2016-07-05, 17:38
Hey, I wrote a pretty neat add-on which fetches tumbnails for PVR entries. It fills the "sIconPath" of the entries via direct db access. This is obviously an ugly hack which can cause problems, but there is no other way to achive it. I have lots of ideas which would improve the user experience of the whole PVR section, but this needs support from the core to work properly.
If there would be a way to manipulate the DB, a lot of features could be implemented. Some examples for German TV broadcasters:
Thumbnails and Fanart support
TV broadcasters supply a nice web EPG with thumbnails for every show. It would be possible to scrape them once a day (2-4 get requests should suffice). Fanart could be supplied like this too from the VOD platforms of the broadcasters. This screenshot is a proof of concept: http://i.imgur.com/3JRocX3.png
Web/add-on connectivity
EPG entries could provide a direct access to VOD sources like trailers. German broadcasters host around 70% of the TV program online, so that could be linked directly from the EPG. I have an add-on which enables the user to do that, but involves a suboptimal context menu - direct support would be nice. Screenshots: http://imgur.com/t8Q8yU7, http://imgur.com/e6zlbhc, http://imgur.com/M5YY7Gt
Improving OTA data
The EPG data from the TV stations here in germany is pretty basic. The possibilities of the DVB SI spec are not even remotely used. With access to the DB, it would be possible to extract some metadata. We could flag movies and series; add episode numbers, part numbers, release year, movie director and other informations. This would make skin views like 'list all movies' possible and improves the search for more episodes.
Adding more EPG information
The websites of the major broadcasters feature additional informations for shows/individual episodes. This could be incoperated into the EPG to provide more information. External sources like an IMDB link to a previous marked movie would be possible.
To implement those features, I need access to the EPG database. A methode like "PVR.GetBroadcasts" where it is possible to submit data would be nice. The DB would need some more columns (e.g. for the add-on path), which would have to show up as listitem properties.
I think that this would be a very interesting feature for skinners and add-on devs.
If there would be a way to manipulate the DB, a lot of features could be implemented. Some examples for German TV broadcasters:
Thumbnails and Fanart support
TV broadcasters supply a nice web EPG with thumbnails for every show. It would be possible to scrape them once a day (2-4 get requests should suffice). Fanart could be supplied like this too from the VOD platforms of the broadcasters. This screenshot is a proof of concept: http://i.imgur.com/3JRocX3.png
Web/add-on connectivity
EPG entries could provide a direct access to VOD sources like trailers. German broadcasters host around 70% of the TV program online, so that could be linked directly from the EPG. I have an add-on which enables the user to do that, but involves a suboptimal context menu - direct support would be nice. Screenshots: http://imgur.com/t8Q8yU7, http://imgur.com/e6zlbhc, http://imgur.com/M5YY7Gt
Improving OTA data
The EPG data from the TV stations here in germany is pretty basic. The possibilities of the DVB SI spec are not even remotely used. With access to the DB, it would be possible to extract some metadata. We could flag movies and series; add episode numbers, part numbers, release year, movie director and other informations. This would make skin views like 'list all movies' possible and improves the search for more episodes.
Adding more EPG information
The websites of the major broadcasters feature additional informations for shows/individual episodes. This could be incoperated into the EPG to provide more information. External sources like an IMDB link to a previous marked movie would be possible.
To implement those features, I need access to the EPG database. A methode like "PVR.GetBroadcasts" where it is possible to submit data would be nice. The DB would need some more columns (e.g. for the add-on path), which would have to show up as listitem properties.
I think that this would be a very interesting feature for skinners and add-on devs.