[mythtv-users] Radio Times XMLTV failing

[Dawson, Guy]

> [mailto:mythtv-users-bounces at mythtv.org] On Behalf Of 
> stan at stanandliz.net
> Sent: 03 October 2006 11:42
> To: Discussion about mythtv
> Subject: Re: [mythtv-users] Radio Times XMLTV failing
> 
> 
> Not sure if this is related, but as of last night, 
> mythfilldatabase is failing miserably. Perhaps RadioTimes has 
> changed something? Is anyone else getting this problem?
> 
> 
> > On Monday 02 October 2006 23:20, malcolm torrent wrote:
> >> I'd like to echo Simon's thanks to Neil for the fix.
> >> I tried to diagnose this myself (unsuccessfully) so if 
> possible I'd 
> >> be interested in a short explanation as to how the problem was 
> >> approached, resolved and why this fix works.
> >> Mal.
> >
> > OK. The problem is corruption in the datafile 1961.dat, which 
> > corresponds to the schedules for ITV4 (running 
> mythfilldatabase from 
> > the command line shows the Unicode wide character \u0000 is not 
> > acceptable within an XML document).
> > So I wget'ed the offending URL and looked at the file with a binary 
> > editor (bvi), searched for the sequence of null characters.
> >
> > First thing I thought was to stop the script dying (comment out the 
> > "croak"
> > instruction in the XMLTV code), but then it just died with a 
> > "unexpected end-of-file" error. So I had to replace the 
> offending text 
> > with something else, so I stuck in that line in tv_grab_uk_rt which 
> > substitutes \u0000 with the text ".." (ie, something 
> harmless). Now, 
> > all of that said, there may very well be a legitimate use of a 
> > sequence of two nulls in Unicode (eg, for 3 or
> > 4 byte wide characters), so this kludge can't stay in - it replaces 
> > the nulls without regard for their context in the file.
> >
> > In the end, I suspect it's just a bit of file corruption 
> from Radio Times.
> > It's not happening anywhere else in the data feed, and 
> it'll disappear 
> > from the schedules on Saturday, and we can say goodbye to ugly 
> > kludges.
> >
> > A longer term fix would be for XMLTV to replace offending Unicode 
> > characters with harmless ones, just to be a bit more robust when 
> > dealing with partially corrupted data. I may have a look at 
> this over 
> > the weekend.
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> > Neil

I also had problems last night.  The tv_grab_uk_rt would not get the
channel list from radiotimes.com.  Using wget DID work but only after a
whole bunch of tries.  Looked like the web site was breaking down some
how.

I will be trying again tonight.

I do wonder if all this has anything to do with some changes that may be
going on behind-the-scenes in the world of listings.  Although these
centre on DVB EPG data,  there may be some impact on other publishers
like RadioTimes.com.  See
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/228542

Guy Dawson

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