From zap2xml site:
I do not quite understand this. Does it mean a user has to make sure TimeDate package has been installed before trying the zap2xml Windows installer?
That only applies if you install and use the PERL script version of zap2xml. Its placement on the page is a little confusing. Had me thinking the first time I read it.
Run this executable: C:\Program Files (x86)\Zap2XML\zap2xml.exe
Zap2xml creates a Cache directory directly below the folder it is run from, so in this case it tries to create the directory "C:\Program Files (x86)\Zap2XML\cache".
Windows doesn't allow programs to write data into the directory structure below the "C:\Program Files (x86)\" folder, unless you override all sorts of permissions stuff, which you should not. You need to either move it out to its own directory somewhere, as CountryBumkin suggested, or use the command option "-c <cacheDirectory> (default = "cache")" to specify an alternate location. You should be able to get away with setting that to "C:\ProgramData\cache" or similar, perhaps "C:\ProgramData\zap2xml\cache" for clarity, but you may want the cache to be on a drive other than your boot drive, C:. It depends on how many drives you have, and how much space you have on C:. My cache for one run with 9 Channels and 7 days of data was just 1.27MB, but it was nearly 10MB on disk, as it is made up of lots of small files. So if you have 800 Channels the cache could get big. Probably not multiple gigabytes though.
My zap2xml installation didn't create any other files or directories, other than the Output file which you have correctly placed, and I can't see any other command options that refer to creation of other files and directories, so the above change should make zap2xml work in the "C:\Program Files (x86)\Zap2XML\" directory.
Note that the first time I ran zap2xml I did it from a batch file, and so when it failed due to timeouts I couldn't see the error message. So after that I just ran it in a command window I opened first. I'm not using it for my real EPG collection, so I didn't need to set it up properly. I suggest that if you use a batch file while testing that you add a "Pause" command to the end of the file, so that you get a "Press any key to continue . . ." message at the end of the run, and can view any messages before the batch file window closes.
Pass these parameters through command line: -u email-account -p e-mail-pw o "c:\temp\jeff.xml"
(I removed my zap2it account and pw and replaced it with the generic 'e-mail-account' and 'e-mail-pw'
As CountryBumkin noted, you missed the "-" for the "-o" option in the above command, although of course you may have had it right in the actual command you ran. I'm sure you used your zap2it (not zap2xml CB!) user name (which is an email address) and password in the real command as well. Forgive us for being pedantic.
Sometimes when people write something like "e-mail-pw" they actually do use their email password, instead of the correct password relevant to the task at hand. I have seen people argue black and blue that they are entering their password correctly . . . until they realise that they are entering their email password instead of a web site password.
You should use the -e commands, "-e = encode entities (html special characters like accents)" so that characters are displayed correctly.
You could use the -D command, "-D = include extra program details (S##E##) = 1 extra http request per program!", but I have found
recently found that
zap2it doesn't have Season and Episode numbers for all programs, so that may be of less use than I originally thought. If you do use it, and you get the time out message CountryBumkin mentioned, you could use the -r command, "-r <# of connection retries before failure> (default = 3, max 20)" to increase the number of retries. But that loads the server a lot more, and if it is busy and not responding, then it probably won't respond better if you retry more often. But, the command is there to try.
If you do use the -r command, you may want to also add the -S command, "-S <#seconds> sleep between requests to prevent flooding of server", so that the server gets a little break from your downloads to catch up and serve other users. That may considerably slow your EPG data collection though. If you use it, try no more than 2 seconds of sleep. In fact I would start at 0.1 seconds if zap2xml will take fractions, and see how long the collection took before increasing it.
Okay, I think that covers everything.
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