TOOLS, TINKERINGS & CODE
Being an avid user of MythTV and slowly converting everyone I know over to the idea, TV Guide data is invaluable
There are several options for XMLTV Guide data availible, all have their own drawbacks and problems. Everything from legal issues, to reliability, to ‘did it ever work right?’
Let me tell you about The Australian Community-based TV guide
I’m a lazy chap, and they’ve got the perfect intro on site, so I’m going to quote it!
“The Australian Community-driven TV Guide was created so that personal video recorders (PVRs) in Australia can obtain electronic program guide (EPG) data. Currently, the TV Guide provides data in XMLTV format and in TiVo slice format.”
The guide survives on valuable contributions of time and effort by it’s members. I always felt guilty that I couldn’t offer more time (I tried once and made a fair mess, so I gave it a miss).
That all changed recently. I emailed Warren and enquired about hosting a mirror for the guide. It was quite a coincidence that the previous day he had written a script to provide facilities to use/store/cache/proxy data on cache sites.
A few hours later, (+4 hours for the DNS round robin to catch up) I’m up and running providing a cached supply of data from the main site.
There are currently two caching mirrors for the xmlguide data from tvguide.org.au and we’re feeling a touch under-utilized so feel free to use them.
Tomorrow I’ll re-post the scripts for MythTV I posted in the TVGuide Wiki here on the site for easy access.
Don’t forget to chip in if you’re using it (even if you’re not, feel free (c: )!