Anyone tried to run this using XMLTV for free to air TV? I can’t seem to assign a TitanTV EPG channel to any of my “TV” type channels. Has anyone got this working in Australia?

*update: see here

No, nobody has been able to use this with DVB in Australia that I know of.

I tried to help someone with that this morning, and foud out that the Channels Lineup… option in Programs window > Channels tab > dented wheel menu is disabled when DVB is chosen as Service:. I don’t know why. I asked a tech support guy I talked with at Elgato, and I didn’t receive a response yet.

My guess is that EyeTV first check if the chosen Guide in Preferences allow the selected service, and if not, that menu item is disabled. I think that’s the case because if your change Service: to Antenna, then the menu item is available, and you can download the EPG data for the Antenna channels. Anyone ready to offer his Mac with EyeTV/DVB for development, I’d need VNC/Apple Remote Desktop access, and admin privileges.

Don’t know any way around that yet. Can’t test myself either, since my EyeTV doesn’t have that option in the Service: dropbox; I use a Miglia EvolutionTV which supports only Cable NTSC and Antenna NTSC.

If I get more info about this, or find a way to fix this, I’ll post a news item on the website, so make sure to subscribe to the RSS feed if you want to be notified.

- Guillaume

I have fought with this for the last day. The issue is definitely that EyeTV disables the Channel Lineup button for DVB-T-type services. This is probably because internally it doesn’t have a value to send to TitanTV for DVB-T.

If you are lucky enough to have one of the hybrid analog/digital EyeTV’s (or a second EyeTV compatible box that runs analog) you can set that up. Once that is plugged in, EyeTV will allow you to (manually or auto-tune) add channels to that device by changing the Service drop down on the Channels page. On the Analog page you can select Channel lineup.

From there, you can then follow the EyeTV installation, ie, enter a fake Zip, select the provider, and then for each channel in EyeTV, change the guide data column to TitanTV and select the channel from the list.

Then you can change the service back to the DVB-T channels and do the same on those, now that channels are listed.

Then to download the guide data, go into Preferences and click the Update Now button.

I found that EyeTV would pretend to update the guide data but not actually make a connection (probably the same bit of code) if you don’t have any TitanTV channels on the analog device ticked, or if the analog device isn’t plugged in when the update is going on.

A couple of points about the XMLTV guide data – make sure that your source is putting out data with explicit time zones in it, otherwise your channels will look wrong. Also the EPG Proxy expects the guide data to have channel elements in it, if these are missing nothing will work. Also you might run up against a bug if your channel names don’t start with numbers. (I’ve hacked up my version – might try and clean up this for you Guillaume)

Something else about EyeTV – it seems so far that if you select the same channel from the TitanTV list for more than one channel, EyeTV only shows data for the first channel. That is, if you select ‘Seven’ for 7 Digital, and 7 Digital 1, 2, 3, only 7 Digital will appear on the program guide (this is mainly a problem for the HD channels).

Let me know if you want anything else, but the simple rule is that EyeTV won’t use TitanTV if you only have DVB-T (note that setting it to US DVB also doesn’t help).

There is supposed to be a version of EyeTV supporting Australia soon-ish, but that doesn’t help everyone here.

Joshua

If you guys could send me your /Library/Preferences/com.elgato.eyetv.* files, maybe I can find a way to activate the EPG in your EyeTV without using the EyeTV UI… Please also include a print-out of what you get when you run this command in Terminal: defaults read com.elgato.eyetv

Zip into one file, and send them on http://pub.abuserz.com

- Guillaume

Not sure how helpful this would be, but if you run this command in Terminal: defaults write com.elgato.eyetv “show all tv systems” -bool yes Then restart EyeTV, then your Service dropbox will contain all the available choices (not just the ones your hardware supports).

- Guillaume

Someone reminded me by email: can you guys who have the Channels Lineup… option disabled try to select another guide in the Preferences (say tvtv) and see if the Channels Lineup… option is then enabled ? If so, then the solution would be to proxy tvtv format too.

- Guillaume

Re: show all tv systems

That doesn’t help. With my analog tuner unplugged, this still only gives DVB-T options (which don’t enable the Channel Lineup option). What it achieves is disabling the service filter based on country (ie, DVB-T NTSC is available under Australia, whereas normally I have to select United States, etc).

Re: changing guide source

This also didn’t seem to make a difference for any of the guide settings. Reading EyeTV’s user guide seems to suggest that channel lineup is a TitanTV-specific option (ie, you only get one list of channels from the other guide sources.

I strongly expect that tvtv, etc would work since the European countries are all DVB-T, however that’s another proprietary source to emulate.

the preferences file the command output

Joshua

If tvtv would work (not really work, but if it at least downloads something for real from tvtv servers), then re-formating their XML isn’t a big deal. I already re-format Zap2It and XMLTV format, one more should be easy enough.

What I would need is a packet trace (using Ethereal for example) of the HTTP requests and responses exchanged between your Mac and tvtv servers when the guide is setup and downloaded.

If anyone can provide such a trace, that would be great. I’d need a trace that would start before selecting tvtv in preferences, and end when the EPG data is completely downloaded. You’d need a valid tvtv account to receive valid data from tvtv.

- Guillaume

I just saw this on EyeTV website:

Support for DVB and ATSC EPG’s Do you live outside the tvtv or TitanTV service area and use digital TV? No problem, EyeTV 2 will import TV listings from the DVB or ATSC guides into the built-in Program Guide.

Do any of you know what they are talking about ? ie how does EyeTV 2 import TV listings from the DVB guides ?

- Guillaume

Reading EyeTV’s user guide seems to suggest that channel lineup is a TitanTV-specific option (ie, you only get one list of channels from the other guide sources.

Channel lineup download by ZIP Code (US only): Assign your channels to their TV stations and networks.

- Guillaume

Re: DVB and ATSC EPGs

Yes I know what that’s about (and it works for a few channels depending upon location).

Elgato is referring to the optional part of the digital TV spec that allows for program guide information to be transmitted alongside the audio and video as part of the broadcast MPEG-2 transport stream received by the tuner.

This is called Event Information Table (EIT) insertion, and generally needs to be done by the original broadcaster, though I believe that a second channel can also offer the guide data for another channel (so-called ‘foreign’ mode from memory).

This would require writing a plugin using EyeTV’s SDK instead of the web server approach and modifying a channel’s stream. Alternatively (I researched this for a short time) you’d need to make a prohibitively expensive device which creates an extra channel and put the guide data on that and broadcast that into EyeTV.

I have only one channel here that provides such guide data (I believe it is fully implemented in UK under Freeview though) and it works, however it requires you to frequently watch the channel that has the guide data before the program guide gets updated (that is, EyeTV won’t automatically collect the data every day, though I imagine you could Applescript it to do so, or simply set up a 1-minute daily schedule on each channel…)

Anyone clarify how EyeTV behaves in the UK (or does everyone just enjoy EyeTV’s free tvtv subscription)?

There you go.

Joshua

Re: EyeTV EPG Proxy & using “TVTV” format for Australia:

Surely an existing subscriber can provide a TVTV/EyeTV ethereal packet capture!

Please. I can’t believe this has sat for nearly 4 weeks! This offer from Guillaume is very generous. The situation in Australia for EyeTV EPG is terrible. We have to work together to fix this.

The only current option is IceTV for $146/year and using a Widget which uses applescript to update the schedule in EyeTV (even if EyeTV integration ever does come it is still quite expensive). DVB-T EPG only works on one channel on one the Government run TV stations in Sydney only!

EyeTV Proxy is very exciting. I’ll also attempt sign-up and try the capture tonight. I also want to note that tvguide.org.au provides an xmltv compliant feed.

SO, how hard will it be to get EyeTV EPG Proxy configured to use the xmltv feed from tvguide.org.au ?

Anyone ready to offer his Mac with EyeTV/DVB for development, I’d need VNC/Apple Remote Desktop access, and admin privileges.

I would be happy to give you the access you need.

- Chris

Chris, I use the tvguide.org.au feed however needing the analog tuner to update the guide. In IceTV’s defence they are competitive with other tv guide options (of which they are few) in Australia, but I too wouldn’t consider them until it was fully integrated with EyeTV. To my knowledge this is also Elgato’s fault. If you can ebay yourself a cheap EyeTV analog tuner, or swap your card for a hybrid model you’ll be laughing.

I’m not really willing to put my details into tvtv and reverse engineer them at this point.

Joshua,

How about summarising the steps for tvguide.org.au setup in EyeTV EPG Proxy ?

Having a little trouble with the Ethereal install – will have another go tomorrow night.

- Chris

1. tvtv traffic is SSL encrypted, so no way to sniff and fake that;
2. Even using the defaults write com.elgato.eyetv “show all tv systems” -bool yes command, and choosing US as country, you can’t download the channels lineup from TitanTV; my guess is that the Service locks that option, not the country;
3. I tried changing other defaults values for EyeTV, and none of them made the Channels Lineup… option available.

Looks like digital-only users are out of luck, until (if ever!) Elgato changes EyeTV to remove that limitation… which I doubt they will.

- Guillaume

Chris, re: tvguide.org.au

Setting it up for EEP is exactly the same as any XMLTV installation (so follow Guillaume’s instructions there on the main site). Get yourself a grabber like tv_grab_au_reg and follow its instructions and tell it to download into EEP’s cache folder. (I’m actually using a custom grabber because some of my channels need massaging—it’s not 100% yet but let me know if it would be worthwhile).

I haven’t automated anything yet so every couple of days I just hit the commands in Terminal and manually update EyeTV.

Will this work with EyeTV Hybrid (DVB-T/PAL) or will I need EyeTV 250?

I live in Denmark.

Joshua’s suggestion above should work with any tuner that has an analog input.

- Guillaume

Thanks – I have just activated the guide using Hauppauge WinTV-HVR (Pal BG)

This appears to have been broken by EyeTV 2.4. I haven’t had time to check this properly yet, so this is just a heads up that something might need fixing (though my first impression is that EyeTV now won’t accept TitanTV channels for DVB signals :-\). I’ll have a closer look on the weekend if someone hasn’t sorted it out by then.

Cheers, Felix

Hi,

Problem description: “Channel Lineup” is not available, as discussed above. I seem to get somewhere when I change the EPG from DVB to TitanTV. It asks me for my Zip code, but always responds with “No Lineup Available”.

From the httpd error logs I get: PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library ’/usr/local/php5/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20050922/oci8’ – (null) in Unknown on line 0 PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library ’/usr/local/php5/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20050922/pdo_oci’ – (null) in Unknown on line 0

I have the following setup: Location: South Australia Mac Mini Intel v10.4.10 EyeTV v2.4.1 EEP v0.9.8 EPG is XMLTV from OzTiVo as I have a TiVo as well.

Does anyone have any ideas?

I am willing to let Guillaume have admin access if that will help.

Try the troubleshooting steps detailed here

- Guillaume

Please repost your last message. I had to refresh the DB from a backup after an upgrade of beast went awry. Thanks.

- Guillaume

HI Guillaume,

Sorry to hear about the problems with your forum. It was acting very weird.

I talked to the developer of tv_grab_au_reg. He said the channel listing is optional in the XMLTV spec, and he has chosen not to include it because it can cause problems with some systems.

He did give me some hints on forcing a list of channels, which I have done.

I have repeated test 3 and I now get some broken channel information. I get the correct number of channels, but they are all the same channel. Only the station_id being different.

http://pub.abuserz.com/test_3_results.xml

Here is the file that I am using as the XMLTV source. I draw your attention to the channel listing near the top.

http://pub.abuserz.com/xmltv-A_00001.xml

All the best,

- mike