[mythtv-users] Converting from Data Direct to tv_grab_zz_sdjson

[Tom Dexter]

On 1/13/19, Tom Dexter <digitalaudiorock at gmail.com> wrote:
> Looking at the recent post about Schedules Direct's Data Direct
> support getting dropped in 31, I decided I'd like to switch sooner
> than later, despite the fact that I'm actually still running 29.1.
> I've used the internal Schedules Direct source forever. My recording
> rules are very straight forward...mostly just record all showings,
> sometimes with the "this channel" filter.
>
> The tv_grab_zz_sdjson_sqlite is clearly more than I need and more than
> I want to deal with, so I'm converting to the tv_grab_zz_sdjson
> grabber. I was confused at first because I hadn't realized that the
> lineups you create on the schedulesdirect.org web site are only for
> Data Direct and have nothing to do with the JSON grabbers, which use
> lineups configured in xmltv itself. I have xmltv-0.5.70 installed
> under Gentoo with the proper USE flag to get the tv_grab_zz_sdjson.
> I've experimented with configuring that, and have a pretty good idea
> how that all works but had a few questions.
>
> First of all, my channels table of course currently have the xmltvid
> format as used by Data Direct, so I'm assuming that in during the
> configuration I want to choose the channel id format option 2. Just
> wanted to make sure on that.
>
> Second, as far as the channel=<id> and channel!<id> lines in the
> configuration, is is it necessary to have a line for every id in the
> lineup, or is there a default behavior (either including the channel
> or excluding it) is no line exists for the id at all? I'll probably
> have lines for everything, but was curious on that one.
>
> Third, I currently have a mythfilldatabase argument of "--dd-grab-all"
> configured. Once I use mythtv-setup to change to the Schedules Direct
> JSON API source, I'm assuming I don't want that. What I'm not clear on
> is whether or not I need any other options...or if mythfilldatabase
> will just work as-is.
>
> Last, I just wanted to verify that the overall functionality of
> mythfilldatabase using tv_grab_zz_sdjson is mostly the same (aside
> from getting more days of listings etc). Most notably, that all it
> does is schedule recordings, and that it doesn't alter other stuff
> like channels for example, or anything else I wouldn't expect.
>
> Thanks in advance!
> Tom
>

After making this switch today I'm replying to my own email in case it
might help someone else here. In (partial) answer to the questions I
had:

I used the channel id format 2, which ends up in the configuration file as:

channel-id-format=mythtv

...which is just the numeric xmltvid as my channels already have. This
all worked fine.

In regard to my second question...since I had lines in the config for
all channels in the lineup, I have no idea as to  whether there's an
default behavior if an xmltvid is missing there.

As to my last question, that's an area where the wiki isn't very clear
as to the differences in behavior between tv_grab_zz_sdjson_sqlite and
the tv_grab_zz_sdjson that i chose to use:

https://www.mythtv.org/wiki/XMLTV#Schedules_Direct_Setup

The section on tv_grab_zz_sdjson_sqlite there says "Your channel names
and icons will be updated to match the values supplied by schedules
direct", but the section regarding tv_grab_zz_sdjson really doesn't
say one way or the other.

Here's what happened in my case:

1. It did in fact download channel icons based on the URLs reported
from schedules direct to  /home/mythtv/.mythtv/channels and updated
the icon column of the channel table accordingly.

2. It did NOT change any channel names or callsigns on the channel
table at all, despite the fact that many of them clearly have
different names as compared to the display-names reported from
schedules direct.

3. I had one case where an xmltvid was corrected from an incorrect I
had originally. I'm unclear as to how that actually happened.

So all in all it went pretty well. Two of the channel icons that
replaced ones I had where black logos on a transparent background,
which ended up just being all blank with the mythbuntu theme. I
overwrote those two png files with the old ones I had. Other than that
everything looks good, and it's pretty cool having icons for a lot of
channels that had none before.

Tom