Thread: Web based EPG and scheduler

Hi all,

Been coding on a web scheduler application - aTVScheduler, that lets you schedule TV-shows for recording with MyTheatre among other DVB programs. I'm quite satisfied with the result and thought that maybe it could be of use for some of you aswell...

It's a Java standalone program, it uses XMLTV data for input and the internal windows scheduler to handle start/stop of the DVB software.



Please take a look at server.logoff.nu/atv for more info. All feedback appreciated

Regards
H

I'll check this out as soon as I have the time, from following the links this looks like a its based on some earlier work called jTV, if so a big thankyou. I have been using this program with Mytheatre for the last 9 months with no problems. It makes setting up a recording schedule very easy.
It took a little bit of effort to set up, I only had one unresolved issue which was that I had to go into Mytheatre scheduler and manual tick on ever program the option to wake the computer up out of standby for a recording to start automatically, minor issue that I can live with and may not even be with jTV.
It takes about 10 minutes to set up a weeks schedule of recording (around 20 shows) after that the computer just wakes up records the shows and goes back into standby. I know this sounds like a basic Media center function but I've yet to find a Media center that works well with our true FTA satellites most had special functions added by hackers or couldn't funtion as reliably as MT on our satellites.

It may be a week or so but I will let you know how the new version works out.

Hi, thanks for the reply!

Yes it´s true that the application was called jTV earlier but i changed
the name to 'aTV Scheduler' when jTV was already used for a similar application.

But take the new version for a spin and lets see what you think, there's been quite some changes to it the past months.

/h

Hi Hasse Sorry for the delay in replying I have been away a while and are only just getting caught up. I did get a chance to try the new aTVScheduler and like it a lot, the timeline option is particularly nice, is the an option anywhere to extend the grid to 6 hours?
I'm still having the same issue I mentioned above to wake the computer from standby, not that it's a big deal, I'm just curious if it's something I can fix in my configuration or a limitation of aTV

Right now I'm having another issue which is nothing to do with aTV, my source of xmltv files has gone down, I was using a zap2it
grabber

to download a custom true FTA listing like
this

.
None of the sources of xmltv data including schedule direct have the option to included enough line ups from different areas so this was the only way to easily do it, hopefully it well get fixed soon.
I'm working on a solution using
mc2xm

l it works but I have to manually combine the files, if I can get a one button option to work it will be a better solution.

Hi again, glad you liked it!
Regarding the 'TimeLine' it's still a bit of a beta function, it's not 100 percent exact in it's representation of start/stop times, but still fairly good. But i will look deeper into that.
I made it a 3 hours span initially but you gave me the idea to perhaps make it an user option...when i get the time
But you did notice the arrows in the upper right corner and that allows scroll one hour at the time?

About the option to make the computer wake from standby for scheduled items I first thought it was a piece of cake to fix. But it was not
It's unfortunately not an option when scheduled items are created with schtasks.exe (strange though when this options exist when it's done from within the Scheduled Items in the Control Panel). I still haven't find a good way to circumvent this....any ideas are of course welcome!

/h

I finally figured out how to get mc2xml working as a source of xmltv data for our satellites, if anyone else needs the data to set it up let me know and I will get the files to you.

Hausse, I noticed those arrows to move the time line along 1 hour if you get time to change the grid maybe you could consider making the arrows move the grid along for the time period of the grid and not just 1 hour at a time or making it an option.

Sorry figuring out the scheduled tasks is bit beyond me, quite a bit beyond........
I did notice something that might be relevant, when I schedule a recording it appears in the list of scheduled recordings but as soon as i go into Mytheatre and click on the option to wake from standby and apply, the scheduled recording listed in aTV is removed from the list (after a screen refresh).
After I have enabled the wake from standby option in MyTheatre for all the recordings scheduled, often about 20 for a week, no scheduled recording are shown in aTV at all.
Not a big issue, just something to be aware of when scheduling recordings in this way.

Thanks again for a very useful piece of software.

Hasse
did the demo look's great. going start building my htpc next week. sick of playing with my az box.
sure will give your software a spin when i can.
thanks for sharing

Hi again,
Well it sound a bit strange that your changes to the scheduled task make them disappear from aTV Scheduler. The only reason for this is that they're renamed (not prefixed with 'aTV_' anymore) or simply that they have been deleted.

I'm not sure how or what you do in MyTheatre to accomplish this but it seems rather complicated and time consuming. So I started to look a bit deeper into the problem.

I've made a small program that *perhaps* will solve the problem. It scans through the aTV tasks created and alters them to have the 'Wake from Standby' flag enabled. Atleast it looks like that when I check the tasks via Windows (only checked XP at this point...)

But I have not tested that it actually works...

The program is called EnableWakeFromStandby.exe and by default it looks for
tasks in c:\Windows\Tasks that are prefixed with 'aTV_' and alters them all.

If the above path is not the correct one it can be overridden by giving another
path as an argument when the program is started. The easiest way to run it is
simply copy it to the toolbox directory in aTV and run it from the Web gui I guess.

you can download it from server.logoff.nu/atv/ewfs.zip

Hopefully it will work and suite your needs.

madmadworld; Thanks, you're welcome!

EDIT
Made a test and probably the case is that the Task Scheduler does not recognize the changed jobs directly.
So to accomplish this wrap the EnableWakeFromStandby.exe in an .bat file that stops/starts the service.

This file could contain something like this;

@echo off

echo Invoking EnableWakeFromStandby.exe %1 ^<BR^>
net stop "Task Scheduler"
c:\atv\bin\EnableWakeFromStandby.exe %1
net start "Task Scheduler"

exit 0

/hasse

I've been playing around with it a bit more and you are correct as soon as Mytheatre "wake by task"is enabled from Mytheatre (Mytheatre-right click-actions-open scheduler-Wake by Task)) the complete task is renamed from aTV to Mytheatre hence the reason for it disappearing in aTV.

Your new utility nearly fixes the issue, it looks like there are still 2 issues.

1) I think it also needs to enable the "run only if logged on" flag, in windows scheduled tasks as well as the "wake the computer to run this task" flag that it currently enables.

I noticed that when Mytheatre makes a change to a schedule task to "wake by task" these are the 2 extra flags it enables in windows scheduled tasks

I've been Googling the subject and apparently XP is very reluctant to run any scheduled task without a password enabled. There are various hacks and work arounds suggested but so far I have been unable to get any to work


I thought by manually selected "run only if logged on" it would solve the issue but this is where things start to get weird

2) After 1) above to get the PC to wake I also have to go into schedules tasks, select the schedules tab where the time for the start of the recording is shown and select any item in the window to cause the apply button to light up it is not necessary to change anything although changing something and then reversing the change is an easy way of getting the apply button to light up.
After clicking on the apply button the PC will now successfully wake from standby and record as scheduled



Just noticed your edit to the post, I will give it a try if I can figure it out, I'm working at the limit of my very limited knowledge here