[mythtv-users] Radio Times XML Feed

[John Veness]

On 08/10/2014 18:30, Paul Harrison wrote:
> The RT feed will be depreciated on 1st November and shutdown in 
> January 2015. There is still a possibility the radio times grabber 
> will be updated to use the new API so the switch would be seemless but 
> until then to get data for the new channels you have to use the atlas 
> grabber.
>
> I switched  recently to use the Atlas grabber which seems to be 
> working OK.
>
> These are few (possibly incomplete) notes I made that hopefully will 
> help anyone to try the new grabber.
>
> 1. get a key - click 'get your free api key' on 
> http://atlas.metabroadcast.com/#apiExplorer (you need a twitter, 
> google or github login)
> 2. create app once logged in - the web site often fails so be patient 
> pressing back often works
> 3. get latest stable xmltv 0.5.65 or later
> 4. start mythtv-setup
> 5. Select a Video Source and change the grabber to 'UK - Atlas 
> (atla.metabroadcast.com) (xmltv)'
> 6. Press the configure button and follow the instructions - this will 
> ask for your key and what region/channels you want and then create the 
> config file the grabber will use to get the correct channels for the 
> source
> 7. Some of the id's may need changing in the channel editor for 
> example all the itv1
>
> bbc2.bbc.co.uk         -> england.bbc2.bbc.co.uk // or use one of the 
> other regions scotland/wales etc
> granada.itv1.itv.co.uk -> granada.itv1.itv.com   // same is true for 
> all the itv1 regions
>
> 8. If you want to test you can remove all the existing programs from 
> the program table by running this query in mysql
>
> truncate program;
>
> 9. Now run mythfilldatabase to grab the new data
>
> 10. mythfilldatabase will appear to fail with an error when using the 
> early versions of the Atlas grabber.
> That's because the grabber return 1 to indicate an error because it 
> can't find a supplemental file 
> tv_grab_uk_atlas/tv_grab_uk_atlas.user.map.conf. Later versions ignore 
> the error.
>
> 11. the atlas grabber doesn't support "allatonce" like the old radio 
> times grabber so to get similar behaviour you need to add the 
> '--refresh 0-99' to mythfilldatabase
>
> Paul H.

Thanks for the notes. I have not yet made the change from RT to Atlas 
and have some questions:

1, Does duplicate matching work OK? Or will I find previous episodes 
that I've already watched being re-recorded? I guess this comes down to 
whether the program IDs match, but I've never really understood where 
those IDs come from.

2, What about radio programs - I understand the Atlas grabber supports 
radio stations too, which I currently use EIT to populate. If I move 
radio stations to Atlas, will duplicate matching work for those too?

3, I have a hand-crafted configuration file for the RT grabber, with 
lines like:

channel south.bbc1.bbc.co.uk
channel south.bbc2.bbc.co.uk

with just the channels I want. Can I just copy the same file for the 
Atlas grabber? I thought I read somewhere that the Atlas grabber uses 
completely different channel IDs, four digit numbers I think. I don't 
mind setting up a new config file if necessary, just wondering.

Cheers,

John

-- 
John Veness, MythTV user, UK, DVB-T