EPG discussion on Enigma2 STB's

[iBoston]

Okay, i got it. The EPG data that was in the DW signal @ 103w was amazingly detailed. The detail that comes from the online EPG sites stunk. We watch a lot of documentaries, and need the detailed EPG guide to know if it interests us.

DW doesn't have an online EPG that i could find other then whats on in the next couple hours. However they did have a PDF for August and September. The PDF had the FULL detail... But, how do i get that into the satellite receiver? I modified my program to download the PDF's, i found an open source program that converts PDF to TEXT. So, my program downloads the PDF's, then runs the open source program to convert to TEXT, and then my program continues deciphering the TEXT into my data field and create an XMLTV format which could then be imported into the Receiver.

Wala... I got it.... Now, the problem, i cannot reliably stream without internet break-ups. I will miss the DW signal for a LONG time.

 

[cyberham]

Here Starlink is being promoted at a one time $142 cost for hardware and a monthly fee of $100 in local currency. Could you justify for your home? I don't think they have limits so video streaming might work out OK.

 

[iBoston]

Here Starlink is being promoted at a one time $142 cost for hardware and a monthly fee of $100 in local currency. Could you justify for your home? I don't think they have limits so video streaming might work out OK.

That's twice what im paying now. We have a teenager that eats up what ever we have.. Ill wait a few years more until he moves out, in which then ill see whats up. I went ahead and kicked down his share of internet speed. We allotted him 3/4 of our bandwidth. I put it more at 50/50. I just did that yesterday, so we shall see if that resolves/helps the DW streaming issue.

 

[iBoston]

I wanted to add a couple updates. First off, my EPG for DW has been really stable. I haven't had any issues since i originally coded it. I wasn't sure if the PDF to TEXT was going to be stable. Its been going solid for over a 18 months.

Just because i can, i added EPG data for PressTV and iFilm. I grab the EPG information directly from PressTV and Ifilm and import it into the STB. Its all automated and integrated. They were both in json format which made it easy peezy to program.

 

[iBoston]

Anyone found EPG for WPT on 97ku. The one listed at Home | WatchWPT matches the online stream, but doesn't match whats on the KU service. Example, right now, it shows "Battle of the Champions" which is what is streaming, but on KU 97w, it its PlayWPT.com (FoxWoods Resort)

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[iBoston]

Taiwan Plus on KU updated their website. They completely changed how the EPG is fetched. I saw it as a challenge, as it was completely different then anything i ran into before. Before, it was a json result from an http api call, that returned sequential EPG information. I could fetch the data sequentially not having to save away or organize the json.

The new format, they embed the json in the actual html page. So, no longer a separate URL for api, as its embedded. First off, i had to strip out just the embedded json. That part was easy, but then i realized the information was broken into data subsets. Each json field is a index of lists, and then different fields referenced an index # to the lists. Before i could tackle this, i actually had to write a function that decodes the entire json into an indexed array so to speak. That was what was new and i had to program. That took me 4 hours or so. Now i have a fully indexed json in a memory spaced array.

Here is an example (very basic and very show friendly) of how they jumbled the json data.
0 : Taiwan Talks
1: random
2:random
3:Taiwan talks is a bla bla show
4: Episode 78
5:February 26th 3:30pm
6:Schedule,Title:0,Desc:3,AirTime:5,Episode:4

So, i had index it into memory by the index as shown above, 0-6. I then had to search for a schedule entry and then read the airtime value which is a # which told me where the actual airtime is located ie. index 5, and then i would reference index 5 to get the actual date/time and the same held true to fetch the show title, and the show description etc. This json didn't just have 6 index items, it literally had over 7,000 index items that much had nothing to do with anything i cared about. Talk about burying data. Also, the data was jumbled and in nonsensical order.

I had to make sure my code was flawless, as the index #'s are not specified, they are the number of lists, and if i didn't decode it perfectly, my # of lists wouldn't match, which would mean that when i was told where to fetch certain information from, if my index #'s didn't match i would grab the wrong information.

In the end, My KungFu was strong. I have restored my EPG for Tawain Plus.