INTERACT FORUM
Windows => Television => Topic started by: RoderickGI on September 13, 2020, 01:19:44 am
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This one is for you Yaobing.
I have switched to using XMLTV.net as my EPG source. It does include Season and Episode data, so it is better than the OTA EIT data I was using. In fact it looks pretty good.
However, I noticed pretty quickly that movies weren't being flagged as such in MC. It turns out that XMLTV.net use a slightly different Categorisation for movies.
EPG Collector, and the OTA EIT data it collected, used the field:
<category>Movie</category>
I suspect most EPG sources use that actually.
But XMLTV.net in their wisdom use:
<category>Television movie</category>
and
<category>Cinema movie</category>
That's nice of them, isn't it? But it breaks MC's Guide colour coding, and other functions, as the [Media Sub Type] is set to "TV Show", even for programs over two hours long. If you are interested in seeing the data, you can access it directly via XMLTV.net. I use http://xmltv.net/xml_files/Melbourne.xml, which produces an 8.7 MB file.
Could we have MC set the [Media Sub Type] to "Movie" if the Category of a program contains the word "movie" rather than only if it matches exactly?
Thanks for considering.
PS:
I also thought that if a program was over two hours MC would set it as a Movie. But maybe that only happens if there is no <category> field in the EPG record.
So if a <category> field exists, and it isn't "Movie", then the [Media Sub Type] isn't set to "Movie"?
PPS:
You might want to look at the range of <category> values XMLTV.net uses. I assume it is driven by the FreeView Plus requirements. The list of categories is quite extensive, and may be of interest to Guide coloring and other functionality.
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I checked the ICETV EPG XMLTV and they too only use "Movie". I can provide a sample of the IceTV XMLTV if you are interested.
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I'm pretty sure every EPG I have seen until now only used "Movie", way back to Topfield, TEDSuite, and so on. Certainly, the OTA EIT EPG and EPG Collector only use "Movie". I suspect it is just FreeView Plus trying to provide finer categorisation to make their TV Guides look special.
I assume you have seen the same issue I did.
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I'm mostly using ICETV (all the major channels) so I'm all good. I'm now using XMLTV.net to fill in ones not covered by ICETV, then EIT for those not covered by either as in terms of "quality", ICETV > XMLTV.net > EIT.
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....as an example here is the data you get for a random movie:
xmltv.net
<programme start="20200910154000 +1000" stop="20200910172500 +1000" channel="92.yourtv.com.au">
<title>Father's Doing Fine</title>
<desc>While waiting for her daughter to give birth, a widow and her family face several domestic crises.</desc>
<category>Comedy</category>
<category>Cinema movie</category>
<icon src="https://s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/nine-tvmg-images-prod/44/90/01/449001_270957_FADO_i_T2_t1_.jpg" />
<episode-num system="imdb.com">title/tt0044605</episode-num>
<previously-shown />
<rating>
<value>G</value>
</rating>
</programme>
icetv
<programme airingID="153109249" mediaID="27566-0" start="20200910054000 +0000" stop="20200910072500 +0000" channel="2746">
<title lang="en">Father's Doing Fine</title>
<desc lang="en">An aristocratic English widow has four daughters, a title but no funds and her first grandchild on the way. With one daughter married, how do her other three girls handle love? And will the local doctor have his armorous way?</desc>
<credits>
<director>Henry Cass</director>
<actor>Richard Attenborough</actor>
<actor>Heather Thatcher</actor>
<actor>George Thorpe</actor>
<actor>Noel Purcell</actor>
</credits>
<date>1952</date>
<category lang="en">Comedy</category>
<category lang="en">Movie</category>
<language lang="en">English</language>
<icon src="http://images.icetv.com.au/8db6-696e-37d4-deda.jpg" width="780" height="1170" />
<country lang="en">United Kingdom</country>
<episode-num system="imdb.com">series/tt0044605</episode-num>
<episode-num system="themoviedb.org">139153</episode-num>
<video>
<present>yes</present>
<colour>yes</colour>
<aspect>4:3</aspect>
<quality>HDTV</quality>
</video>
<previously-shown start="2010-11-13" />
<subtitles type="teletext" />
<rating system="ACMA">
<value>G</value>
</rating>
</programme>
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The extra data from IceTV is very nice. Credits, Language, Aspect Ratio, Quality, etc.
As XMLTV.net gets it data from yourtv.com.au, which I assume is the source for the FreeView Plus EPG, it is quite surprising that the XMLTV.net EPG doesn't include more information. After all, FreeView Plus is supposed to be all about getting better visibility of programs through a better EPG. Well, at least that is the selling point. It is actually all about protecting advertising revenue for broadcasters...
Thanks for sharing.
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Without looking at their code on github, I'm not sure how xmltv.net get their data. I'd not be surprised if they are just scraping the web page (which is what previous attempts also did).
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Yeah, I doubt there is an open API for it. But there must be an API for Freeview Plus devices, so someone may have reverse engineered that. As it must all be HTTP calls, or maybe HTTPS, that shouldn't be that hard.
I didn't look at their code either.
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Changed: MC will classify a show as "movie" if the XMLTV puts it in a category of "Television movie" or "Cinema movie".
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Thank you Yaobing. Much appreciated.