[mythtv-users] Aus XMLTV grabber

[William Uther]

Alo,

> Thanks for that. I've created my config file as follows:
>
> global channels, authinfo
> channels = (('ABC
> NSW','nsw.abc.gov.au'),('ABC2','abc2.abc.gov.au'),('CHANNEL NINE
> SYDNEY','sydney.nine.com.au'),('SBS SYDNEY','sydney.sbs.com.au'),('SBS
> NEWS','news.sbs.com.au'),('CHANNEL SEVEN
> SYDNEY','sydney.seven.com.au'),('CHANNEL TEN
> SYDNEY','sydney.ten.com.au'))
> authinfo.add_password(realm, 'minnie.tuhs.org', 'myname', 'mypass')

You need to set your username and password.  They'll get reset each  
time you use the --configure option.  I agree that it isn't the most  
helpful error message.  Maybe I'll get around to catching that  
exception and putting something more useful there sometime...

> Will, if you're reading this, we all really appreciate you creating
> this. I hope you don't mind me making a couple of further suggestions:
>
> 1) As most of us in MythTV land are using the 9MSN grabber it would be
> good if the config file could support the "abc2.abc.gov.au" style
> channel IDs as it would a) make for easier migration and b) allow
> people to flick between the 2 scripts if one site is down for some
> reason.

That's in the latest version.

> 2) I'm wondering whther it might be easier to allow a paranter to be
> passed to the script of a time offset, or a value in the config file,
> which would then set the correct time in the XML output without
> worrying about what version of mythfilldatabase you're running or what
> your offset is in mythsetup. The 9MSN grabber handles this via the
> config file and it works really well.

Rather than having a bug in mythfilldatabase and then an ugly hack in  
my script to work around it, I'd rather fix mythfilldatabase... which  
is what I did.  It's just that the fix isn't in the released version  
of myth yet.  Once 0.19 is out I'll probably deprecate the --force- 
explicit-timezone option - I don't trust the hack.

As for setting a timezone conversion, myth already has that option -  
see below.

> I'm unsure how to get the timezone piece working, though. No matter
> what OII try my listings are 10 hours behind.

The XMLTV data contains the time of the program.  In the case of the  
tvguide.org.au data, the time is correct, but specified in the UTC  
timezone.

> This is what I've tried:
>
> 1) Running tv_grab_au_tuhs with --force-explicit-timezone. This
> results in +0000 entries in the xml file.  Do I need to set a TZ
> environment variable or something?

yup - the "--force-explicit-timezone" option just adds the "+0000"  
entries to make it explicit that the data is in the UTC timezone.   
You still need to tell myth to convert that to the local timezone.   
In mythtv-setup, in the 'general settings' section, there is an  
option to set the timezone for the EPG.  If you have that set to  
'None' then mythtv ignores the timezone information in the XMLTV  
file, and treats the timestamps as local.  That will make things 10  
hours off for people in the Australian eastern standard timezone.   
You want to set an explicit timezone there, or choose 'Auto' if your  
linux box has its timezone set correctly.

> It seems that the only way to get the times right in the EPG is for
> the start & end times for the emtries for programs in the xml file to
> be in the local time zone rather than UTC

If you have myth set up to ignore timezone information (the 'None'  
setting in mythtv-setup), then yes, it ignores it :)

> which I thought was the
> purpose of --force-explicit-timezone but for some reason it's not
> working on my machine.

No - the purpose of that hack is to make myth recognise the timezone  
of the XMLTV data.  Without the "--force-explicit-timezone" hack, or  
the fix in myth, the setting in mythtv-setup is always interpreted as  
'None'.

> Any ideas? Once I get this bit working I think I'm there!

Once you set your myth timezone to 'Auto', and either use a fixed  
version of mythfilldatabase or use the "--force-explicit-timezone"  
option to the script, everything should work.

Be well,

Will              :-}