DA35E44C398C454307E8E33B8426143DAEC9F596836F97C8F74750E5975C64E2189F45DEF46B2A2B1247ADC3652BF5C308055DA9">
    <NameSpace name="Microsoft.MediaCenter.Store">
      <Type name="Provider" />
      <Type name="UId" parentFieldName="target" />
    </NameSpace>
  </Assembly>
  <Providers>
    <Provider id="provider1" name="KICK4U" displayName="KICK4U Local Broadcast Guide" copyright="© 2019 Kick4U" />
  </Providers>
  <With provider="provider1">
    <Keywords>
      <Keyword id="k1" word="Educational" />
      <Keyword id="k1000" word="All" />
      <Keyword id="k2" word="Kids" />
      <Keyword id="k2000" word="All" />
      <Keyword id="k3" word="Movies" />
      <Keyword id="k3000" word="All" />
      <Keyword id="k4" word="News" />
      <Keyword id="k4000" word="All" />
      <Keyword id="k5" word="Reality" />
      <Keyword id="k5000" word="All" />
      <Keyword id="k6" word="Series" />
      <Keyword id="k6000" word="All" />
      <Keyword id="k7" word="Special" />
      <Keyword id="k7000" word="All" />
      <Keyword id="k8" word="Sports" />
      <Keyword id="k8000" word="All" />
      <Keyword id="k9" word="Premieres" />
      <Keyword id="k9000" word="All" />
      <Keyword id="k10" word="Paid Programming" />
      <Keyword id="k10000" word="All" />
    </Keywords>
    <KeywordGroups>
      <KeywordGroup groupName="k1" uid="!KeywordGroup!k1" keywords="k1000" />
      <KeywordGroup groupName="k1" uid="!KeywordGroup!k1m1" keywords="k1000" />
      <KeywordGroup groupName="k2" uid="!KeywordGroup!k2" keywords="k2000" />
      <KeywordGroup groupName="k2" uid="!KeywordGroup!k2m1" keywords="k2000" />
      <KeywordGroup groupName="k3" uid="!KeywordGroup!k3" keywords="k3000" />
      <KeywordGroup groupName="k3" uid="!KeywordGroup!k3m1" keywords="k3000" />
      <KeywordGroup groupName="k4" uid="!KeywordGroup!k4" keywords="k4000" />
      <KeywordGroup groupName="k4" uid="!KeywordGroup!k4m1" keywords="k4000" />
      <KeywordGroup groupName="k5" uid="!KeywordGroup!k5" keywords="k5000" />
      <KeywordGroup groupName="k5" uid="!KeywordGroup!k5m1" keywords="k5000" />
      <KeywordGroup groupName="k6" uid="!KeywordGroup!k6" keywords="k6000" />
      <KeywordGroup groupName="k6" uid="!KeywordGroup!k6m1" keywords="k6000" />
      <KeywordGroup groupName="k7" uid="!KeywordGroup!k7" keywords="k7000" />
      <KeywordGroup groupName="k7" uid="!KeywordGroup!k7m1" keywords="k7000" />
      <KeywordGroup groupName="k8" uid="!KeywordGroup!k8" keywords="k8000" />
      <KeywordGroup groupName="k8" uid="!KeywordGroup!k8m1" keywords="k8000" />
      <KeywordGroup groupName="k9" uid="!KeywordGroup!k9" keywords="k9000" />
      <KeywordGroup groupName="k9" uid="!KeywordGroup!k9m1" keywords="k9000" />
      <KeywordGroup groupName="k10" uid="!KeywordGroup!k10" keywords="k10000" />
      <KeywordGroup groupName="k10" uid="!KeywordGroup!k10m1" keywords="k10000" />
    </KeywordGroups>
    <GuideImages />
    <People />
    <SeriesInfos />
    <Seasons />
    <Programs>
      <Program id="1" uid="!Program!TOON_0000" title="Kids Cartoons" description="" shortDescription="" originalAirdate="2001-01-01" keywords="k2,k2" isKids="true" />
    </Programs>
    <Affiliates />
    <Services>
      <Service id="s1" uid="!Service!KICK4U_TOONS" name="KICK4U Cartoons" callSign="K4UTOONS" />
    </Services>
    <ScheduleEntries service="s1">
      <ScheduleEntry program="1" startTime="2019-03-04T00:00:00" duration="86400" isRepeat="true" />
      <ScheduleEntry program="1" duration="86400" isRepeat="true" />
      <ScheduleEntry program="1" duration="86400" isRepeat="true" />
      <ScheduleEntry program="1" duration="86400" isRepeat="true" />
      <ScheduleEntry program="1" duration="86400" isRepeat="true" />
      <ScheduleEntry program="1" duration="86400" isRepeat="true" />
      <ScheduleEntry program="1" duration="86400" isRepeat="true" />
      <ScheduleEntry program="1" duration="86400" isRepeat="true" />
      <ScheduleEntry program="1" duration="86400" isRepeat="true" />
      <ScheduleEntry program="1" duration="86400" isRepeat="true" />
      <ScheduleEntry program="1" duration="86400" isRepeat="true" />
      <ScheduleEntry program="1" duration="86400" isRepeat="true" />
      <ScheduleEntry program="1" duration="86400" isRepeat="true" />
      <ScheduleEntry program="1" duration="86400" isRepeat="true" />
      <ScheduleEntry program="1" duration="86400" isRepeat="true" />
      <ScheduleEntry program="1" duration="86400" isRepeat="true" />
      <ScheduleEntry program="1" duration="86400" isRepeat="true" />
      <ScheduleEntry program="1" duration="86400" isRepeat="true" />
      <ScheduleEntry program="1" duration="86400" isRepeat="true" />
      <ScheduleEntry program="1" duration="86400" isRepeat="true" />
      <ScheduleEntry program="1" duration="86400" isRepeat="true" />
    </ScheduleEntries>
    <Lineups>
      <Lineup id="l1" uid="!MCLineup!KICK4U_LOCAL" name="KICK4U Local Broadcast" primaryProvider="!MCLineup!MainLineup">
        <channels>
          <Channel uid="!Channel!KICK4U!0001" lineup="l1" service="s1" number="2" subNumber="0" />
        </channels>
      </Lineup>
    </Lineups>
  </With>
</MXF>
Importing can be done manually using the client, or using loadmxf.exe. You could get fancy and create a script that will edit the startTime and then import the mxf file and add it as an action in the current epg123_update task.
- Gary
Keeping WMC alive beyond January 2020. https://garyan2.github.io

jachin99

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#11

Post by jachin99 » Wed Mar 06, 2019 12:04 am

If the TV guide entries don't work out you could also try integrating your feeds with macrotube. I started a thread a while back with a couple of examples, and the plugin itself still works fine but most of the site lists for it no longer work. The good thing about it is you can add your own sites if you figure out how to format your providers list correctly. Here is a link with some examples viewtopic.php?f=9&t=11767 Instead of putting a single news or kids entry into the guide, you could have a kids section in macrotube with different sites under the one "Kids" provider.

Kick4U

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#12

Post by Kick4U » Sat Mar 09, 2019 10:01 pm

Spot on as usual Gary! Thank you very much!

Thank you jachin as well for the insight in MacroTube, it has me wondering if it is possible to create actual channels within the MCE guide from .m3u or video files to save me from having a few media players and modulators on 24/7. This would also allow me to get rid of my server AC unit that is nothing but noise in one of my closets. It will be great to use the closet for something else instead of just old electronics!

Sincerely

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