Re: tv_grab_uk_rt users: An important update :(

First of all thanks to the xmltv community fo providing my EPG needs for the
last couple of years. I've been using the Atlas grabber with NextPVR for
quite a while and was affected by the service "clarification". I
contemplated rolling my own solution by scripting the xmltv utilties to
scatter grab from Atlas and re-build the monolithic honking great big xml
file that NPVR likes to ingest, but in the end all the corner cases and
error detection was just too much. There has been a thread running on the
NPVR forums about this:

http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php?58173-Any-alternative-to-Atlas-Meta
broadcast-for-UK-EPG

Someone from SD came on and was very helpful; sufficiently so that I took a
free of charge trial account on SD and used the JSON service. I was able to
side by side the Atlas feed with the SD JSON feed for a while... 

> I have no problem paying a modest subscription, but can someone please
post a current EPG example from Schedules Direct for a
> UK freeview programme ?
>  - to be useful we need additional metadata that xmltv so usefully
provided.
>
> Otherwise we could be reverting to the one-line EPG that broadcasters
transmit, which would be like going back to a post-office
 > supplied phone in the unheated hall.

There might be issues with redistributing whole swathes of EPG data.
"rkulagow" on that forum gave us an example of a single programme JSON
return. It's probably OK to repeat that here...

{
    "programID": "EP012616430181",
    "resourceID": "189669",
    "titles": [
        {
            "title120": "Top Gear"
        }
    ],
    "descriptions": {
        "description100": [
            {
                "descriptionLanguage": "en-GB",
                "description": "Richard attacks the test track in a
remarkable concept car from Mazda, and Jay Kay guest stars."
            }
        ],
        "description1000": [
            {
                "descriptionLanguage": "en-GB",
                "description": "Jeremy, Richard and James take on their
rivals from the German equivalent of \"Top Gear\" and, in doing so, face
their toughest challenge yet - not mentioning the war. Plus, James drives
some exceedingly strange Japanese sports people in an equally strange
Japanese car and Richard attacks the test track in a remarkable concept car
from Mazda."
            }
        ]
    },
    "originalAirDate": "2008-07-27",
    "genres": [
        "Auto",
        "Entertainment"
    ],
    "metadata": [
        {
            "Gracenote": {
                "season": 11,
                "episode": 6
            }
        }
    ],
    "contentRating": [
        {
            "body": "Australian Classification Board",
            "code": "PG"
        },
        {
            "body": "USA Parental Rating",
            "code": "TVPG"
        }
    ],
    "cast": [
        {
            "billingOrder": "01",
            "role": "Guest Star",
            "nameId": "79008",
            "personId": "79008",
            "name": "Jay Kay"
        },
        {
            "billingOrder": "02",
            "role": "Host",
            "nameId": "554977",
            "personId": "533947",
            "name": "Jeremy Clarkson"
        },
        {
            "billingOrder": "03",
            "role": "Host",
            "nameId": "554978",
            "personId": "533948",
            "name": "Richard Hammond"
        },
        {
            "billingOrder": "04",
            "role": "Host",
            "nameId": "406324",
            "personId": "397449",
            "name": "James May"
        },
        {
            "billingOrder": "05",
            "role": "Guest Star",
            "nameId": "884435",
            "personId": "618541",
            "name": "The Stig"
        }
    ],
    "crew": [
        {
            "billingOrder": "01",
            "role": "Director",
            "nameId": "613403",
            "personId": "588873",
            "name": "Brian Klein"
        },
        {
            "billingOrder": "02",
            "role": "Executive Producer",
            "nameId": "613404",
            "personId": "588874",
            "name": "Andy Wilman"
        }
    ],
    "entityType": "Episode",
    "showType": "Series",
    "hasImageArtwork": true,
    "md5": "0CPoFeKFw3HSA3gTXjrgeg"
}

I took the $25/year subscription. My own experience to date has been good.
Perhaps the programme descriptions are a bit shorter than Radio Times, but
(IMHO) some of those RT descriptions were rather rambling and did not lend
themselves to 10 foot wide EPG on home cinema style use. Some series and
episodes have different numbers - the major ones are OK, but where there is
some doubt as to what were seasons and what were specials, then numbering
can be a bit "out" e.g. BBC "Horizon" - but then again many of the different
sources of episode data disagree on this so what is new! Look on that NPVR
thread above for more information from a few end-users who have compared UK
guides on Atlas and on SD to see what might be missing/different.

Of particular concern to some users is that recurring serial dramas (soaps)
like Eastenders do not have an SD episode number. The programme subtitle
(that subservient to the main title) does have text like "Episode 5000" and
I was able to get NPVR to rename recordings to include a sub-title when no
S/E data was available and NPVR seems quite smart at avoiding duplicates in
series using S/E, so I was happy. Others in the community less so.

I don't have anything to do with SD, just a reasonably happy user, but I
encourage you to take a free subscription and try the service. Use one of
the (two that I know of) SD-JSON to XMLTV converter/grabbers and do a side
by side comparison with Atlas.

But bear in mind if you choose to go with Atlas that my reading of the most
recent e-mail is that you have 3 months to use Atlas/Metabroadcast as a
developer before migrating to a paid for (and huge number of multi-user)
license with likely high cost once your "application you are developing"
hits market. That doesn't really sit well alongside the open software
movement. So SD with (by my experience) good customer support, run as a
charity at $25/year looks good to me.

If there is a huge clamour, I'll go back on the NPVR board, catch
"rkulagow"'s attention (he/she was very responsive and helpful) and see if
he/she will provide the mailing list with a larger sample. Given permission
I could have a go with a SD-JSON grabber and post a sample of XML myself... 

D




------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mobile security can be enabling, not merely restricting. Employees who
bring their own devices (BYOD) to work are irked by the imposition of MDM
restrictions. Mobile Device Manager Plus allows you to control only the
apps on BYO-devices by containerizing them, leaving personal data untouched!
https://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/304595813;131938128;j