USING MC2XML TO MAKE YOUR OWN EPG - tuturial with open discussion

[argfark]

Expatter....Thank you for being so generous as to spend so much of your time "teaching a man to fish". I am an Expat and in the country I am in which is more or less a skidmark in the worlds underwear and I cant even buy USA programming if I wanted to. So for me its a life ring.

Ilan....Thank you for buying me 4 more days of knowing whats up...Without a guide all I am doing is spinning my wheels flipping around and sometimes borking my internet connect which is a combilation of cans, strings, carrier pidgeons and tin foil.

Viper....too few have encouraged you to execute what you intend to do...Hope that you do man. At minimum I say thank you for trying.

FYI..."isreal live" addon did some funky update and self populated pvr simple client today going as far as enabling it. Threw my kodi into fits trying to load prv stalker and kept shutting itself down. Disabled pvr simple 3x and restarted,,,each time it auto re-enabled simple client and re-borked it all. backdoor disabled IL and simple client and the merry go round stopped spinning.....I only mention in case ppl start having same issue and dont realize what is really going on, and start blaming papi or expatters or ilans guide.

Saludos

[expatter]

Expatter....Thank you for being so generous as to spend so much of your time "teaching a man to fish". I am an Expat and in the country I am in which is more or less a skidmark in the worlds underwear and I cant even buy USA programming if I wanted to. So for me its a life ring.

Ilan....Thank you for buying me 4 more days of knowing whats up...Without a guide all I am doing is spinning my wheels flipping around and sometimes borking my internet connect which is a combilation of cans, strings, carrier pidgeons and tin foil.

Viper....too few have encouraged you to execute what you intend to do...Hope that you do man. At minimum I say thank you for trying.

FYI..."isreal live" addon did some funky update and self populated pvr simple client today going as far as enabling it. Threw my kodi into fits trying to load prv stalker and kept shutting itself down. Disabled pvr simple 3x and restarted,,,each time it auto re-enabled simple client and re-borked it all. backdoor disabled IL and simple client and the merry go round stopped spinning.....I only mention in case ppl start having same issue and dont realize what is really going on, and start blaming papi or expatters or ilans guide.

Saludos

You're welcome.

I long ago stopped letting most addons auto update for similar reasons. I do not like to have someone else take control of my stuff. In fact, I uninstalled most of what I had initially. I found that more addons is just too much and I don't need them since I don't use them. USTVNOW has basic US networks in 720p for free and for $ you can get a whole US lineup in HD. Add stalker and another sub and I'm good. Most of the stuff I get from Specto and don't deal with the commercials.

I ran away from the Israel everything when I first read some horror stories about what ticked off devs do. Ya gotta be careful. Better to not auto update but do it manually after you read in other forums if there have been probs. I learned the hard way bout 4 years ago.

[expatter]

I wanted to know if much of this is addressed in this thread

http://iptvtalk.net/showthread.php?2...lopment/page22

I managed to locate a copy of that EPG Grabber, Its is a lot of serious code. Been a long time, however, I managed to get the webgrabber created and my old one backed. I slapped mc2xml in the bin file and launched the batch file and back, it prompted for what type of pull I wanted and chose E for English, bam it running. still waiting...... I guess we will see what the output looks like. OK editing this for the update. shiver me timbers, Pys0ns go bat grabber apparently utilizes some very interesting techniques. It uses both webgrab+ AND mc2xml to pull and consolidate the data, some serious time swapping occurs and boom outputs an NFPFS file. PM me for a copy of this or look for it found it on GitHub. its working. I need to figure out how to change mod the channels, I just edited the *.ch file in mc2xml and will test.

Dang, that stuff seems like ages ago. If I remember correctly, Psyc0n scrapped webgrab due to its being soooooo slow. And messing around with dummy files and all is a PITA (IMO). Though it will give you the wherewithall to reverse engineer and learn the guts of what it takes to make a finished product. That's pretty much how I taught myself to design databases back in the day. Read, copy and modify to suit your own needs. After perusing a few of the pages in that thread, I would say - just stick with mc2xml. And reading all that stuff can make your eyes bleed, so be careful!

[Waylotul]

Amen, that is about the time that I decided to get this service for my son and I. He loves cartoons and I had to cut the cord when big cable began to bundle everything and hike up ala carte services. I run a Kodi M8s for him and a windows 10 w/ 128GB SSD w /8GB Ram box for whole house and use HDMI to split off to each TV. Mine can handle the 50MB file and probably more.

I see a lot of work on this method here and over at webgrabb+ from both Psyc0n and BlackBear199. Even some of the site INI files there are edited by the same dudes. I see most of the files have no returns in them so the code is smashed up. Hard to decipher it but could use some help. IN that thread Psyc0n said he doesn't want to post go2.bat and does not want people to be taught how to do their own. WOW>

Have you looked at it? Would you look at it?

[expatter]

Sorry, I have zero interest in dealing with webgrab since I do not and will not use it.

[martin934]

I've been plugging away at making my own chl and ren files and got a sub with SD. I'm working on plugging some empty channels. I would call myself an "advanced user". Not a programmer. No formal computer education. Using SQLiteSpy I was able to read the TV and EPD DB files from kodi and develop an excel spreadsheet with a channel list, the server channel numbers and stock categories assigned to each channel. I used the thread to figure out how the chl and ren files work. Figuring out where to source each channel has been the biggest pain for me. Since SD limits to 4 threads per day, I plan to try to use free services to plug some channel holes and see if I can create a full english channel xml. I don't even watch most of them, I just hate seeing blanks! I've pulled a bunch of different source xml's to find channels. Thank you expatter for all of your work and tutorial. It would have taken me considerably longer to put it together without your info. Viper8690's guide is great, but I am going to try to finish mine as a learning experience in case something happens along the way with that guide.

Thanks again to everyone that has contributed to this work!

[expatter]

I've been plugging away at making my own chl and ren files and got a sub with SD. I'm working on plugging some empty channels. I would call myself an "advanced user". Not a programmer. No formal computer education. Using SQLiteSpy I was able to read the TV and EPD DB files from kodi and develop an excel spreadsheet with a channel list, the server channel numbers and stock categories assigned to each channel. I used the thread to figure out how the chl and ren files work. Figuring out where to source each channel has been the biggest pain for me. Since SD limits to 4 threads per day, I plan to try to use free services to plug some channel holes and see if I can create a full english channel xml. I don't even watch most of them, I just hate seeing blanks! I've pulled a bunch of different source xml's to find channels. Thank you expatter for all of your work and tutorial. It would have taken me considerably longer to put it together without your info. Viper8690's guide is great, but I am going to try to finish mine as a learning experience in case something happens along the way with that guide.

Thanks again to everyone that has contributed to this work!

Just a quick FYI~with Schedules Direct you can have 4 lineups but you can make 6 changes per day. You can use the mc2xml --delete-lineups and when it starts to run the pull, do a control + break and stop the pull. Then you will have 2 more lineups you can try (well, 4 actually).

[martin934]

Thanks. I'm not sure I fully grasp that just yet, but I'll keep going over it. I'll try it and see if that helps me wrap my head around it. There are a few channels that aren't covered by my US, UK and Can pulls. But both you and Viper didn't pull those either, so maybe they are not attainable. Like C-span american history (c-span3).

[martin934]

Interesting. A station like "Press TV" is a 24-hour English language news and documentary network, affiliated with Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting. I really don't want a guide, as it is probably something I'll never watch. It would be nice to jog my memory of what it is as I scroll past it. Is it possible to add information so it continually appears in the guide as a description or in the actual time slot for that channel? I also found that Rev'n is an OTA station and has an affiliate in NY. I could create a ren and chl for it. I found C-span 3 from a cox cable provider in Providence RI. Knocking them off little by little, I may be able to fill many of the empty channels. The question is, with SD, how many sources can I pull from? Or should I use microsoft legacy for channels that I do not care that much about and save my SD threads for the others? Again, this is merely a fun exercise in trying create a complete guide rather than something of real importance. I appreciate everyone's time and patience with me. If I get it right, I'd be happy to share any files I have with the group.

[expatter]

Interesting. A station like "Press TV" is a 24-hour English language news and documentary network, affiliated with Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting. I really don't want a guide, as it is probably something I'll never watch. It would be nice to jog my memory of what it is as I scroll past it. Is it possible to add information so it continually appears in the guide as a description or in the actual time slot for that channel? I also found that Rev'n is an OTA station and has an affiliate in NY. I could create a ren and chl for it. I found C-span 3 from a cox cable provider in Providence RI. Knocking them off little by little, I may be able to fill many of the empty channels. The question is, with SD, how many sources can I pull from? Or should I use microsoft legacy for channels that I do not care that much about and save my SD threads for the others? Again, this is merely a fun exercise in trying create a complete guide rather than something of real importance. I appreciate everyone's time and patience with me. If I get it right, I'd be happy to share any files I have with the group.

At this point you are thinking this is a fun exercise and that's good. At some point you may have a different opinion on it. I am of the opinion that learning something new is a good thing, however my opinion of NFPS is that it is completely arbitrary and follows no logical rules. That's why I have turned off all but 180 channels and will probably whittle that down again since there are many more channels that I have never watched and in all likelihood, never will. To compound the issue is the fact that once you do have a guide and see what should be on and if you click on a channel and something completely different is streaming, you realize that it is in fact, a different channel than the name and logo indicates. There have been channels that I liked to watch that are gone and some channels that just do not work. So for me, this is an exercise in frustration. As such, I am glad that others are stepping up to fill the void. Some users will be appreciative but the vast majority will probably find something to fault no matter what.

To your point of how many sources you can pull from SD, I'm not certain. I've read different viewpoints at several forums in the past couple of years. My thought is that if you draw attention to yourself you will get screwed. I don't think this type of service is quite what they had in mind for end users. Just look what happens when things are publicized on youtube. They disappear fast. Nothing is certain in this game so best to keep that in mind. Here today, gone tomorrow with many. So I wouldn't take it too seriously. Rather just commend yourself on your own accomplishment. As far as sharing...it's nice to share, but once you start down that road people will begin to expect you to support your efforts rather than reward them. And that's where I have a problem with it. Just look at the tone of many posts on this one forum and see that for yourself. So let your conscience be your guide. After expectation comes demands. And this was the whole reason for my post about learning to do for yourself and having a semi-rewarding experience. You rely on only yourself and take solace in that.

To your question about the 'odd' channels - this was handled by using 'dummy' files which were other text files with the names as they appear in NFPS and a ren file that has a generic blurb about what streams on that channel i.e. 'local news and weather for xxxxxxx', etc. Is it worth the bother? Not to me and neither are the channels themselves. So the point here is that 'to each his own' and you simply cannot please everyone, so just please yourself. You said you don't like seeing blank spaces in the guide. My answer is to turn off the channel so it doesn't even appear in the pvr and that is no longer an issue. Do I want to see Indian channels or just about most of the international ones? Nope. So I simply hid them. Period.

I hope this helps you in your decision making process. Have some fun, think of it as a hobby as this service was initially pitched and then pat yourself on the back for whatever you accomplish.

Sorry for the cynical response. I don't mean to turn you off from your good intentions. At the end of the day, there is nothing wrong with a sense of accomplishment. Just be realistic in your expectations.

Cheers.