XMLTV
Beyond TV XMLTV Importer import XMLTV data into Beyond TV. You'll need first to download XMLTV data, by using an XMLTV grabber.
XMLTV is an Open Source project with a simple and effective principle. A utility (a grabber) extract television programs from a Web site and save these data in XML format. These XML data can then be used in a software that will display a program guide.
You can learn more about XMLTV here: http://membled.com/work/apps/xmltv
You can download XMLTV grabber here: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=39046
Installation
Step 1: Install Beyond TV 3.4 (or newer) and run the Beyond TV Setup Wizard. Verify that Beyond TV can display Live TV fine at the end of the setup Wizard.
Note : you doesn't need to configure your channels in Beyond TV as the importer will replace your channels.
If you are using a version of Beyond TV older than 3.5, then disable automatic updates of program guide. To do it: open the Beyond TV Web Admin utility (http://localhost:8129) and choose "Settings" then "Snapstream.Net Settings" and for the heading "Allow Automatic Updates" choose "Disable" in the dropdown list.
Step 2: Obtain your XMLTV data by using a XMLTV grabber.
Step 3: Install our importer. If you don't have yet download our XMLTV Importer. Launch the installation software and follow the instruction of the setup wizard. Then launch our importer, you should obtain the following Import Wizard:
If you do not want to see the wizard again but instead want to use the classical interface, check "don't show this wizard again". Click on the "Next >" button to continue.
In this step of the wizard enter the path of your XMLTV file (or click the folder button to browse for it) and eventually type your Beyond TV password (if you have set one up in Beyond TV Web Admin), then click on the "Next >" button.
Here you can specif the location of your XMLTV Grabber as well as the parameters used in the command line (if any). This way when you will automatically launch the Importer, it will launch your XMLTV grabber so as it can download your XMLTV file, click on the "Next >" button.
Specify here your time zone settings. That is the numbers of hours to add or substract from the hours in your XMLTV file to have universal time. You can also specify if your zone use daylight saving time. The importer should have detected the right parameters for you already.
To help you find the right settings, the wizard displays the air date of a show, adjust settings until the air date is right for the show, then click on the "Next >" button.
The importer needs to know how to make the difference between two episodes of the same series, to do so three detection methods are proposed, make a choice between the three. The wizard will suggest the most appropriate method based on your XMLTV file.
If after importing your data, you see in the program guide that two episodes are the same when they should not be, try to change the detection method (the safer is based on airing date).
The "shows without original air date are reruns" should be checked if your XMLTV file does contains only "<premiere>" nodes for identifying first run shows and that shows wihtout this node are always reruns. If you don't know, don't check this box.
Specify the keywords that best describes movies, series, sports and news in your XMLTV file and specify the prefix the importer will use for episode numbering, click on the "Next >" button.
Create the mapping between the channels in your XMLTV file and Beyond TV. To do so, click on the "Edit Channels" button, and the channel editor will be opened as on the figure below:
In this editor you will create your lineups. A lineup is a collection of channels that are on the same video source (the tuner, the composite input).
This editor displays the list of the channels that the importer found in your XMLTV file. For each channel listed in the editor you must provide:
- The name of the channel as it will be displayed in Beyond TV (mostly in Web Admin)
- The call sign of the channel as it will be displayed in Beyond TV (mostly in fullscreen or windowed mode)
- The channel number, that is the number used to tune the channel
- If you receive HD channels in the USA (ATSC) then you can enter the major and minor channel number (the previous one is the physical). Leave this two numbers empty if you are not in the USA.
- The lineup number you choose the channel to be.
If you want you can add additional channels to your lineups, to do so you have to specify:
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A channel ID (similar to those of your XMLTV File)
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A channel name and call-sign
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The channel number
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The lineup you want to put the new channel
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If the channel is the same as an existing one (copying all programs)
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A time offset (in hours) to create "+1" channels
Additonal channels are useful if you want to add a channel that you don't have in your XMLTV file, or if you want to duplicate a channel on another lineup.
If you duplicate a channel to be present on multiple lineups and want to Beyond TV treats these channels as the same one (to see only one channel in the guide), all these duplicated channels must have the same ID and channel number.
New : If you use BTV version 3.5 or newer, you can directly assign your XMLTV lineups to your Beyond TV video sources. To do so, click on the "Video Source" tab in the channel editor and choose a lineup for each video source (this way you'll not have to use Beyond TV Web Admin).
You can also edit the categories found in your XMLTV file. The purpose of the Category Editor is to reduce the numbers of categories. The Editor will already contains the recommended top level categories (Movie, Series, Sport, News etc...) you cannot delete them, but you can ignore them (except Movies and Series) and create some new top level categories.
When you edit a category you can specify :
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The Name : this is the internal name it is only used by the Importer, you cannot change it for predefined categories. It is not used outside of the Importer.
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The Display Name : this is the name that will be displayed in Beyond TV.
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The keywords : you can type here many keywords separated by a comma, whenever the Importer found the corresponding keyword in one of your XMLTV categories, it will then match it to the category your are editing.
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The excluding keywords : those are the keywords (coma separated list), that will prevent a XMLTV category to be matched to the category your are editing when it match the preceding keywords list
After editing the keywords and excluding keywords list click on the "Test" button to view the result of the filter. This way you can tune your keywords filter easily.
You will notice that you cannot edit the keywords lists for the "Other" category. This is because this category is designed to receive all the XMLTV categories that doesn't match any of your categories. You can as well click on the "Test" button to view all the XMLTV categories that cannot be classified. This will help you to create the missing categories and adjust the keywords lists of your categories.
You can add / remove sub categories, this way you can create any number of levels. But don't forget that Beyond TV only understand a category and a sub category, so it is advisable that you limit your tree to two level : main category and sub category. Also to be more efficient try to use the same sub category names for Movies and Series (and other main category if you can).
Note: After each Import, the Importer will log Information event in the Windows Event Viewer that list precisely the categories that couldn't be mapped to one your categories. There are tow events : one for categories that cannot be matched to a top level categories and one for categories that can be matched to a top level category but cannot be matched to a sub category.
When all channels and categories are done, click on the "Update" button and the lineups and channel mappings will be saved, you will the return to the wizard, then click on the "Next >" button.
If you have made a donation for the Importer, you can schedule here automated update of Beyond TV, when you have chosen the right schedule, click on the "Next >" button.
Note: you still have to schedule your XMLTV grabber to run automatically (before the task you schedule here for automating the program guide update into Beyond TV)
During the importation the progress bars will show you the state of the guide update process; you should even see the name of the channel being imported. Our importer is currently converting your XMLTV files in three new XML files (or more if you have more than one lineup) that will be saved in the Beyond TV configuration folder (in folder "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\SnapStream\Beyond TV\3rdPartyGuideData").
At the end of the conversion, our importer will ask Beyond TV to load these new XML files that contains program data and your line-up.
At the end of the importation the message "Import done" will be displayed above the overall progress bar. You can the close the importer; your data are imported in Beyond TV. You can check that Beyond TV has loaded program data by looking in the Beyond TV logs; you should see entries like these in the logs:
Click on the "Next >" button.
If you use a version of Beyond TV older than 3.5, you must then tell Beyond TV that it should use your new program data. To do so, open Beyond TV Web Admin (http://localhost:8129 ), then choose "Settings", then "Audio and Video Inputs"
Edit the video source you use to watch TV and click on the "Edit Settings" link, in the "Tuning Settings" heading, choose as lineup "Snapstream.Net Lineup" in the drop down list (or one of your lineup created in the editor if you use Beyond TV 3.5), as in the picture below:
With Beyond TV 3.5 or newer, you do not have to do this if you already done it in the Importer (Channel Editor). You can always use Web Admin to see if all was set up correctly.
If you have some problems, you can read the FAQ.