Description

WebEPG is a Electronic Program Guide grabbing application. There are several other programs that do what WebEPG does, but not as easily and not as well integrated with MediaPortal.

WebEPG advantages

One of the big problems of a general EPG grabbing application, like XMLTV, in MediaPortal is that channel names don't match the names used in MediaPortal, causing the TV guide data not to be imported properly. This is what WebEPG aims to address. WebEPG uses the channels created by MediaPortal and with the user's input, maps that to the channel from the TV Guide site. It doesn't require the user to change any channel names.

When downloading EPG data from DVB, you only get data for the next 48 hours. With online TV Guide grabbers like WebEPG you may get up to 14 days!

Configuration

Activation

To enable or disable this plugin navigate to the Plugins section. Make sure you tick the WebEPG checkbox in the right pane or else the plugin will not be activated.

General

Expand the Plugins node and select the WebEPG node in the tree, you should see the following screen:

First configure the Global Settings:

Grab Days

You can define the number of days you want to download program data for by specify this number in the Grab Days box. Be aware that you can not download more days than your data sources provide (you can see this amount in the Guide Days box for each channel), and that specifying more days means an increase in the amount of time it takes to download your whole guide. Enter the number of days to grab each time WebEPG runs.

Write programs to

Grabbed EPG data can be written to one of the following locations:

TV Server Database

This is the default option. Data will be written directly to the TV Server database and be available immediately in the TV Guide in MediaPortal. Under normal circumstances this is the option you want to select.

tvguide.xml file configured in XmtTv Importer Plugin

Some times you may need a tvguide.xml file for use with some other component. If you have configured XmlTv Importer Plugin to monitor and import a tvguide.xml file, this option allows you to output grabbed EPG data to that file for further processing.

tvguide.xml in the following folder

This is similar to the previous choice but allows you to manually specify the folder where tvguide.xml should be stored. Note that this folder should contain a copy of the xmltv.dtd file.

Delete old programs before import (Recommended!)

If you select this option, existing programs in the database will be removed prior to importing grabbed EPG data. This is useful if for example some EPG data has changed since the last grab. If not selected, no data will be grabbed for programs already in the database. This option only makes sense if writing EPG data directly to the TV Server Database.

Note: if all your programs are not removed, use the Refresh DVB EPG data on the Manual Control option in TV-Server Configuration.

Auto Mapping

After the above basic configuration you may want to try to automatically map TV Server channels to grabbers known to WebEPG. To do this, select your country in the Country dropdown list, and then click the Auto Map button. The Auto Map function will first import TV Server's TV and Radio channels and then will try to find a grabber for each imported channel based on its display name. When several data sources are found for a channel, the first one will be used. Note that if the list in TV or Radio Mappings page is not empty, Auto Map will not import the channels but instead try to auto-map channels already in that list.

If auto-mapping fails to properly map you channels, or you have many channels but don't want to map all of them, you can proceed with manual mapping.

Grabber status report

After you have successfully mapped your channels you may save your configuration by pressing the Save button. To test your configuration you may press the Grab now! button and monitor the grabbing progress on the left.

Manual Mapping

There are two configuration pages that allow you to manually map channels to WebEPG grabbers: one for TV and one for Radio channels. Only TV Mappings is described below but Radio Mapping is identical. Click on TV Mappings or Radio Mappings tab to bring up the following screen. Note that in this description the TV Mapping*s part is used, the *Radio Mappings part is mostly the same, just for radio.

To manually map channels, first you have to import them from TV Server database. To do so just hit the Import button. If you do not want to import all of your channels, you may select a channel group in the Group dropdown list before pressing Import. You can repeat this process to import as many channel group as you need. If you want to remove some channels from the list, select them and then press the Remove button.

• If you have already selected your country from the dropdown list in the General page, you can press the Auto Map button at any time to try to automatically map the channels in the list. Existing channel mappings will not be changed, only unmapped channels will be considered for auto-mapping.
• To manually assign data sources to a channel, select the channel to configure and click the ... (browse) button behind the Channel textbox on the right side of the window. A Selection dialog will show up now. Fold out the Web Sites item, and then fold out your country item.
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    Choose one of the available data sources, and select the channel from this list. If the channel is not available in the list, it may be available in one of the other data sources, or else underneath one of the other countries, if it is a foreign channel. If you still cannot find your channel listed, you may need to edit or create a new Site Configuration/Grabber File. See customizing WebEPG for details. Click the Select button to assign the data source to the channel. You do not need to close the selection window yet. Just move it to the side a bit, and click one of the other channels in the underlying TV Mappings window. Then repeat the previous procedure to assign a data source to this channel. After you've assigned all channels, you can Close the window.
• Some channels show more than one TV station, switching halfway the day from one station to the other. To configure these channels, click the Multiple (Merged) tab to bring up the screen below. Each row in the grid represent one section of the day.
  To start a new section click the ... (browse) button in the last row (which is marked with a *) to assign a data source. But now you also need to enter a starting and an ending time for the part of the day on which this station shows. To do this move to the right and type the Start and End time in the corresponding columns. Then move to another row to store you changes. Note: there is currently a bug in WebEPG which drops the first item that starts exactly at the switching time. To work around this bug, just set the starting time one minute earlier. If the switch happens as 19:00, just enter 18:59 as the starting time. You don't have to do this for the ending time. Repeat this process for each TV station that shows on this channel. To change the data source for a section, just click the ... button in the respective row. To change the Start or End time just select it and type the new time. To remove one or more sections, select the rows and press Delete on your keyboard.
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Schedule

Normally you want WebEPG to regularly download EPG data so that your TV Guide is always up to date. If you are using Power Scheduler plugin and have configured a schedule for grabbing EPG, WebEPG will follow that schedule. There are however situations where you are either not using Power Scheduler or you may not want to configure a schedule there. In this case you can configure when WebEPG downloads EPG data in the Schedule tab:

Here you can choose at which days of the week EPG is downloaded and at which time.

Customizing WebEPG

WebEPG can be customized by editing existing site configuration (to add new channels, remove old ones, get extra data, etc), or by creating new configuration files for sites not currently listed.

Troubleshooting

When assigning data source to channels in WebEPG configuration, the data source does not list your channel

Not every data source has information on all channels. Try another data source, or even another country if it is a foreign channel. If you still cannot find your channel listed, you may need to edit or create a new Site Configuration/Grabber File. See customizing WebEPG.

No program data is showing up

1. Make sure that you pressed Save on the General tab before grabbing started.
2. Select TV or Radio Mapping tab to confirm that the correct grabber is mapped to your channels.
3. If you're using Write programs to: tvguide.xml file configured in XmtTv Importer Plugin or Write programs to: tvguide.xml in the following folder, make sure that the path to the tvguide.xml file is correct in MediaPortal ConfigurationTV ServerXMLTV[ > > |XmlTv].
4. Set Write programs to: tvguide.xml in the following folder and start a new grab. There should be a tvguide.xml file created in the folder you select. Open the file and look for channels and programs. If programs are missing you might have a broken grabber.

Manually added channels don't show up in the program guide

Only channels whose name exactly matches a channel in your TV setup will show up in the program guide.

Some programs are missing on merged channels

This is a known bug; set the starting time of the station switch one minute earlier.

No program data available after midnight on merged channels

No solution is known.

Other

• Check tv.log inside the MediaPortal log files folder for details.
• Consult the WebEPG forum.

Going further

• To beef up your EPG, why not add some nice TV channel logos?
• Try customizing WebEPG