[mythtv-users] UK xmltv/tv_grab_uk_rt woes - argh!

[Stephen Tait]

At 17:02 04/05/2004 +0100, you wrote:
>I don't think your problem is RT blocking access - I'm updating my tv
>listings as I write this with no problems. Sorry if that rubs salt in the
>wound ;-) but just so you don't go down the wrong track.

Damnit, and I was looking for a nice excuse to wear my new-found haXx0ring 
hat too!


>And yes Myth will auto tune to your channel of choice. I use NTL cable
>though so I've no idea what the frequencies you needs are. I used to use the
>terrestrial channels and it was a nightmare trying to fine tune the signal.
>Sadly Myth won't let you enter an exact frequency (as far as I know).

Does that mean you grab input through the S-Video-In (assuming you use a 
PVR-250 or similar)? I'm probably going to have to figure this out as some 
point when I hook this thing up to the video (I have a load of VHS tapes 
that I want to convert into digital format). Even if you can't fine tune 
the frequency, being able to enter the right channel numbers would be a 
good start! When I play using the plain jane channel numbers through 
mPlayer, the picture is fine, especially considering I'm using a cheapo 
internal aerial until the machine is in a fit state to live under the TV, 
so I prolly won't need to do too much fine tuner (besides, I live within 
sight of the throbbing 1.21 jiggawatts, Great Scott! of Crystal Palace).


>If you post your xmltv output (what it is that suggests to you that a
>user/pass is needed in particular) then I might be able to help some more.

The error message I saw spewed out of the CLI was as follows:

 > finding channels:       could not get channels page
 >
http://www.radiotimes.com/PersonalisationServlet?event=3&channelType=1&includeUnchosenChannels=true&jspLocation=/jsp/select_channels.jsp&rtError=/jsp/error.jsp&jspError=/jsp/register.jsp&next_page=tv_select
 >
 > - aborting

Now if I put my 'Know About As Much About Web Coding As Your Average 
FrontPage Programmer' hat on, that looks like a "You must register, 
damnit!" error - but as Adam says, his is working fine.

I posted this error in response to Paul Woodward's reply, but only just 
noticed that it was a personal one, not a mailing list one. He's suggested 
using the bleb tv grabber, and symlinking it to tv grab rt (I therefore 
presume that the MythTV internal tv grabber names are hard coded...?). Text 
of his/my mail is repeated here for similar people struggling to get this 
thing in line:

 > I did see that [bleb] a few times when googling about for uk tv grabbing 
stuff,
 > but since it hadn't made it into XMLTV I short-temperedly assumed it wasn't
 > working just yet.

(Re: the error page URL)

 > I'm assuming this means I have to a) register with T to look at the pages
 > and b) somehow tell XMLTV that I want it to log in with this particular
 > username and password. I've had a look through the tv_grab code, but I'm no
 > PERL guru and can't figure out where the hell to put this information.
 > There was also a guy using the Windows version in Showshifter who reported
 > the exact same error on the 1st May. I'm assuming T have changed something
 > on their site in lieu of all the XMLTV hits.
 >
 > bleb tv sounds like the best option at the moment. I've found the site
 > (http://homepage.ntlworld.com/zmower/tv_grab_uk_bleb.html), I take it all
 > one needs to do is download the grab app and chmod it 700, right? It'll
 > have to wait until I'm back in front of a CRT. I mean, *another* CRT.
 >
 > As an aside, does anyone else think that each and every Myth installation
 > using a TV grabber is a bit wasteful? Couldn't some kindly .org, volunteer
 > or paid-for company just run the tv grab themselves and give everyone a
 > nice selection of regionalised tarballs to download once a week? Then the
 > TV listings companies would be far more tolerant cos it wouldn't cost them
 > anything in terms of bandwidth. It could all be done from a centralised (or
 > P2P) network.
 >
 > <Typical Brit/Commie Socialist Rant>Besides, the beeb is a public
 > institution. I don't really see *why* they should be allowed to restrict
 > access to listings which we, the license payers, pay for them to
 > make.</Typical Brit/Commie Socialist Rant>
 >
 > Phew! Oh well, the end appears to be nigh. I have to say, getting
 > Gentoo/ivtv/Myth et al up and running has been the most educational
 > experience of my life!
 >
 > Any further comments welcomed!

And Pauls reply:

>I did a personal reply to you, so you might want to send it to the list if you
>want responses from your questions below. As for bleb, it really is as easy as
>it says on the page you found. The listings aren't perfect - the 
>categorisation
>isn't great, but it's better than nothing. I also sim-linked the bleb grabber
>to tv_grab_uk. I modified the bleb script to grab 7 days of data, a bit
>wasteful, maybe I'll make it more intelligent sometime.
>
>Paul

As is probably obvious, categorisation is the *least* of my worries right 
now! I'm going to delete all the reply stuff below, all these chevrons are 
getting on my nerves.


>Good luck,
>
>Adam

Many thanks to both Adam and Paul - I've come further  along with this over 
the long weekend than I thought was possible, and am highly ashamed to 
admit I was tempted to install 2k on this thing, but then It All Just 
Worked (aside from XMLTV), and I was astonished by the coolness of Myth. 
I'll have another crack at it tonight and see what I can come up with. And 
start putting together the rest of my UK howto, which I'll post at some time.

P.S. as an (unimportant) aside, I was wondering if the automated IMDB 
lookup thing in MythVideo (was meant to work...? I've got about 200 dvd 
rips I've made (yes, really!) and can't face entering the number manually. 
I did that once for my own PHP/MySQL frontend for my movie collection 
(which was lost in a catastrophic cfdisk error - d'oh!) and couldn't face 
doing it again. Or am I just pressing the wrong button in MythVideo?

Again, many thanks.