[mythtv-users] New Freeview EPG option

[Nick Rout]

I am starting a new thread about this.

Many of you will be aware that Sky has issued C&D letters to a number
of people that have been providing EPG info for Sky and Freeview
channels. The "take downs" that have resulted have also inconvenienced
Freeview users.

The good news for freeview users is that there is a new listing source
at http://nzepg.org/ - I picked this up from a thread at geekzone.
This seems to be provided by some kind soul, who probably wishes to
remain nameless for obvious reasons (even though IMHO they are not
breaking any law, and provide no access to any Sky data anyway. By the
way that's not legal advice either...).

The other good news is that you can still use tv_grab_nz-py by
updating the download url to this new source. To change the url in
your existing script just look at the following lines from my amended
script:

SOURCES = (
#       'http://epg.pvr.geek.nz/epg/listings-all.xml.gz',
        'http://nzepg.org/freeview.xml.gz',
)

You'll see I commented out the old line and inserted the new url.

This listing only contains freeview channel data, and if your legacy
setup refers to, eg tv3.sky.co.nz you'll have to:

(a) change that to tv3.freeviewnz.tv - best place to do this is in
mythweb (settings|tv|channel info)

(b) change the setting in ~mythtv/.mythtv/Freeview.xmltv (where mythtv
is the user running the backend and Freeview is your source name.) The
file is in the format:

channel=tv3-plus1.freeviewnz.tv
channel=tv3.freeviewnz.tv
channel!ctv3.sky.co.nz
channel!tv3.sky.co.nz
...etc

Where the ! separator means we don't use that channel and the = means
the opposite. In fact most of the sky.co.nz lines in that file will
now be redundant, I had the sky listings for legacy reasons and I have
been meaning to set them to the freeview ones for a while anyway.

For people using Sky via a STB, you may have to get access to the Sky
EIT data via, eg, epgsnoop.