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[DaveR]

IceTV Series Recording for JRiver MediaCenter

IceTV Australia have published their latest API documentation so that programmers can create a plugin or extension to add IceTV's Interactive Smart Series Recording to their favourite digital TV recording software like JRiver MediaCenter, for Australian users.

If needed an IceTV subscription will provided to make it possible for you to develop a plugin or extension, with a free 12 month subscription on completion.

IceTV API Specification:
http://developer.icetv.com.au/Home.html

There is an email address at the bottom of the IceTV API Specification homepage so that you can ask your questions relating to integrating this API into a JRiver MediaCenter plugin.

Plus there is a thread discussing the IceTV API on the IceTV website here:
http://forum.icetv.com.au/iceforum/announcements/4/icetv-api-documentation/5065/


cheers
Dave at IceTV

[RoderickGI]

That would have been really great, three years ago when I asked about it.

Now, JRiver MC has some really great Recording Rules functionality, and combined with a good quality EPG, such as IceTV in XMLTV form, series recording is quite reliable. While IceTV's Interactive Smart Series Recording is probably better, mainly due to reliable and accurate Repeat Flags, and consistent Series and Episode names, most of that benefit is achieved using the IceTV XMLTV EPG feed. The API could only set time based recordings in MC I suspect, the same as it did for Topfield PVRs, which would mean that none of the series recording, searching, matching and filtering capabilities of MC would be required. Except that people would probably still set One Time recordings via MC, so there would be two sources of recordings in MC, and the need for differentiation between them, so that the API didn't alter scheduled recordings created in MC. Of course a user could probably set all recordings through IceTV, if there is an immediate update to MC.

JRiver also provide the capability to set recordings from remote locations, over the internet, although not in anywhere near as polished a form as IceTV does. Your iOS, Android, and Windows Phone Apps, plus the extra metadata you use for program searches, may be enough to sway users to want to use the IceTV capabilities exclusively for setting recordings. But most of the technical aspects of your solution can be technically done using just JRiver products.

It is a shame, as I really wanted to use your EPG and Interactive Smart Series Recording functionality back in 2013. I had been an IceTV user for a long time. If the integration was built using your API I would look at it. But currently I'm using the free OTA MHEG5 EPG data and getting pretty good results.


Our strongest advocate for IceTV on this forum is Imugli. He has written up a description of Setting up MC with IceTV EPG in Australia. I sure Imugli will be along to comment shortly.

[imugli]

Hi Dave,

Welcome aboard!

It's great to see you on here, and it's great to see something finally happening in this area.

To be honest I'm torn on this as far as JRiver Media Center is concerned though.

As RoderickGI has said, I'm a big supporter of IceTV and I like supporting the little guy. My concern is that there are only a few Oz users here (that I see) and even fewer that use IceTV. Would it be worth JRiver puting in the hours to integrate the IceTV API into Media Center? I'm not so sure.

As Media Center is closed source, that work would have to be done by JRiver themselves.

Maybe it would be worth reaching out to Jim directly and discussing this with him, which is what a few of us have asked you guys to do over the years. Perhaps JRiver could implement IceTV as a default TVGuide data provider, if the benefit was there.