Hi all.
I'm stripping down and rewriting the Nine MSN tv_grab_au script (that I got from this list, posted in Nov 2004) mostly from scratch following the style/features of the other grab scripts which are already in the myth distribution, with the obvious goal of getting this script incorporated too.
As such, I'd like to hear any suggestions for features that people find lacking in the current version.
What I've got so far:
(*) Configuration code that automatically probes the NineMSN site for regions and services and queries the site for appropriate ids and channel lists. (tv_grab_au --configure)
(*) A channels file which is an initial attempt at following the ideas of RFC 2838, plus code that handles channels not found in the configuration file (hard to know what to do with those). Resulting channels are of the form abc2.abc.gov.au, sydney.nine.com.au etc, and the mapping can be seen using tv_grab_au --list-channels.
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2838.txt>
(*) Simplified parsing code for the guide and details pages, using the "industry-standard" HTML::TreeBuilder parsing code (in line with the existing myth tv grabbers). This should make it easier to adapt to any changes in HTML code on the listing site.
Here are the things I'm thinking of looking into now:
(*) People with Foxtel (or some other commercial TV service) presumably want both the free channels and the Foxtel channels downloaded, right? What are you doing now? Two versions of the script with different hard-coded configurations (one for free, one for Foxtel)?? If anyone cares about this, I'd propose incorporating a multiple source system into the script from the ground up.
(*) Parsing ourguide.com.au for the channels that it lists. It doesn't appear to have any commercial services listed, and it is missing the digital-only channels (e.g., ABC2, SBS News). It does, however, have enough information to rip titles, start/end times, and short descriptions for many programs right from the guide page.
(*) Configuration parameters and/or a probabilistic/adaptive method of finding programs whose descriptions don't change often enough to query the details page every bloody time (e.g., news programs, morning programs, etc).
Obviously some of these features are designed to lower the load on Nine MSN (or whichever site we need to switch to down the track).
*NON-FUNCTIONING* experimental code may be perused for those interested -- I'll have a working version shortly and post a message when that is done.
<http://immir.com/tv_grab_au> the grabber <http://immir.com/channels> channels configuration file <http://immir.com/tv_grab_au.conf> example config file
Any comments?
Cheers, Michael. _______________________________________________ mythtv-users mailing list [email protected] http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
