You are here

tvguide.com srvid for specific provider

42 posts / 0 new
Last post
samu-rai
Offline
Has donated long time ago
Joined: 10 years
Last seen: 8 years
tvguide.com srvid for specific provider

I'm trying to move away from using zap2it as a source as it is incredibly slow, and recently has been giving 'memory load' errors, and am hoping to use tvguide.com.

 

The issue I'm having is in locating the srvid for the relevant provider. I have seen that people were using a 'copy link address' technique, but having tried this I think the site must have changed as now this only shows 'http://www.tvguide.com/Listings/#'.

 

Does anyone know of another/updated way to locate my desired srvid number?

 

Thanks in advance

 

Sam

francis
Offline
francis's picture
Has donated long time agoWG++ Team member
Joined: 11 years
Last seen: 1 week
Is the support helpful?
support us

Ok, I can go 2 ways here.
a. zap2it
1. I'll see why zap2it could give you a 'memory' load erros
2. Speed,  will see if we can increase that, but probably can't do much about it (most of the time also not an issue.)
 
b. tvguide.com
1. give me your postal code, of other setting you use on the site (I'll search for the srvid)

samu-rai
Offline
Has donated long time ago
Joined: 10 years
Last seen: 8 years

Hi Francis
If you could look into Zap2it that would be great, as I think I will still have to use them for some Canadian listings (unless tvguide.com carries listings for Canada?)
The provider I need on the TVgudie is DirecTV with Local channels (Digital (non-rebuild)) zip code: 11375.
Thanks as always
Sam

francis
Offline
francis's picture
Has donated long time agoWG++ Team member
Joined: 11 years
Last seen: 1 week
Is the support helpful?
support us

For tvguide, the srvid should be 889066.16777216 I think.

francis
Offline
francis's picture
Has donated long time agoWG++ Team member
Joined: 11 years
Last seen: 1 week
Is the support helpful?
support us

Ok, had a quick look and changed some things.

If you could give this one a try.

Speed will be the about the same as before. Because it is the site that is that slow.

Things you can (should) do to further speedup the grabbing.

1. Go to the site and click "Set preferences". There only select the channels you want to grab. (You'll have to re-save the cookie for this and re create the .channels.xml file)

2. in the config file you should set the update mode to incremental. Previous siteini had an error, so this mode didn't work that well. But that is now fixed.

 

I don't know if the memload error should be fixed. I have minimized the "unnecessary" data that was grabbed previously, but don't know if this will fix this.

 

If you could let us know how this one is running?

 

PS: best is to use the latest beta I think.

 

Attachments: 
francis
Offline
francis's picture
Has donated long time agoWG++ Team member
Joined: 11 years
Last seen: 1 week
Is the support helpful?
support us

And here one that should realy be faster

Attachments: 
samu-rai
Offline
Has donated long time ago
Joined: 10 years
Last seen: 8 years

Thanks Francis.
 
Zap2it does seem faster, but I am still having 'System.OutOfMemoryException' errors.
 
Also, whenever I try and create a channel list on tvguide.com I get 'Time parsing error : String was not recognized as a valid DateTime.'
 
Logs attached. Any ideas?
 
Thanks

francis
Offline
francis's picture
Has donated long time agoWG++ Team member
Joined: 11 years
Last seen: 1 week
Is the support helpful?
support us

Zap2it:
Could you give me the settings on the site you have used (zipcode/country/provider/...)
 
tvguide.com:
What I already thought. The site has changed so a new siteini will be needed. Will see what I can do in the comming days.

samu-rai
Offline
Has donated long time ago
Joined: 10 years
Last seen: 8 years

 
Hi Francis
 
Zap2it providers as above.
 
DirecTV - Zip: 11375
 
Thanks again
 

francis
Offline
francis's picture
Has donated long time agoWG++ Team member
Joined: 11 years
Last seen: 1 week
Is the support helpful?
support us

Ok, memload I can't reproduce. But could you try with the latest beta (1.1.1/53.15)?
 
Here also a new version of the siteini. Just to fix the warnings like:

   Suspicious      title in index page  = NBA Basketball
      differs from title in showdetails = NBA Basketball (?)

 
Those should not occur (if possible), because the incremental update would not work as efficient as possible.
If running this version with the latest beta still gives you the error, could you look at how many memory you have installed, how many is in use just befor you launch WG++ and if you run win7 on 32 or 64 bit.

Attachments: 
samu-rai
Offline
Has donated long time ago
Joined: 10 years
Last seen: 8 years

I have 4GB of RAM on the desktop I use with WebGrab.
 
I'll try your suggestions tomorrow and report back.
 
Thank you

samu-rai
Offline
Has donated long time ago
Joined: 10 years
Last seen: 8 years

Hi Francis
 
With the latest site ini you attached for zap2it in getting an error 'Warning : Load Cookie fails for zap2it.com! Index was outside the bounds of the array.'
 
I tried regrabbing the cookie, but to no avail.
 
Thanks

francis
Offline
francis's picture
Has donated long time agoWG++ Team member
Joined: 11 years
Last seen: 1 week
Is the support helpful?
support us
reuven wrote:

Hi Francis,
 
for tvguide.com, is it possible to get the channel site id and xmltv id for the following channel?
 
zip code: 53542
Provider: Antenna,Madison area broadcast
Channel: WisChn 21.2 or WPT2 23.
 
Thank you very very much

 
I'm working on a new version for this site. Will be available soon

francis
Offline
francis's picture
Has donated long time agoWG++ Team member
Joined: 11 years
Last seen: 1 week
Is the support helpful?
support us

Is currently any of you guys, using tvguide.com?
I'm just wan't to know if the old implementation is stil working, or not

samu-rai
Offline
Has donated long time ago
Joined: 10 years
Last seen: 8 years

Francis, 
 
Would you mind trying to create a channel list for the srvid you gave me above and see how you get on?
 
Prehaps I am just doing something wrong. I don't want you to go to the trouble of creating a new site ini if it is down to a error on my behalf.

francis
Offline
francis's picture
Has donated long time agoWG++ Team member
Joined: 11 years
Last seen: 1 week
Is the support helpful?
support us

Ok, guys,
Searching for the srvid is not as simple anymore (or, I'm looking at the  wrong place).
 
So I rewritten this siteini yesterday (still ongoing)
But to start, I would like you to test the next files. I'm not going to tell much about it, because I want to get the _info.txt file as clear as possible. So most users can understand it, and use it.
One thing I can say, is that you don't need to create/rename siteini's, like the previous version. So normaly you will only need this one siteini to grab all the tvguide channels.
 
Currently I've put the timezone to +00:00. Because the site uses UTC timings. So the time you see in the guide.xml, should be the correct one. So if you are in timezone -05:00, and if you see
start="20140307180000 +0000"
this is equal to
start="20140307130000 -0500"
 
so that show would start at 01PM.
This version of the file currently handles only the US zipcode (I think).
A version for the other countries and the selection by timezone (eastern, central, mountain, ...) I'll have to check how to do that. So later more about that.
Just remove the underscrores from the uploades file, before using them.

samu-rai
Offline
Has donated long time ago
Joined: 10 years
Last seen: 8 years

It works like a treat Francis!
 
Thank you :D

samu-rai
Offline
Has donated long time ago
Joined: 10 years
Last seen: 8 years

Could anyone else confirm if they are getting cookie load errors with zap2it?

francis
Offline
francis's picture
Has donated long time agoWG++ Team member
Joined: 11 years
Last seen: 1 week
Is the support helpful?
support us
samu-rai wrote:

Could anyone else confirm if they are getting cookie load errors with zap2it?

Could you upload your config, cookie and log file, for this error?

francis
Offline
francis's picture
Has donated long time agoWG++ Team member
Joined: 11 years
Last seen: 1 week
Is the support helpful?
support us

And here the full version. This supports:
A. By time zone (Eastern, Central, Mountain, Pacific, Alaskan, Hawaiian)
B. By zip code and provider
C. By country and provider
 
Let me know how it goes.

Attachments: 
samu-rai
Offline
Has donated long time ago
Joined: 10 years
Last seen: 8 years

Hi Francis
 
Docs attached as requested.
 
This has only started happening in the last few days.
 
Thanks
 

francis
Offline
francis's picture
Has donated long time agoWG++ Team member
Joined: 11 years
Last seen: 1 week
Is the support helpful?
support us

xmltv_ns:
Correct. Had forgotten to add the system to the siteini.
Just change

site {ratingsystem=MPAA}

into

site {ratingsystem=MPAA|episodesystem=xmltv_ns}

and it will be correct
 
Time handling:
Normaly it is local times. But the site gives the times in UTC timing. So currently it puts the time in "local time" +00:00. Not ideal, but currently the best solution.
Another solution is to grab the timings in local time, but then everybody has to set their own timezone in the siteini file. And that is something I wanted to avoid.
But probably it will change befor the official release of this siteini.

francis
Offline
francis's picture
Has donated long time agoWG++ Team member
Joined: 11 years
Last seen: 1 week
Is the support helpful?
support us

dRon wrote:

Making some progress. Made the  xmltv_ns change and the Season/Episode numbers show up correctly.
MediaPortal has problems with how the timezone channels are generated.
Problems with xmltv_id="(Pacific)ABC">(Pacific)ABC
this works xmltv_id="Pacific ABC">Pacific ABC All I did was remove the () from the channel name and MePo xmltv setup tool will set/save/import the channels.

Thanks for that feedback. I'll try to adjust the siteini, so MP would not error on this. Will change "(Pacific)ABC" to "Pacific -ABC". If you could check, if MP support that.

 

dRon wrote:

Still having problems with getting the times working with MePo. I put timezone=UTC-08:00 in the tvguide.com.ini file, tried enabling MePo timzone compensation, but MePo does not seem to recognize the start="20140310080000 -0800" etc to adjust the time. Based on MePo wiki I'd expect/hope this would work. If I add a static fudge factor MePo does tweak the times but not really what I want to use. Will look in MePo forums to see why MePo has problems. Link to MePo wiki
http://wiki.team-mediaportal.com/1_MEDIAPORTAL_1/141_Configuration/TV-Se...
 

Quote from MP:

Normally timezone information inside tvguide.xml is ignored; it is assumed that all programme times are local times.

So what you see is a problem from MP (because this is not what is stated in the XMLTV standard). But of course we want to adjust, so you can import into MP.

What you can try to do now, is to set timezone=-08:00 (like you already did) + change format=time into format=utctime (look in the siteini, you will find some lines with that)

At that moment, the times in the guide.xml should be correct (but still with timezone offset) (Check this).

That can be fixed by running WG2MP (see the download section). The file you then get, should be imported correctly in MP.

(we are currently investigating, to make this a little bit more user friendly = easier for you guys)

 

dRon wrote:


It looks like WG++ is using a "*" after the show title to indicate a "new" shows. Just want to confirm this is expected.
Title * = New show, some exceptions
Title = Old/Repeat show

Yes, this is the same behaviour as the previous siteini. So when I detect that the "new" flag is set for a show, I put a * at the end of the title.

 

 

samu-rai
Offline
Has donated long time ago
Joined: 10 years
Last seen: 8 years

Hi Francis
 
Is there any update on the Zap2it cookies issue?
 
Thanks

francis
Offline
francis's picture
Has donated long time agoWG++ Team member
Joined: 11 years
Last seen: 1 week
Is the support helpful?
support us

samu-rai wrote:

Is there any update on the Zap2it cookies issue?
 

Tested it yesterday, and you can fix it by removing the next line from your cookie file.

.zap2it.com    TRUE    /    FALSE    1396865606    cto_tribune  

Will see what we can do in the future to avoid such erreatic behaviour.

samu-rai
Offline
Has donated long time ago
Joined: 10 years
Last seen: 8 years

Thank you.
 
I'll give it a go later.

francis
Offline
francis's picture
Has donated long time agoWG++ Team member
Joined: 11 years
Last seen: 1 week
Is the support helpful?
support us

Here still working (or I'm testing the wrong zip)
Tested with both 11375 and 94022 (generated the correct providers and channels)
And the 2 links you provides, also return both the correct data.
Maybe a glitch on the server side?
 
During test, I stumbled upon a case I could not get any data from the sites. But that had nothing to do with the site. I just had a space at the beginning of some lines in the .channels.xml generating part. And then it failed. But removing the leading spaces from those lines fixed this. Maybe you got the same issue (but this is a long shot).
 

dvgeek
Offline
Joined: 10 years
Last seen: 6 years

@dRon - can you please post your tvguide.com.ini and webgrab++.config.ini files?
I am also in the SF bay area and I'm getting a bunch of "Error downloading page: The remote server returned an error: (400) Bad Request." errors for some channels.
Thanks.

dvgeek
Offline
Joined: 10 years
Last seen: 6 years

Thanks @dRon!
My files look almost similar.
Unfortunately I don't import into MePo - I only use MePo's TVEngine for recording - my scheduling is done through Argus Scheduler (the best scheduler out there IMO)
My Config:
http://forum.team-mediaportal.com/threads/success-complex-multi-seat-install-love-you-guys-gals-of-team-mediaportal.125098/
The import went fine - the times matched - (Easiest check was with scheduled news times like KTVU @ 10pm and KPIX @ 11pm)
My grab was for 14 days, which I ran just now - which should have grabbed till 4/3/2014 - but my guide is populated only till mid day 4/2/2014.  I then checked the actual website of tvguide.com and the listings exist only till about mid-day of 4/2/2014.  Could the errors be because there are no more listings available and I am trying to grab more?
I tried increasing the times in the retry-timeout section in the xml file - but still got the same errors. (set it back to default - as the run with the increased retry time took two hours)
There exists a lot of documentation for WebGrab++Plus - and TitanTV has a better TV Listing than most TV Guide sites - so I am contemplating on starting from scratch for this.  Have to find time to do this as a project.
 

dvgeek
Offline
Joined: 10 years
Last seen: 6 years

Looks like last night's (more like this AM at 03:00 pacific) scheduled update run on my machine went thru - I now have the schedules for April 3rd also.
Even though the logs say updates for 14 days, it seems to grab only for 13 days (3/22/2014 to 4/3/2014) - no complaints though.
Thanks @dRon for the help!
@dRon - When I said our files are similar, I meant the only differences were in our zip code and you have a couple of more channels set up for grabbing.  Rest all is same.
 

dvgeek
Offline
Joined: 10 years
Last seen: 6 years
corporate_gadfly wrote:

makkie_65 wrote:
I am getting the * in the title of some programs.

Like other reports, I'm also getting the extra asterisk (*), presumably denoting new episodes, in the title. That is definitely tripping up my recording scheduler (Argus TV). Any way to strip the asterisk (*) out?
Thanks in advance.

I use Argus TV Scheduler too - and it works fine for me - actually the asterisk (*) is pretty useful in demarcating new programs - else, while reviewing the marked for recording schedules, you will have to go thru the program info and, if you can recall every episode, it's fine, or else for someone with memory challenges like me, it's pretty difficult.
 
My titles for new episodes are like "The 100 *"  and for repeats are like - "The 100", without the quotes of course.
 
You could edit out the section that add's the extra asterisk if you do not want it.
 
Look for this section in your site.ini file:

* add flags accoridng to airing attributes
index_temp_5.modify {calculate(format=D0)|'index_temp_4' 1 and}
index_temp_6.modify {addend('index_temp_5'=="1")| (live)}
index_temp_5.modify {calculate(format=D0)|'index_temp_4' 2 and}
index_temp_6.modify {addend('index_temp_5'=="2")| (repeat)}
index_temp_5.modify {calculate(format=D0)|'index_temp_4' 4 and}
index_temp_6.modify {addend('index_temp_5'=="4")| (new)}
index_title.modify {addend('index_temp_5'=="4")| *}
index_temp_5.modify {calculate(format=D0)|'index_temp_4' 8 and}
index_temp_6.modify {addend('index_temp_5'=="8")| (cc)}

Remove or comment out this line
index_title.modify {addend('index_temp_5'=="4")| *}
 
And you will not have an asterisk for new episodes / prgrams anymore.
 
Hope this helps.

dvgeek
Offline
Joined: 10 years
Last seen: 6 years
dRon wrote:

Dvgeek, trying to understand what you did in message #50 to get rid of the "Title *" for new shows. Looking at the INI file there are 2 places with the same type of title modify operation.
line 57, index_title.modify {addend('index_temp_5' =="4")| *}
line 80, title.modify {addend('temp_5' =="4")| *}
Only comment out line 57, with a test WG++cfg.xml file 1 day and 1 channel, deleted guide.xml, run WG++, edit the guide.xml, and get Title = "American Idol *", this is a "new" show. Same "Title *" for other new shows. The "repeat/old" shows have "Title", WG++.log shows,
   Suspicious      title in index page  = American Idol
      differs from title in showdetails = American Idol *
Comment out both 57, 80, repeat the process,  get Title = "American Idol", nothing in the log. None of the shows have "Title *". So I need to comment/disable both line 57 and 80.
I want to modify the INI so new shows have "Title" and repeats show "Title *" so I can match the way "mc2xml -b" works. All my current recordings for new shows use "Title" and I want to skip repeats with "Title *". So groping through WG++.pdf documentation (page 24) and looking at the INI file, looks like the WG++ coding for "NOT EQUAL" is not==. So I do make the following changes, repeat test
line 57, index_title.modify {addend('index_temp_5' not=="4")| *}
line 80, title.modify {addend('temp_5' not=="4")| *}
This gives me what I want, old/repeat shows are "Title *", new shows are "Title", and nothing interesting in the log file.

@dRon - actually my tvguide.com.ini file has this in only one place - in the section -
 
* add flags according to airing attributes
 
 

dvgeek
Offline
Joined: 10 years
Last seen: 6 years
dRon wrote:

hmm, my version of tvguide.com.ini downloaded from the zip in msg #23 shows the following version info in the header.
* @Site: tvguide.com
* @MinSWversion: V1.1.1/53
*   none
* @Revision 7 - [05/03/2014] Francis De Paemeleere
*  - totaly rewrite of the code

dRon - my tvguide.com.ini shows the same info.  Here's my modified one...as well as the WebGrab++.xml file (For some reason an underscore was added to the ini file...)
 

dvgeek
Offline
Joined: 10 years
Last seen: 6 years
dRon wrote:

dvgeek wrote:

dRon wrote:
hmm, my version of tvguide.com.ini downloaded from the zip in msg #23 shows the following version info in the header.
* @Site: tvguide.com
* @MinSWversion: V1.1.1/53
*   none
* @Revision 7 - [05/03/2014] Francis De Paemeleere
*  - totaly rewrite of the code

dRon - my tvguide.com.ini shows the same info.  Here's my modified one...as well as the WebGrab++.xml file (For some reason an underscore was added to the ini file...)
 

compared dvgeek vs dRon version, they are the same other than the 1 line you added to the header. Your version has both lines I showed (58/81).  Do you see warnings in the WG++.log file? No big deal if you are happy with the way the .ini file works.

@dRon - From what I can see and understand, one line adds the astersik (*) to the Program Title Field and the other to the Name Field in my ARGUS Scheduler.
 
Also, I checked the logs for the past couple of days (so the delay in posting a reply), but I do not wee any warnings in the WG++.log file...
 

francis
Offline
francis's picture
Has donated long time agoWG++ Team member
Joined: 11 years
Last seen: 1 week
Is the support helpful?
support us

Hi guys,

I've adjusted the .ini file to the latest WG++ beta implementation. This version should be resistant to any DST change.

What this .ini does, is capture the show times in UTC times. Because of the new time zone implementation of WG++, all DST changes should be calculated correctly. Even if you are in a different time zone and/or different DST regime.

So the output guide.xml file, will contain only UTC timings. (normally the XMLTV importer, should convert these timings into the correct local ones).

I hope you could give this one a good try. If it works fine, I'll make this one the official one and put it on the EPG channels page.

(P.S: be sure to use the latest beta 53.16pre)

Attachments: 
twghughes
Offline
twghughes's picture
Joined: 9 years
Last seen: 7 years

Anyone having issues with tvguide.com taking absolutely ages to fetch data? Only trying to grab around 35 channels and four days worth of content but by the time it finishes, it will be close to eight hours (!!). Constantly getting 400 bad requests and timeouts. The XML does eventually generate but it just takes so long.

Caralgos
Offline
Donator
Joined: 3 years
Last seen: 3 years

Hi, I am trying to get the site_id from a Mexican provider called "total play" on tvguide. The problem is that I cannot get the channel list, I have followed the instructions of the info.txt but all the zip codes that I put bring me channels from the United States, could someone help me ...?

jhr1948
Offline
Donator
Joined: 4 years
Last seen: 7 hours
Caralgos wrote:

Hi, I am trying to get the site_id from a Mexican provider called "total play" on tvguide. The problem is that I cannot get the channel list, I have followed the instructions of the info.txt but all the zip codes that I put bring me channels from the United States, could someone help me ...?

Does TVGuide.com actually have Total Play as an option? I looked in Mexico and tried a few States/Cities and never saw Total Play as an option. If you know it has it for sure, then tell me the State/City and I can tell you the number to put in the place of Site_ID to run a channel list

Blackbear199
Offline
Blackbear199's picture
WG++ Team memberDonator
Joined: 8 years
Last seen: 41 min

u dont use zip codes for anywhere outside the usa.
you have to use country,region,then provider...
i dont know if the current ini supports this but i have my own modified one that can do it.

@jhr
if you want to find it select mexico for country,then DF(distric federal which is mexico city) for region,then select mexico(not mexico d.f) and you will see total play listed as a provider.

jhr1948
Offline
Donator
Joined: 4 years
Last seen: 7 hours
Blackbear199 wrote:

u dont use zip codes for anywhere outside the usa.
you have to use country,region,then provider...
i dont know if the current ini supports this but i have my own modified one that can do it.
@jhr
if you want to find it select mexico for country,then DF(distric federal which is mexico city) for region,then select mexico(not mexico d.f) and you will see total play listed as a provider.

Awesome, thanks Blackbear199. Was trying to help out Caralgos
 
Here's the channel provider line to run a channels list
 
<channel update="i" site="tvguide.com" site_id="898364" xmltv_id="TotalPlayMX">TotalPlayMX</channel>

Caralgos
Offline
Donator
Joined: 3 years
Last seen: 3 years

Thanks guys, I'll try it and I'll tell you later ... !!!

Caralgos
Offline
Donator
Joined: 3 years
Last seen: 3 years

I already tried it and it is all correct, however I would like to know if it is possible to make an exclusive site.ini of "total player". I don´t know how simple or difficult it can be, if someone tells me how to do it or if they already have it, I would appreciate it.

Log in or register to post comments

Brought to you by Jan van Straaten

Program Development - Jan van Straaten ------- Web design - Francis De Paemeleere
Supported by: servercare.nl