EPG improvements

[pneumatic]

Hello

Not sure if I'm in the right place for this, but I'd like to recommend some improvements to the EPG.

1. A method to increase the default recording padding, mainly due to the TV networks constantly changing program times or running late. Or is there a command line utility that can do this already?

2. Get more than 3 days of EPG data. Currently, if a show ends and the user wants to set up a season pass for it, they often can't, due to the next showing being more than 3 days away. I read a comment on whirlpool which stated a recent software update resulted in more guide data days, so maybe OzTivo is already starting to roll that out - is this true?

3. Scrape EPG data from the free to air EPG, which seems to be of better quality than where OzTivo is sourcing it from. Or are there legal issues with doing this? Even if it's not for profit?

Thank you

[DavidKeegel]

1. If I recall correctly, you can change default recording padding in TiVo > Networks and Settings. Or have a look at endpadplus.

2. There is EPG data until today+4 days (so as I type this, that is up to the end of Friday 23rd). I think "recent software update" is a mistake, but it did change from today+3 days to today+4 days I think in Jan 2018. There is no need to do anything at the tivo end to take advantage of that (except perhaps connecting to tivo service early in the day, as long as it is after about 3am AEDT).

I am aware of two issues with extending the number of days:
(A) it will increase the size of the slices (for example, it will take longer to connect to tivo service and download the guide, and cause more network traffic).
(B) we have no automated way to update the EPG data after it has been uploaded to OzTiVo. We do have a manual way to update EPG data when upstream EPG is updated between today+4 and today+2. But this requires volunteers to look after doing those updates on per city/region basis. If we uploaded say today+7 instead of today+4, for people who are not in one of the few regions where EPG data is manually updated, there is more chance of the EPG data becoming out of date.

Both of those issues are potentially fixable. For (A) we can reduce the size of slices by breaking up slices (currently all Australian channels go into a single lineup for series 3, we could change this to have say per-state lineups). For (B) we could get more volunteers, or try to work out a way to automate updates.

3. Can you be more specific about the source you are talking about? (Feel free to send me a URL privately.) Is the "better quality" because of issue (B) - that we are getting EPG data 4 days in advance and mostly not updating EPG afterwards?

[pneumatic]

Or have a look at endpadplus.

Seems to be exactly what I was after, thanks :)

I'm having trouble finding documentation for it though. From what I can tell it should already be installed with Series 3's, and it seems I just need to edit the endpad.config file to set a custom padding? Is that all I need to do?


Can you be more specific about the source you are talking about? (Feel free to send me a URL privately.) Is the "better quality" because of issue (B) - that we are getting EPG data 4 days in advance and mostly not updating EPG afterwards?

I thought it might be possible to scrape it from one of the myriad TV guide websites, eg. freeview.com.au/tv-guide, but I'm guessing they won't like people doing that, or maybe it's not possible for technical reasons.

The quality issue is more to do with the program titles and descriptions than the number of EPG days, which I only had a problem with regards to not being able to set season passes when there are no upcoming showings, eg. after the show has ended and trying to set a season pass.

[DavidKeegel]

Seems to be exactly what I was after, thanks :)

I'm having trouble finding documentation for it though. From what I can tell it should already be installed with Series 3's, and it seems I just need to edit the endpad.config file to set a custom padding? Is that all I need to do?


I have not used endpadplus (or endpad) myself.
If you can work bootpage, then add "endpadplus," into the list of hacks and reboot the tivo.

For an example of working bootpage, if bootpage -p /dev/hda (print bootpage) says:
root=/dev/hda7 dsscon=true console=1,115200 hacks=telnet,ssh,serial upgradesoftware=false
then run
bootpage -P "root=/dev/hda7 dsscon=true console=1,115200 hacks=telnet,ssh,serial,endpadplus upgradesoftware=false" /dev/hda

Warning: using bootpage -P is not for the faint of heart - if you get it wrong your tivo could end up not booting when you restart it in future. Save the output of bootpage -p before hand, just in case.

You can see the invocation of endpadplus in /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit.author (which has the start and end number of minutes). One of my tivos does not have a /hack/endpadplus directory, but both have /hack/endpadplus-1.2.2b.zip so you could unzip if you don't already have /hack/endpadplus. Then you will have a /hack/endpadplus/README.txt with basic documentation.

[pneumatic]

Thank you very much David.