[azrael17]

Alright guys, I've spent countless hours working through this, but I finally got it to work correctly. I'm posting this information for anyone else who runs into the same problems I had since the responses I got here were.... let's just say, unhelpful....

Over the Air EPG DATA AND PTVL

If you are like me your PVR backend pulls in the channels as names that greatly differ from your EPG data retrieval tool. I use MC2XML.

Throughout these posts you will read that you should change your xmltv.xml file to match the channel names listed in PTVL, DO NOT DO THIS. It's pointless and the wrong way to go about it.


Whatever your PVR backend is, mine is NEXT PVR, open it and go to the settings where you can change channel names. This is where you want to change your channel names in step 3.
Do NOT listen to the advice here and try to change it in settings2.xml, that is pointless since you might want to re-autotune at some point thus wiping your settings2.xml and hard work out unless you do.

Now, finding the channel names is the part that is sort of a pain but I found an easy way to do it since some of them differ greatly than how they show up in NEXT PVR.

1. Open your xmltv.xml file that was generated from MC2XML and look at the each channel entry. Those are all of the OTA channels available in your general area. Depending on your reception, some might not show up in your actual PVR.
Begin with the first channel and copy the name that appears in there. For example, mine was KMSPDT (a Fox affiliate station). Now, you need to find this station's tv listing in your web browser. The site I used was http://www.zap2it.com/tvlistings

2. Find this station ID (KMSPDT) then open up your NEXTPVR and go to Channel Guide. You should be able to compare the website with your channel guide in NEXT PVR to find out what NEXT PVR has labeled that station as. For me it was labeled as KSMP-HD, which is why PTVL wasn't syncing it with my EPG data automatically. For whatever reason PTVL has a tough time syncing them together unlike XBMC's LIVE TV. (NOTE: This assumes that you have already done the UPDATE EPG inside of NEXT PVR under settings - channels. Otherwise your NEXT PVR will have no channel data.)
Once you have done this and gathered a list of all of the channels, you are ready to move on to the next step.

My channel list ended up looking like this:
The ones on the left are how they appeared in NEXT PVR and on the right of the ='s is how they appeared in my xmltv.xml file.
Bounce = KMSPDT2
KMSP-HD = KMSPDT
KARE-HD = KAREDT
KARE_WX = KAREDT2
WDMI-LD = WDMILD
WDMI-LD = WDMILD2
WUCW HD = WUCWDT
Get TV = WUCWDT2
ZUUS = WUCWDT3
K33LN-D = K33LND
tpt MN = KTCIDT2
qubo = KPXMDT2
KMSP-HD = WFTCDT2
WFTC-HD = WFTCDT
MOVIES! = WFTCDT3
WCCO-DT = WCCODT
tpt 2 = KTCADT
tpt MN = KTCADT2
tpt Wx = KTCADT4
KSTPDT1 = KSTPDT
ION = KPXMDT
IONLife = KPXMDT3
TPT Life = KTCIDT3

3. Now, go to "Settings" inside of NEXT PVR and then "Channels". You are now going to change every channel name to the ID that was from your xmltv.xml from step 2. (For example I changed every station from the left name above to the name right of the ='s sign. Once you are done hit the UPDATE EPG option in NEXT PVR.

That's it! Re-populate your XBMC/Kodi TV data inside of XBMC/KODI and autotune your settings2.xml.

Glad I could be so "unhelpful" (even though pretty much everything you describe here has been told to you several times by multiple members including myself).

Regardless, thanks for the nicely written guide. Maybe if you hadn't filled it with pot shots at the people who tried to help you it would end up linked in the first page.