Just an update on this: I found and followed several links for this setup. CountryBumkin had a great write up on setting up EPG, using mc2xml, zap2xml and other sources, as well as xmltvdb. I used xmltvdb and it worked great - for a day or so! Then it would not update. I mucked around and tried several options to create the initial XML file (standalone mc2xml using SchedulesDirect, percdata,zap2it) and each would output but xmltvdb would not update. I think I must have modified the properties file and did the dreaded save as ansi. After getting frustrated with trying to find a good solution, I found other post stating that SD now uses json and the episode naming was good. I tried it and bang, it worked!
So I dropped it all and setup XMLTV using SchedulesDirectJSON and it seems to be updating correctly! It has only been a day, so I don't want to jinx it either! It is nice to just use the MC program to do all of this and output in the correct format versus having to run a batch job separately.
Just thought I would give my update.
Thanks for the advice RoderickGI and CountryBumkin!
Pete